Houston Dynamo v. Charlotte FC, Sunday, July 3

steres leaves the most dangerously positioned player to run out to a less dangerous player hmmmmm i can't believe people even want to argue with me about him

how many times are we going to give up the same freaking goal from the back post due to the failure to secure the wing combined with a narrow so pinched in line that means you can make a back post run unabated for chances on goal

what a great identity we have picked how many years of getting killed down the wings and like one year it netted positive, we are a cheap team play disciplined well considered underdog soccer

 

This game is so boring I'm in the stands on BigSoccer.

 

the part our deal colleague finesses in trying to paint a picture of consistent expansion losses is that it's for different reasons. used to be from the dynasty throwing out the B team in quasi USOC rotational fashion -- because we were so much better maybe the reserves can win while the first choice rest to play someone decent -- and it's now we can't even beat them straight up.

i get grief about my coaching and GM buildup speed critique but this is another expansion team kicking our a$$ at home. like we should be at least better than that. if nothing else. that too hard to manage? too fast for some of you? at what point do my critiques become fair? 13th place? last?

 

if fafa is going to play at all he should start. move him or start him. we lack the courage of any convictions.

 

people wonder why i want to see HD2 up or whatnot (or obsessed over gitau) but when you're down 2 goals and putting on memo and junqua that's not a concerted effort to win a soccer game with anyone of potential impact. we are either cupboard-bare on the bench or so far up our own arrogant tookus we think this might actually work.

 

perhaps steres being turned in circles while giving ground almost to his own 6 will be the end of the nonsense but who knows the ability to bs oneself seems high around this team

vera with a nightmare

one thing about vera on goal 2 is we have a running issue with making passes for the sake of making passes, and this pep inspired bs notion of i will ground pass out of trouble, who is he looking for and why isn't that ball cleared to mars when he is being both chased and shepherded into the dangerous middle of the field, and i don't see where the pass is going.

you can just stand foot on the ball if you don't see a pass. in which case he doesn't step into the bear trap. you can hoof the odd ball downfield rather than run into the press or force a pass that comes right back at you. personally i come from the passes for a purpose school. and when in doubt.....you can finish the rhyme for me....

 

on the goal we just generally lack that sort of virtuoso unpredictable accurate technical ball. just flip the ball over the top. nice. creative.

and then i personally am a speed wing guy at our paygrade. if it's gonna be technical needs to be a lot more technical. speed is cheaper. i think we can do better than fafa but it's like we're intent on making every goal a result of dozens of passes leading to a predictable entry ball. every goal doesn't have to be hard work. dead balls. counters. cheapies.

they need to sit down and decide not how are we going to pander for tickets but instead how am i composing a team that can beat the other teams in the league. tactics meant to win rather than entertain or sell some "way of playing" or "identity." better chosen talent. if we suck no one is buying tickets very long no matter how hard you pander.

 

Seemed the guys were just off tonight. They didn't know where each other were, the crosses were off, nobody making well timed runs etc. And Coco, please quit shooting from long range and hitting nothing but the bar.....that would be the bar behind the goal on the concourse.

 

i get the critique fafa was really only productive on miami but when you play charlotte that's closer to playing miami. duh. if he's being sold or traded get that done and swapped faster.

the lineups are almost like a team trying to lose on purpose. i don't get it. been that way since the break. are we tanking or stupid?

if fafa is in bubble wrap to be sent out of town. courage of convictions and finish the deal. otherwise about every line had B team elements and the B team is basically last year's last place team give or take steres who is that level.

 

that was just 3 points from the easy month in the schedule.

the fanboys have slept while this dropped to 11th. maybe they can quote me some more pathetic ticket numbers. i prefer results.

they have the window to fix this before i go on strike.

 

Does your strike include BigSoccer? By all means don't wait....

 

We just lost to an expansion team that had never won a game on the road.
These players of ours just do not have a collective spirit to defend their own house
Then on the road, this ugly trait is even more obvious as we are trash on the road.
Damn it!!!

 

Not only did we lose in our house to an expansion team that has never won a road game, we did it with HH there and our best attendance in years.

Honestly, we are lucky it was only 2-1, we could have easily, and I mean it's only because Charlotte's number 7 sucks, that we didn't let two more in. Horrible performance, our guys stole their paychecks tonight. They only player I saw who actually played decently was Ceren, who did his job. Maybe Zeca....I don't know, shit performance.

 

at a big picture level, the tactics don't work which then exposes the talent level. i liked the defensive turn to begin the season but it with an exception or so has been abandoned. it's too predictable what we will try to do and what our weaknesses are.

one of my concerns with "pandering" and "identity" are they undercut how coaches and teams would normally respond to a situation. what would the normal response to shipping 2 goals every night be? exactly. i also think back in the day if your wing forwards sucked you wouldn't be playing a 433 on purpose, which is kind of stupid. the formation wags the personnel dog instead of the other way around.

the basic idea to tactics is to maximize your chances on a night or over time. our tactics save deploying a 10 play to no personnel strength nor do they create a fundamentally sound defense. predictable offense. same goal allowed over and over.

if you play too much like ramos you will converge back to his results and standing. my concern is the word is in from on high to play a certain way. if you have to have a gonzo offseason window for those tactics to be competitive then that's really saying the tactics don't help and the team rises and falls on talent level independent of coaching.

which then implies the GM ain't perfect either.

the normal response to our personnel -- including HH, let's be clear -- and how we are playing would be bodies behind the ball, sit back, no press, and counter into the space behind the attach. HH isn't going to supply the missing technique and his toolbox is that of a destroyer.

i think they want to turn this into a 352 like atletico -- or stay in the 433 -- but the defense is swiss cheese, the wings aren't very good -- and that formation stresses the wings -- and you then need some speed and finishing when we do get the ball. i'd be playing 451 or 361 until the defense is fixed. fundamental soundness. bodies behind the ball. keep the score down. the offense then doesn't need to score 2-3 a night while we fix it.

one of my concerns with hiring nagamura to change things is SKC always struck me as similar to us and a bit cavalier. that and more dedicated to their style than practical. we need practical. what formation is it with this set of players you would play to best win games. it's not 433.

 

also maybe pick tactics like you play in a furnace half the time

 

we
are
dog
sh^t

PS
bUT wE HAvE Hh!

 

On the bright side this loss means we won't be in the playoffs. Can spend the rest of the season prepping for next.

 

re what i said yesterday

There were too many unforced errors and giving the ball away at crucial moments. “A lot of giveaways, a lot of lost balls, a lot of unforced errors that lead to a lot of shallow chances,” Nagamura said. “They were really good in transition, Charlotte FC, but especially because we gave the ball to them too much. We lost too many easy balls by forcing plays when we should have kept it and that took our momentum away from the game. In the second half, we tried to change a couple of things, be a little bit more mobile up front, but again I think it was a bad day for us today. Too many giveaways, too many lost balls. That is what really, really effected our game.”

this discussion is correct and all well and good but we have so many consistent issues where it's like either the players are uncoachable/bad or the coach isn't effectively coaching the stupid out of them.

along similar lines, 1 goal where we allow a cross and give up a chance back door for being narrow is a player. a dozen is the coach. one of my concerns on the coach and tactics is repeated things never get fixed.

and running steres back out there after the previous game speaks to my concerns about glacial uptake on what is wrong. we get it eventually but on season destroying timescales.

 

lets be real half this roster is USL level until that changes these are the results

 

it's not about the Xs and Os, its the about the Jimmie and Joes

repeat ad nauseam

 

Hector Herrera speaking postmatch to his @HoustonDynamo teammates @TheStrikerTexas #HoldItDown pic.twitter.com/7VJOzXOSKx

— Victor Araiza (@victoraraiza) July 4, 2022

 

i think it's more complicated than that. my broad belief is this will converge back to the talent level. but i don't see this as last place talent. i think the tactical concepts are so.poor that the talent level is not leveraged but rather exposed. i think there are plenty of other western teams getting away with fairly little themselves.

i don't think our system helps us at all. we are horrible on dead balls and header goals. maybe 1/3 of our midfield produces and he's only ok. the wing play is predictable which is bad for getting the job done. lots of giveaways forcing balls, at the midfield level. not enough striker service.

conversely the defense the supposed hard hat mids don't contain opponents that well -- including everyone's favorite two way nightmare coco -- we give up too many crosses too easy, we play narrow deep and give up constant backdoor chances, and whatever "shifting around" concept we are trying to implement doesn't work.

i don't get what we're trying to do and how we possibly see it as a winner in a competitive environment. and then i find it absurd how we have the same problems game after game. that's coaching.

i am sure people will say but the personnel but barrett had jack squat and he managed to whip them into something that didn't constantly leak goals. to me the problem is we hired someonre to play a "way" and that way isn't revolutionary relative to what we did the past half decade.

to me if you don't have the talent to go end to end and win then you should be emphasizing team defense to counter your better resourced opponents. you negate their expensive offense with dogged defense. LAG. if we kept teams to 0-1 goals then the stuttering defense is enough to get results. if you ship 2 goals a night this is what happens over time table wise. we keep talking up attacking soccer but not assembling eredivisie type squads that score 3-4 goals a night in their own right. kind of stuck in the middle someplace which is not a competitive advantage. mediocre offense. mediocre defense. the ceiling on that is barely playoffs IMO.

i think we took the wrong response to the last kinnear year and that misunderstanding has never been weeded out of the organization. i think there was the idea that if we were going to struggle then we needed to play prettier soccer as a team identity to try to keep fans. the response most years except 2017 was we sucked even worse. team history tends to suggest the fans don't care about how we play and more the results we get. the attendance continues to erode as we remain confused. "but i gave them this expensive player." "but i gave them fun attacking soccer." the fans aren't eurosnobs, they don't care. they want results.

hire a winning coach, have them self-GM, run the team out playing tactics that fit the personnel. the coach can build towards the jigsaw puzzle but you should only morph into the endgame as the personnel support it. if an interim version of the team sucks maybe it should be bunkering instead. results over purity tests or identities.

i mean our wings suck so bad why even play a wing-driven formation. if this is all we get then the wings should be formatted as mids and told to emphasize tracking back, which we need worse.

i also think that high energy in a hot environment is idiotic. some reason no one seems to notice how things seem to always pivot worse in may or june. that's either they can't do the concept in the heat or the early season results being produced by over-training early on to which the rest of the league catches up and you start to break down.

 

i can't believe it's not xs and os when we ship basically the "same goal" every week. if you have to play 5 backs a team fixes that sort of thing.

i get personnel against austin. i don't get it against charlotte or some of the other slop we also can't beat.

i kind of feel like people are trying to revive brian's malarkey argument last season. last year was a 10-11th place team that finished last and the increment was on ramos. we trying to protect staff from accountability again? why are we defending staff before they have any winning history here? HC and GM are supposed to be tools to make this better than the sum of the parts. this plays down to talent. looks like a mess most of the time.

and if we still don't have personnel maybe your buddy the wet behind the ears ex goalie isn't that great. eg how many wings does he need to sign to trip over one of them who can play at MLS level? unlock the expensive striker you just signed?

and then on the wet behind the ears brazilian he's fighting his opening day instinct which was park the bus with this unit. this is what happens when a 433 team hires a SKC xerox machine. maybe figure out a bad team shouldn't look like last year again this year.