Post-match: San Jose Earthquakes - Toronto FC (Saturday, 3/25) postgame thread [R]

Gonna be a month in a row with Quakes over the playoff line. Did Almeyda do that? Maybe the summer of his first year?

 

The Quakes are also scoring at a pace of less than a goal per game.

 

We kinda fixed the defense but now the offense is broken. It’s Quakes whack-a-mole.

 

Anybody that's objective should be saying that game was ass.

 

@Kaitlyn

The Italian boards keep talking about MLS being inferior but I've countered with the Serie A's decline in the last 5-10 years.

If Thiago Almada can play for Argentina, do you think Federico Bernardeschi can still play for Italy?

 

Mancini complaining not enough Italian players in Serie A, said it was worse than England with the Premier League. Maybe so. I read last week that there was only one Italian in the top 10 goal scorers in Serie A, whereas in England there are 4 English players in the top 6.

 

With all the foreign players on rosters, it’s gotten so bad in Italy that they had to go find a player in Argentina.

Mateo Retegui's grandfather was born in Sicily I believe and through him gained his citizenship.

He ended up scoring against England but that's only because the Serie A can’t produce any Italian born players capable or good enough to play for the national team.

 

Although,, save for the last five minutes or so, we were far better in an away game than Atlanta who - notwithstanding yesterdays humiliation bs Cowlumbus - are within two points of the top of the East.

 

Admist all the high-fiving over the Mensah signing, I think people still don't appreciate what we gave up (on paper) to get him. He's a DP and his salary is pretty close to Espinoza's. Imagine if instead we spent that capital on a DP left winger who is even close to as capable as Espinoza, attacking from the other side. Cade and Benji then become, as they should be based on this year's performances, subs who need to earn more minutes with productivity. And away we go.

I'm not saying that signing Mensah was a mistake necessarily. Our hand was forced - it was the safe move, rather than hope that we can cover Nathan's spot with some combination of Ågren, Munie, and Beason. But it came with a significant opportunity cost and our lack of goal productivity reflects it.

 

Benji and Cade are capable of playing better.

I know this will meet with resistance from you, but maybe we should be seeing more of Tommy.

 

I like to see him in that freer midfield sub role that he had last night (and Matias did it a few times last year also). I thought he had a bit of a hard time finding the game on offense at first but made a few defense plays, including stuffing Bradley when he was lining up a Zone 14 shot. And later he started to get in on the offense with that overlap / cross on the right, and unfortunately the bungled rebound, and then winning a free kick for us right at the end.

Competition will be tough for midfield spots though with Monteiro, Niko, and Gruezo all coming back at some point so I think minutes will be tough for him to come by unless Luchi starts to look at things a little differently.

 

We had our chances, but didn’t finish. So we tied.

Cade and Benji both off to a poor start this season. Maybe it’s just young guys having trouble adjusting to a new system?

JT had very little to do. He made one killer stop in the first half, and I think a couple of more pedestrian saves in the second half.

Paul Marie had a great night on both sides of the ball. I’m not a big fan, but he was great against TFC.

Akapo had a solidly good night also.

Mensah and Rodrigues were both a bit uneven. Both made some mistakes that could have cost us. Rodrigues was good on offense, but may have have taken a ball away from one of our strikers who might have scored on that chance.

MB did well. That’s more like how I’m used to seeing him play. He made a couple of good tackles too, which is not his long suit.

Jackson had a really good game. I was very pleased with that.

Espinoza was great.

Cade did a number of things well, but couldn’t finish to save his life. Benji was just plain bad at nearly every aspect of the game. Cade has been better than Benji in every game so far this season, and Cade isn’t playing very well.

Jebo looked lost out there.

We have to fix our offense. We scored plenty of goals last season, but this season, it’s a drought. I’m hoping that it’s just a slump, a little bit of adjustment to a new system. I believe that our offensive players are decent, adequate. Not world beaters, but good enough. Our defense has been crap. Now it looks like we’ve fixed most of our defensive problems. Just need to get the offense back in gear.

But, we have a rough stretch of games coming up, as @Kaitlyn says. We could easily lose three in a row.

It’s going to be a “challenging” season.

Good thing my liver test are improved!

Go Quakesfans!!

 

I'd feel worse about our offense if we weren't creating chances. Our xG over the last 2 games, with 0 goals combined, is almost 4. So the chances are there, we're just not executing the shots. When we have xG's like 0.6 or 0.8 (as we sometimes did last year) that's when I feel "more bad" about the offense.

That said, I'm willing to hold out the possibilty that we may not really regress to the mean, xG to G, and that we are just a poor finishing team. How many open headers have we hit wide of the post this year? There were two last night. The only quality shot on goal I can remember last night was Yueill's Zone 14-ish low driving shot in stoppage time.

 

There were a lot of positives to take out of that game. Baldisimo had a much better game. I think that's expected considering the circumstances under which he played last week. Paul Marie had maybe the best game he's played from a defensive standpoint. Put himself in some really good position to break up plays.

It's frustrating for the team to get so close to scoring so many times and fail to do so. The reorganized front line was better, and Cowell close to goal is where he belongs. I think if he and Kikanovic start together again, they will break through.

Espinoza played incredibly well but looked absolutely beat by the end of the game. It's a shame that nobody on the team can slot in there and offer anywhere near as good of play.

Thompson also looked good as a sub. He recovered a lot of good balls, made good offensive plays. He looked solid. That sub role is just where he's at and if he keeps playing like that, he'll get consistent sub minutes.

The only player who really struggled was Ebobisse. He just wasn't able to find the space in the box that he normally does, so credit to Toronto for shutting him down. Of course, that should have offered up better chances to people other than Rodrigues, who looked like the only player who actually cared about scoring.

 

I should have said that Judson and Tommy both looked pretty good last night. Good to see Judson on the pitch. We need for him to be good this year because it’s a damned long season. TT did well too. I want to see Skahan too. Maybe he’s not getting minutes because he looks poor in practice? I’m getting a little worried about his development.

Also, that’s the first time that Bouda has looked good to me in his last four or five appearances. Nice aggression without being out of control or fouling other players overly much. He’s still not ready for prime time, but was decent.

We need to see Munie and Ågren get some minutes too. And Walls.

Go Quakesfans!!

 

We see so little of Bouda it's hard to get a good read on him. One thing that concerns me about him is his defense though, or lack thereof. It's just a sort of matador kind of thing where he makes a half-hearted effort and then lets the attacker go by. I think there was a game last year - can't remember which, where he came in and we wound up giving up a goal late and coughing up the lead, and his lack of defense was a factor. I think it was the 2-2 game against RSL. When you're a late sub like that you should be going 120% on both sides of the ball.

 

Coach seems to like Tommy, whether you do or not. I fear that that makes Skahan the odd man out. I was hoping to see him while we were depleted, because I think we are unlikely to when our other guys return.

I haven’t been impressed with Ågren when I’ve seen him, but that doesn’t say or mean much. He ought to be good enough to sub from time to time. Beason is much better appt CD than outside.

Ochoa shouldn’t be any part of our conversation for at least another year or three.

We really need to do some squad rotation this year. It hurt us that we didn’t last year.

Go Quakesfans!!

 

12K tickets sold maybe, butts in seats not a chance.