What does that say about Ben's acumen if he leaves tactics to someone who has shown no real proficiency at putting good tactics together. I mean, if he had better ideas than Ashton, wouldn't HE be taking charge of the tactics? So he has worse ideas than Ashton yet we should let him off the hook?
OK, if it's Ashton's tactics that are at fault the FO can fire Ashton now that we have Higuain as an Asst. coach. Benny escapes direct blame and the situation improves, right?
They've been sending these guys to Europe for years during the summer break to "study the game" At some point you have to admit the student doesn't have the capacity to master this domain. No shame in that. Not everyone has the the qualities to become a good soccer coach. Maybe in another 10 years our owners will finally figure that out
The MLS record for fewest goals in a season is 22. Just sayin' is all. Might come in handy around late October.
And I, despite being the designated Ben Apologist, will not defend him for keeping Ashton and his tactical acumen of a 4 year old around.
Indeed. There’s not a better pure shot-stopper in the league. As a keeper I will keep watching this awful team just to see him do his thing.
I agree with what you said but not about Gressel. I've watched a lot of Atlanta games in the last couple of years and he has fairly good speed. He is not the fastest guy on the field but he can hold his own. Give him a little time to settle in with the team. Frankly, he looked a move ahead of other players who either did not break into space or were slow in making a decision as to where to move. I stand by the idea that he will be the most impactful player pickup brought in over the offseason. What worries me is we just don't have the number 9 we need up top.
As any leader is aware, the buck stops with them. Ben is responsible and he makes the final calls even when he delegates.
Ben actually is playing with FOUR d-mids on the field. In addition, to Moreno and Felipe, you also have Canouse and Segura.
Speed and speed of play are all relative. They may look slow for MLS but believe they are way faster than you think. I played NCAA Div1 ball and the vast majority of us cannot compete at their level. Take someone like CJ Sapong who I had a chance to see "up close and personal" and he back in college for a small school like JMU was head and shoulders above the others on the field. And even CJ Sapong while a solid player in MLS is nowhere near the top of the League.
That last goal was humiliating. That was a blooper real for the ********ing Australian A-League, and I still can’t get over it.
I've got disagree with griffon 1108. Gressel is not slow, but Asad looked very slow to me in his first sprint up the field. He had just entered, so maybe he wasn't properly warmed up, but I was shocked.
I hope I'm wrong about Gressel, but to me he looked lumbering and required a bit of space to ramp up to speed. Quick he is not.
Great, good garage, maybe a block farther than the old Lot H/I. Two blocks to get right onto the onramp to 695 going back to Virginia.
We parked in a lot at the corner of M Street and Half Street for $30. About a ten minute walk to the stadium. No issues.
Gressel is very clearly not a #10, but it sure seems like he was playing in the middle and Flores was on the wing. If it was any other coach than Olsen, I'd be surprised.
Is there a good team in France? If PSG didn't have like a billion dollars wrapped up in the playing roster, they'd suck like the rest of Ligue 1.
Wait Yall...tell me it ain't true: source I didn't get to watch anything except highlights so just found out. To me this is a fireable offense (esp coupled with Ben's illogical reason for leaving 2 subs unused). Preseason is the time to get stupidity like this out of your system and prove that it doesn't work. Even if you chose to gamble on using Gressel centrally WHY ON EARTH HAVE FLORES ON THE RIGHT INSTEAD OF HIS NATURAL POSITION???!!!!???! It's unfair to these players...wasting their best years "learning" under a coach so poor. Somebody has to intervene for the sake of the club.
umm. They rolled out this exact line-up in our final preseason game, the one where we comfortably beat Philly and Gressel was involved in 2 of the 3 goals from his central position and Flores was playing on the wing. Also of note, that was the first preseaon game for both Flores and Asad, who have been nursing injuries for several weeks. From a tactical set-up, it's not strange to have Flores on the right. This is a "modern" football set-up that is very common. For DC United in particular, whether we're in the 4-1-4-1 or 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 it is our outside backs who give us width in the attack and are the ones getting to the touchline. When your outside backs are giving you the width, your wingers push in - this is designed to get numbers in the box once we're forward - and having Flores pinch in from the right makes total sense in this set-up as it puts him on his preferred shooting foot (it seemed like he had several opportunities to pull the trigger on shots in the game and hesitated). If you are asking Flores to be a winger in a 4-4-2 or 3-5-2 or something like that than you would definitely want him on the left. With all of that said, it was very clear early on that our tactical game plan was not working. Gressel was unable to spray the ball around effectively like he had against Philly largely because of the wind. And it was very clear in the first half that Gressel was ineffective and every time Flores touched the ball good stuff was happening. I would have switched them no later than half time but the fact that we were turning mostly into the wind for the second half I could see maybe giving Gressel a little more time to operate and see if the plan worked better going with the wind. As for leaving two subs on the table, this was indeed frustrating and is a long-time Olsen weakness. As soon as we gave up the first CO goal I was begging for a sub - taking out one of the two defensive mids and put in another attacker. If we went for the win at home and lost, I could live with it. At the game, I thought we were really plodding. I watched a lot of MLS over the weekend - saw parts of probably 8 games. Everyone else seemed to play faster than us. But then I rewatched our game last night and it wasn't as bad as I thought. I think the pieces might be there and it's not surprising that the offense isn't clicking on all cylinders. Asad and Flores we're basically hurt for all of preseason. Arriola has been lost to an ACL. I'm pissed we lost on Saturday and would have liked to see some more in-game tactical adjustments and another sub at least, but I don't think the season is lost like many on this board seem to.