Bruce keeps complaining about schedule congestion but then notes that it's a problem for every team. But the problem is not the same for every team because some teams rotate their squads more than others. Bruce has run our starters into the ground with a sort of "binge and purge" scheme. Mostly binging on the starters and an occasional purge. And it's never really mix and match except for maybe one player or two at the very most. It's either A Team or B Team. And then of course if you play all your bench players all at once they're generally not gonna do that well and then everyone concludes, "See we have no depth!". Actually the B Team, the 2 times they've played, have held their own. I think they had the lead in St. Louis at halftime and against Seattle it was 1-1 at the half before the starters started coming in. Both road games - even higher degree of difficulty. He's kind of setting them up for failure (and they didn't really fail!). There's no reason he had to keep guys like Romney, Jona, Skahan, Fernandez, and maybe even Adimabua on the bench tonight vs. starting. None of them started the previous game. Whatever drop in quality or familiarity that might ensue you might gain in fresher legs. It could be a push. And now we're screwed for the Portland game because we ran the starters into the ground again this game. You can't watch a game in which the starters failed to win, and conclude "We have no depth!" If the "depth players" played and we lost then OK, maybe, but you can't blame the loss on the guys who didn't play or who barely played.
Nah. We dominated the first ten, maybe twelve minutes. We had a few moments of good after that, but no more dominance. Bruce should have been rotating players in (as subs) sooner and more often weeks ago. Our subs aren’t good enough to play as a unit. In this game, Bruce should have used all five subs, and sooner. He should have pulled Roberts and Harkes at the half, then Judd, Marie, and maybe Benji about twenty minutes later. It’s a knock out tournament. No sense saving subs. But mostly, our roster is just thin, and we’re four players short of a full roster. Maybe only three players short. And some of the guys on the roster aren’t good enough. Partly that’s on Bruce, but more, it’s on RottenFish. He needs to spend more on our roster, but he won’t. Go Quakesfans!! F- Fotis!! F- Fisher!! Twice!!
Don't over rotate based on the last 5 games... we're just equalizing. We've been very lucky in many games, now we've been a bit unlucky. We knew we didn't have a deep bench and it's showing. I get why Bruce is hesitant to sub people and he is at fault... the solution to that problem was before the season started. Ever wonder what our record is with Harkes starting? It's too much effort to correlate the data, but I bet we're less than 5% wins with him starting.
Not dominant for 30 minutes but the better run of play for at least that long but couldn’t get the final ball right. I don’t think any MLS team has a full B Team that can be reliably competitive against other team’s A Teams. That’s why you rotate with mix and match instead of binge and purge. Plus then the subs look better when playing with more starters and gain some confidence.
Combination of factors - some regression to the mean but also not enough rotation / dead starters. Again with our bench, we can’t say that they’re no good when they’re not playing. It’s the starters who have been losing these games for the most part. I don’t see how we can watch us lose another game that’s like 90% starters and conclude that welp, we don’t have any depth! By the way notice that Judd’s injury (likely pulled hammy) is nearly identical to Timo’s. Making a sprint into the final 3rd on short rest, straining to beat the defender, and pop, there it goes. The injuries are another consequence of insufficient rotation. I’m not high on Adimabua but he’s played like 20 minutes all season and has an assist in that time. We’ve been running Judd into the ground. Maybe Adi’s not enough good for MLS but I’d like actually see that before concluding it. Niko was playing like every minute of every game when he got injured. There’s no reason Bruce couldn’t have been spelling him a little bit with Fernandez. As for Harkes I was kind of thinking that he’s a CM who “looks busy” but what exactly is he accomplishing? He’s just kind of running around out there in the middle of the field. Doesn’t seem to have many memorable moments on the ball or defensive plays.
On the plus side, I thought the announcers were far more even-handed than most. They didn't seem biased for either team -- they were rooting for a good game and praising both sides. I didn't scream at them even once, and my family can tell you how rare that is.
Yes, that's because they are not MLS announcers. If we had an MLS crew it would have been paeans to CO all game long.
I know it seems like the season is falling apart due to recent form, but i would guess everyone on here would have been very happy if you were told we would be 9w 2 d 3 L going into the final game before the break . Obviously rest and adding to the roster will be hugely important in stabilizing the season and making the playoffs, but I feel pretty good about what the team has accomplished to date. Actually pretty remarkable.
Bruce said he thinks the team will have a good 2nd half. But he said the same thing last year and we didn't . I think we'll be OK in the 2nd half - not the wild success we had at the beginning of the year, but not losing a bunch of games in a row. Let's say a 1.5 PPG kind of clip. Of course injuries can always play a part, and is an unknown. Losing Daniel or Munie for a good part of the 2nd half of the season would be rough (knock on wood).
I think one bad old school aspect of Bruce is that he doesn’t sub because he thinks suffering and playing while hurt builds character.
One final note regarding the match..... Everyone criticizes PayPal but it still looks better than the CRapids place....