Same, though I fear Hopkins is really just a Skundrich who can dribble. Too slow. Still, I'm fine letting it play out on the field. I have no desire to watch Flores anymore, and really Kamara after the Austin crap. Canouse/Durkin are below average mids in MLS, they just are. How about Garay and Djeffal if we're just going to lose anyway?
While I understand the thought, I can not fully agree. I enjoyed the exciting, attacking play last year. However, after a full preseason under Losada, the lack of cohesion has been shocking. This team has lacked chemistry all season. Other than pressing and trying to create turnovers, there have been no offensive tactics. Quite frankly, our pressing has not been particularly well coordinated either. Most notably, the team has no idea how to break down an organized defense. Some of this is on the coach. Sure, one could argue that Losada deserved more talented players. We may never know why Arriola left, and not replacing him or Paredes before the start of the season was huge. I thought that the loss of so many players at the same time in the off season was too much. However, if Arriola and others left because of Losada, then some of that is on him. We may never know.
Dallas is the third best team in the league and we're bottom of the East. Im going to take a guess as to why Arriola left.
I think that was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. On the other hand, while you’re right that we may never really know what actually happened, what is clear is there’s plenty of blame to go around and no one's hands are clean.
Everything about the team screams amateur. We bring Loudon United off the bench. We have a “coach” whose major experience is as Ben Olsen’s deputy. There’s some quality on the squad but nowhere near enough. The team might make the playoffs given how poor the conference is, but the entire org is a sham. It looks about half the time like they just met in the parking lot. Relegation would be merciful at this stage. There should be a price to pay for mediocrity
no one says he was wrong about players coming in but Losada beat that team into losing with his high press style. He owns that!
I remember more than one source saying that Losada had taken the fun out of the game. If last night was an example of fun then I want misery all around.
Well you either high press or you lose every game with this squad and the losing culture we have. Run or die.
The high press style was the only successful and exciting thing that this team had going for it for almost 15 years. This is where you are wrong. Really wrong. More than a difference of an opinion wrong. We keep coming up with excuses for this team as if they are Fredo and we are just giving him Vegas so he won't screw things up. A team of professional athletes should be able to get fit, stay fit, and play a style that their coach wants them to implement. We had a crap ton of injuries before Losada.
You can create a lot of chances and be inconsistent at finishing or you can create a couple but be clinical. You can't be wasteful and uncreative. Otherwise, it was pretty much what I think we can expect from DCU this season. Defense didn't play too bad, but made mental errors on set pieces and fouled in dangerous areas (I wish we had an attacker who would go at defenders in the way Crew attackers do, and maybe create the occasional dangerous free kick opportunity). We have to hope the other team wastes chances the way that we do -- that free kicks go into walls, that volleys from corner kick clearances go into the stands -- in order to be competitive right now.
Well, that's the direction Losada was heading in before he was shytecanned; that is, if you've got a team that's so bad that it's not going to make the playoffs, you might as well sit the non-performing veterans and see what the youngsters can do.
Regardless of Losada and his coaching style, the owners bear the responsibility for sticking with a GM who has a poor track record a decade long. Instead of firing him they kick him upstairs. Until there's accountability in the front office, it doesn't matter who is coach.
No, no, no. Every arrogant coach says "my system is brilliant, if they just play it right we will be undefeated". No you fit the system to the skill set of your players, not the other way around. That squad could not high press to his level and stay healthy. A fact we all saw. Previous injury woes had zero to do with that. Come on a person as smart as you are can see that. How exciting the system was for short stretches has nothing to do with the fact they could not sustain that system.
We did that once. We called it "Bennyball." Posess and bunker. I saw that Saturday night. Never pass it forwards! Keep possession by passing it backwards and occasionally (only occasionally!) to the side. Because when the other team gets the ball, we're too slow and unskilled to play defense, so we better have the ball all the time or start collecting yellows.
While I generally agree with this statement, it assumes that a system exists that could allow the players on this roster to compete, let alone succeed. That’s not the case. Losada was certainly part of the problem, but I disagree violently that he was the main part of the problem. The main part of the problem is the group of players. The notion that they can make a deep run in the playoffs if they had a system that fit their talent level is simply nonsensical.
You pick a coach with a system and a philosophy you cannot ask the coach to ditch his philosophy and system because you are a cheap ass team that can't get decent players. Losada had no reason to think he should do something differently. At the beginning of this season we saw a less aggressive and more targeted press. I don't think that was changing the system to the players but more trying to squeeze a diamond from a turd.
So we were effective last season with the high press and it seemed like we were pressing a heck of a lot less this season, even against a team this group should have been able to execute against in USOC, but Losada didn't press them high. We sold off the 2 best players for his system. Matter of fact, Arriola wanted to leave bc he hated Losada ... but he busted his hump above and beyond last season. You can call it a good pro, but if you do, you indict almost every other player on the roster. The injuries were a problem, but I am not sure you saw that with his club in Belgium. It's not like we didn't have a disastrous amount of injuries the prior season too. DCU has frequently been among the leaders in injuries I tried finding more info and it was surprisingly hard to find or I couldn't find the google phrase to search. That said, I recall 2020 being bad too.
Gotta disagree. This is largely true if you're coaching a U-14 squad. It might be true if you're coaching a national team. But you don't hire Bielsa because you want to bunker. When a high-profile coach gets hired, speculation is all about how the players will fit into the coach's system, not the other way around.