Post-match: Vancouver Whitecaps FC - San Earthquakes (Saturday, 5/14) postgame thread [R]

Where is the Quakes defense and why take Cade and Jebo out?

Play has improved with Alex Covelo but in this game anyway, he threw away 2 points!

 

Vancouver almost grabs the 3 points on the last play of the game.

 

That Tie/Loss is on Cavelo... why leave Beason off at the end? Get Beason on, push Marie up slightly and give Lopez some support from JY!

 

Disappointment

 

I've seen enough of Calvo to not want him anywhere near the field again. Why on earth did the Quakes pick him up? He's truly awful. And it's not like we didn't know he couldn't play before. Inexplicable.

 

That was a very winnable game. Our defense sucks.

 

It is always a bad idea to make subs just before defending a corner kick. Bad decision by the coach.

A single Cavelini caused problem with each of our back four players. Nathan and Calvo could not handle him. Lopez and Marie were also easily beaten. Marie looked tired when he was defending.

Lopez was especially bad. He was one of the few doing a lot of ball watching. Others were Yueill and Gregus. These two were so slow and tentative all the time.

It proves that when Espinoza is willing to drive to end line like how he did in his first season, he can be dangerous.

Cade did one thing right and that was the pass to Espinosa on the third goal. He still has so much to learn when he has the ball and how he should position himself when he doesn't have the ball, especially to provide defensive pressure and coverage.

Fair but disappointing result.

 

Remedi, Calvo and Nathan need to go. Enough of cowboy defending!

 

Three blown leads against a bad team... time to start Beason he can't do any worse.

 

Two blown leads. Vancouver blew the first lead.

 

For some perspective, in May 2012, ten years ago, the eventual Supporters Shield-winner Quakes blew a 1-0 early lead and later the draw by allowing a 94th minute goal in a 2-1 loss at Vancouver. Poor defending — by Ike Opara — on the winning goal.

Lesson: worse has happened in the same place to an arguably better team and defenders.

 

Remedi should be the guy coming on in the last 15 minutes to defend the lead and not be the starter. He is most effective in that role.

Calvo and Nathen looked really bad today, especially on that first goal. However, there were way too many odd-man breaks against us when Gregus/JY/Monteiro lost the ball in the middle due to being over aggressive which resulted in dangerous counters.

 

Away point! Need some road wins to make up for the poor season start but things are still trending up. 3 good goals for the Quakes and one of JT's saves was awesome.

 

On a positive note, Espinoza had a good game.

 

I think that Jebo had a pretty decent game too, but then, I’ve only been able to watch the highlights.

 

He had a solid game overall - looked fairly dangerous and played some good passes, and most of the time, held the ball well.

 

Agreed on Jebo and Ezpinoza. It was nice to see Cade come to life in the second half. He seemed to be looking to pass in the first half, and in the second half he hit some really decent ones. Loved seeing Wondo get really excited greeting him on the bench after the sub. Jamiro also looked lively. It's nice to see the smallest guy on the field for us get a header in the box. As much as we're talk talking about offensive guys that was JT's point. Some excellent late saves.

Calvo takes too many chances. He wins the ball a lot by getting on the other side of his man, which is great. . . until it's disastrous. Wasn't impressed by the the open space between the midfield and back-line late in the game.

Still, an improvement. Now, Beason for Calvo please.

Oh, and it still sucks to see Jungwirth play for someone else.

 

So, there was some good stuff and some bad stuff, but I don't feel too bad about the game on balance. On the positive side, we scored 3 nice goals from the run of play. VC had 4 clean sheets out of 5 games at BC Place. After the 1st half it didn't look like we were going to score, but we looked much more dangerous in the 2nd half.

On the negative side, back to some rakish defending. I'm going to call out Calvo mainly because he was just out of position too many times. Second goal, he was pushed way over on the right side of the Quakes defense, leaving Lopez to cover the middle and then the guy comes in wide of that with no one near him and scores near post. Then at the end of the game when we almost lost at, again, Cavellini is wide open in Calvo's area in the box, and Calvo is jogging in 20 yards from goal. When's that Costa Rica playoff again?

Always tough to win on the road, and I think on balance we outplayed VC, just didn't quite get it done. That happens in soccer. I'm not going to have a conniption. Can't speak for y'all!

I was getting down on Monteiro a bit in the early part of the game because - why does he always circle backwards when receiving the ball instead of just turning forward and attacking? And for a while it seemed like Jackson was the more attacking of the two. But he got it going and wound up having a good game. As Danielle was saying about him, you know he's going to have a really high work rate and win the ball for you - every game. If he can continue to add a little more attack to his game, he's a pretty good addition.

Benji sub was fine, but wasn't feelin' the Bouda sub. I noticed that he didn't seem to be working that hard on defense, and at that point that's really all he should be doing, other than trying to help hold the ball. At this point he's better as a "need a goal" sub.

Finally, although it didn't quite work out in the end, I'm going to give Covelo some credit by (apparently) telling the team to go for it in the 2nd half, and not settle for a 0-0 game. We wound up with something no better - 3-3 in terms of results, except that at least we went for it.

 

This was a winnable game and we pissed it away.

 

The Quakes defense and GK are horrible!

Time to give Bersano a chance as I'm done with JT!

 

It was also a lose-able game, and the Quakes were lucky not to concede shortly before the final whistle.

 

BTW I think Jebo might have been a hair offside on his 2nd goal. Surprised there was no mention of it.

Also, BTW, Jebo's now currently back on top of the MLS goals race (along with a couple of others with 7). Very happy for him. There was a time when I didn't know if he was going to score again.

That Cade pass to Jebo is the kind of pass that will probably have Matt Doyle saying, in his "sample of one proves the rule" way, that Cade has "elite vision". He's already done it once before with Cade. But that was really a perfect pass - perfect weight and placement.