Party Boy looks like he was a solid pick up. Thank god Gio missed that last pass, he would have flubbed the shot and the game would have ended up a tie.
I still enjoy all the NER "supporters" that bought tickets for this match just to watch Zlatan, but got all salty online when he he didn't show. They basically make it seem like the league should mandate that the superstars should be forced to play in front of apposing crowds.
When does Geoff Cameron arrive? We let a 10 man team score two goals on us. I don't know what to say about Ciani, it's like he just decided not to mark anyone in the box. Maybe he knows he is done.... I love that we won that game - it's been a long time since the G's were on the right side of a game like that.
I hardly took any joy from that ending, we were so bad for so much of the game that it was hard to care. This is the team we are: we have players who can make a few great individual plays but we are terrible as a team. That has to be at least partly on Sigi.
The problem isn't that Ciani doesn't mark anyone, it's that he is so slow that he can't keep a player marked and doesn't seem to react well to play behind him.
Ciani is getting the blame but the real culprit is we don't have a clue about how close down space in our final third. Opponents are given oodles of time and space to get in killer passes and crosses. I've really never seen worse at a first division professional level. Remember how LAG back lines used to keep track of each other, making sure they push up together so the team stays compact in and the offside line is clear? Well this isn't one of those teams. REV goal #1 - The defensive shape you see below has to be a joke, right? Our entire defensive line is hanging back in or near our own box. Romney and Ciani have worked out a plan to scrunch themselves together to mark as little space as possible. And apparently Skjosk and Cole are off to the side having a pow-wow about where the Rev players are hiding. Why isn't Skjuirk playing cb with Ciani and Romney moving up on the wide open Fagundez? Why does JDS take a matador stab-and-miss at the Rev player who is about to receive the ball? Why is Cole in the center of the field but Kitchen isn't? How hard is it for a professional soccer team to know they have to push up as a unit to squeeze out the spaces between them and the midfield? And finally who taught Bingham how to make himself so small? Goal # 2 (see below): Hmmm... how are the Rev players ever going to find any space when we have seven field players back? Oh, wait all of the Rev players are wide open? Could it be that Ciani, Skjluxf, Kitchen and Cole are again all hanging back in their own box making this all possible? See the Rev player at the bottom with his hand up? That signal means "pass it to me -- I'm unbelievably wide fuxxing open!" Btw, this is the guy who will get the assist five seconds later. It turns out that it's not that hard to put in a beautiful cross onto a running teammate's head when you are under zero pressure. It also turns out that even as a wing defender in a 5-2-1-2 Cole still loves to pinch in too far and leave late runners wide open to attack his side of the field. It's easy to say Ciani should have done better on their header goal and their near goal off the woodwork. But both of those came from perfectly placed crosses catching perfectly timed runners cutting across the box. Those weren't his biggest mistakes - failing to organize and push up our defense was a much bigger sin. If you give opponents free reign to get attack our goal repeatedly sooner or later they will find their target.
This quote from Brad Friedal was interesting: On whether the amount of space the Revolution were able to utilize was surprising: Coach Friedel: “Not at all. They played an incredible amount of long balls. They’re a very uncharacteristic Los Angeles Galaxy team as far as what’s previously been. And when [Zlatan] Ibrahimović plays, they play even more long balls. They have big gaps in the middle of the midfield. We knew that, but, at the same time, they also have players that are very good in the attacking third that can hurt you. So, were we surprised that the game was open and we had space? Absolutely not. I thought we passed the ball pretty well today and we created quite a few opportunities, but we knew, by now in the season, you can scout the opponents enough. We knew pretty much what to expect.”
Not a Friedel fan but he's right about that. Well actually he understated it - we have big gaps everywhere, not just in the midfield.
I didn't hear Friedel's presser. Does he now have a fake Boston accent? or still with the fake English one?
Yea I agree with everything he is saying and he doesn't sound salty saying it either. We are pretty crap, and New England 100% were the better team who deserved the win. They had a plan, and for the most part it worked. New england just switched off and we pounced.
It was a win. Kudos to the guys who are out there trying. Hard to tell how this team will improve, and there are so many problems that you just have to shake your head and hope for luck. We should AT LEAST have a solid defense by this point, and we are far, far from that. On offense we are often incredibly static. I'm not a supporter of our coaching staff, and our front office is worse.
Well, I feel our defense, bad as it is, isn't helped by our gameplan, which is very direct. We punt the ball up, then lost the 2nd ball, which invites waves of attack to our suspect defense. It's how we let teams back into games; even when we are up we are punting the ball up.
So it seems that the problem comes back to the Gs lack of a strong midfield to win balls and provide link up play.
Or our unwillingness to play through the midfield. Not sure what the point of having a DP midfielder is if we don't play through him.