All hail the genius of Sachin's post [R] This post deserved a thread of its own. It's just too good to let it risk burial in the official thread. Wow.
Well, I've never said it before, but Sachin rocks. So true. We looked lost. We basically had six guys committed to defense plus the goalie, then grought two impotent players into the game.
best post i have ever seen on bigsoccer.com. excellent job. this destroys my post regarding the same sentiments (in much less detail). its time to really rebuild from scratch. simple non-meaningful transactions need to stop.
The natives are restless in DC and across the US and around the world. WE WANT PLAYOFFS AND WILL NOT ACCEPT LESS
Let me be the first to say ... I disagree with this post. While I have thought the same thoughts from time to time, I don't think that's the right reaction. 1) Moreno needs to be on the pitch and in form to earn so much money. But, we do need someone who can fill that role, and I'm willing to bet that Moreno will do the job next season. Moreno lost his fire under Rongen ... he tuned him out. He had no desire in the offseason. Now that Ray is in charge, I believe this offseason will find a much more focused Moreno. Also, he now realizes that he's not untouchable, and that he cannot coast and still succeed in this league. I think he'll return hungrier than we've seen him since 1998. 2) We shouldn't cut both McKinley and Williams, as tempting as it is, unless we have 2 other quality Dmid players to plug in there. Assuming we could acquire someone like Rooney cheaply, then yeah, cut one of the two loose. But, our defense has been pretty darn good of late, and I'm just not comfortable axing both of the guys responsible for putting out the fires in midfield. As much as Trask loves his boy Alavanja, Lazo cannot do the job like the other two, period. I wouldn't mind cutting Lazo frankly, but at least the guy tries. 3) It is unrealistic to expect no injuries to our back line, so we need to draft some depth. With 3 or 4 picks in the top 22 we should have no difficulty doing that and getting players like Akwari ... or better. 4) This formation was an invention of necessity, not choice. We simply have no other players to play. The choice of Lassiter over Curtis is questionable, but they're not that dissimilar in their production. Why we played a counterattack with two very slow midfielders playing forward ... that's a mystery for the ages. -Tron
Just got done seeing the game and I also have to say that Sachin overstates the problems with the team. Look. Last week we played well because we had players doing their job in all aspects of the game: -the defenders defended -the wide players linked up well with Etch, the defenders and the forwards -Etch had a variety of passing options- forward and to either side -Moreno and Q2 paired up well, alternating going long and coming back for the ball To sum up SJ couldn't focus on any part of the field to stop us and our defense didn't get too out of shape. Today vs the Metros some of the same things happened: -the defenders did a good enough job. None of them had bad games. But the offense returned to the bad old scoreless, impotent days. Why? Because we have no one to replace Moreno. With Moreno being injured once again, we lost the interaction between him and Q2. Thus Petke and Jolley were under very little pressure during the run of play. Olsen couldn't make up for it and I'd say Hudson moving him up top, sort of, agrivated the problem because the metros didn't have to worry about -and didn't- defend our right flank. Did you notice that most of our very few real chances came when we ventured onto the right side? Look at the beginning of the game again, when we were pressing the attack. Almost all of it was either on the left with Convey and Etch or the middle with Williams. After 15 minutes or so, the metros figure out our strategy of using only half the field, shift their defense to shut down Convey and Etch- successfully- then preceed to dominate the rest of the half and the first 30 minutes of the second half. After that we start clicking more but mainly because Lazo became more aggressive and started dribbling to the right helped by Reyes who was freed from marking Diallo, and Olsen basically said, "fuck it, I'm a winger" and started playing on that side too. The problem then became we had only one forward and again Petke and Jolley are on speaking terms enough to shut down Lassiter or Q2. So we were back to our scoreless streak again, trying to attack a set defense. Again (suprise!) unsuccessfully. Blow up the team? No that's silly. We just need two forwards playing at once who are halfway decent. Hudson needs to make a hard decision on Moreno for next season, though my guess is that if Moreno stays injured the next few games, Hudson won't hope the offseason brings about a new attitude on Jaime's part as he'll get rid of him thinking that Jaime let the team down when they needed him. In a real way, Mopreno is in the exact same situation that Josh Wolff is in with the Fire- makes a lot of money and gets injured a lot. Bradley's ready to deal Wolff even before he got hurt yet again because he needs someone he can rely on. Smart guy that Bob Bradley. Moreno, again is our Wolff. But even besides Moreno we need a forth good forward because we need two forwards on the field with our midfield. Again, we need: - Two forwards to join Q1 and Q2. Moreno has a chance to be one of them, but he's got to show something NOW. Possibly it's already too late in Ray's mind. -A backup winger. Possibly Mappy fills this role, but we likely need one more. -More defensive depth, though this is not as high a priority as the first two. -
Good emotional post Sachin but I have to side with Skip and DT on this one.. Fans are fickle by nature and emotion most always rules the day especially after yet another impotent performance in an important game.. Tweaking is the answer my friends, not wholesale changes.. Did 2001 teach you anything about wholesale changes? Not only were were bad, but we were downright awful last season.. At least this team keeps games close with a damn good defensive side.. The problem now obviously is getting healthy bodies to play in our key striker positions.. Patience people, patience.. I certainly understand your frustrations at this point but completely panicking will only furthur our collapse, not help it.. We've got a very good core of players to work with and as Sachin most elequently pointed out, our subs are simply terrible players at this point and it goes without saying that they wouldn't even see the light of day without all these injuries that keep popping up... We'll be back one day.. We just can't do it all at once.....
I have to come down somewhere in the middle on this one. Jaime, if you can't gut out 45 minutes in the most important game of the year, then ADIOS. But give the team to Convey!!! Please no. He appears to be turning into Richie Williams with all the back passes. And please try to beat Zaidie one time ont he dribble before thinking you can run a team. He was terrible. We suck.
-First on Sachin's post. I like at lot of what he said but that is only half the battle. With a purge new talented players must be brought in. A definitive plan for that must also take place. Cutting players without upgrading is just as useless as keeping poor players. -Second, I am getting tired of this bashing of the backwards pass. Would one of the anti-backpass group please like to tell me what should be done with the ball. Most of their back passes take place when they are closed down from any other option. No one moves up front. Defenders close down the dribbling options. What should they do? Hold the ball and lose it like Villeagas? The only passing option they seem to miss, every so often is the quick over the top cross field pass. A backwards pass is not a bad thing. It maintains possesion. It is always less tiring to attack/posses rather than defend.
A backward pass is not always a bad thing but when we are talking about a plyer who is said to be a future center attacking midfielder for United and US, then I would like to see him take the ball forward once in a while. I do not bash Richie for passing backwards because that is part of his job. Convey is supposed to have the skill and confidence to beat Craig Zaidie with passes and with dribbling and help our attack. he did neither of these at any time yesterday.
Williams - Buh Bye Alavanja - Buh Bye Etch - Buh Bye Lassiter - Buh Bye McKinley - Buh Bye Moreno - pay cut
Sachin for coach! Really, it's awfully hard to score when you don't shoot, or even ever really go toward the goal.
Man, any of you guys NOT siding with every word Sachin wrote have a high tolerance for crap, don't you?
I agree that Bobby should have done better one on one against Zaide. I just have gotten tired of people making that back pass sound as if it is a evil thing.
From the touchline, Bobby should be making diagonal runs into the box instead of just waiting for the ball and then trying to beat a defender with a cross. He's like a rook in chess-he only moves right to left or up and back. Ray needs to tell him to watch what Freddie Ljungberg at Arsenal does. And I don't mean the hair thing... Dave
But the problem Convey always faces is that it just isn't that one defender in front of him (last night Perch) as behind that guys are always a couple of other shading towards him since we normally don't play with two wingers and thus the opposition doesn't have to worry about a cross field pass. So the diagonal run for Convey is very rarely open and the only open space is against the touchline. We need other players to run towards the back post or just play the freaking wing to free up Convey.
Great post by Sachin I agree we need to blow up the offense. I mean blow it up big-time. It's where our $$ are However, I also agree w/what some others said. We need to be very good at finding replacements. Getting bad players for bad players does us no good.
The back pass has been incredibly predictable for D.C. United. One reason might be that nobody seems to have either the speed or the strength to force themselves forward and get open. I'm tired of seeing United players consistantly pushed off the ball (and not just little guys like Bobby, but everybody). We need some serious weight training during the offseason. I don't think I've seen a more unskilled team than Metro, but they kept beating us down by pushing our guys off the ball, and their quick enough to take away our bad passes. And their goal came because of speed. Frankly, I wouldn't take one Metro player over his United counterpart in Sunday's game with the exception of Mathis. But their speed and physical presence kept them in the game. Metro played like total compost but still won.
Another vote for Sachin. As I have been advocating in earlier posts, it is time for overhauling the team (primarily the forwards and midfielders). I don't think we have to worry that Ray can't find new, better players. With the level of talent DCU has, it would be hard not to find better players. As far as the Bolivian duo goes, they have had their chances and not delivered. It would be sad to see the longtime core of the team leave, but the time has come. Patience is not the question, we have seen a steady decline in their play for three years. Waiting another year and hoping for the best is not the way it is done in professional sports. If you do not produce you are replaced by someone who can. In watching the Metros game, we can see what defensive pressure does to our midfield. There was no threat to the scums net. Yet last week against SJ they looked good because injuries forced SJ to put their strength in the defenders and pull it out of the midfield. Etch has the ability to look good when there is no pressure (SJ and all-star games) but can't get it done anymore with pressure. A question, why do we think Olsen was playing a forward postion? Whenever I saw him he was running the sideline as usual. This was our standard away game 4-5-1 "hope we don't give up a goal or we are dead" formation. Our best hope now is that there is someone really good at the top of next year's draft and that the so called DCU brain trust recognizes it and does not trade the pick.
Great points by everyone (even GoDC ). I'll respond to as many as I can in several posts. But the question here is "Is Jaime past it?" and based on the evidence of the past two years, I would have to say yes. Odds are he's not going, I'll concede that, but let's face it. He's been a part time player the past two years and we can't have that, not at his salary. I am starting to think the rest of the league as caught up with him and we're starting to see why he didn't hack it at Boro. At best, he's a 30 minute player off the bench, and you don't pay a 30 minute player the max salary. As for Lazo, hell, I'm willing to get out there and try. I won't be better, and I would be MUCH MUCH worse than him, but I'm willing to try. Fine, keep McKinley. At least we can lob a header toward him every once in a while, but Williams has to go. He's plainly past it. This is the biggest hole in my first post. Chino is not a defensive midfielder. I have thought about Convey in this role, similar to a way O'Brien can play for the Nats, but I don't think Convey is up to it. Absolutely. I'm not simply reacting to this game. We've been living in the past waiting for Etch, Moreno, Olsen, Lassiter, and Pope to regain their form from the glory days. Except for Pope, that hasn't happened and isn't going to. Sometimes you do have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We've supposedly got the best young talent in the league. Run them out, let them take their lumps and let's get on with it. We're half-pregnant right now. We've sorta started to rebuild but we're not fully committed, which is why we have Williams and McKinley, along with Lassiter, Zambrano, and Villegas. I'll react to other people in future posts. Sachin
Good points, my fellow moderator. But I have to disgaree. We've rebuilt the defense completely. We just need some depth on the back line to round things out. But the offense has to change. There is no indiciation that Moreno, Etch, et. al. will return to their previous form, if for no other reason than they are, biologically, on the downside of their careers. Like I said before, at this point Jaime is a 30 minute man. Either he takes a massive pay cut and accpts a reduced role or we get another young forward who has some hunger and ambition. And thank you for not calling Mappy "Cartographer." Sachin
Like I said, I believe the problem goes much deeper than injuries. We've rebuilt the backline and now it's time to rebuild the front. I believe people live up to the expectations placed on them. Let me put it this way, I can't see us being much worse than the past two years with the lineup I suggested. I'm not talking about making wholesale roster changes here. Out of 11 positions, nine players I mentioned in my post already are on the roster and receive playing time. It's time to up their level of responsibility. Sachin
We're sufferring right now because we have very little offensive firepower. We have a couple of good flank players (Olsen and Convey) but we rarely seem to have a central midfield and front line that can combine imagination with skill and speed. Marco is very skillful. When he's "on", his long balls and his passes are impressive. But he isn't always on. Most games, he plays with 100% of his heart, but too often he gets distracted by anger and by opportunities to hold the ball and look for the perfect opportunity. Chino is much more imaginative (IMO) than Etch is right now, he's much faster, he doesn't sit on the ball until three players converge on him and take it away. But he doesn't have the muscle and skill to move through traffic or to hold the ball for a short time under intense marking. Our forwards... Q1, who knows. He's out for the rest of the season. I found him a very hot and cold player when he was starting. He has good wheels, but he often displays bad judgement, and he appears to have a low work rate. I can understand a burst of speed leaving Ben tuckered out; he's coming back from a major injury. When Q1 would run (not sprint, but run) upfield with the ball, then stop and stand still after passing it off, or walk slowly downfield when we turned it over and the other team was on a breakaway, I had to wonder how fit he was. I won't bother talking about Roy; I assume he'll be gone at teh end of the season. I'm not convinced that a little scouting in D3 couldn't have found us a player that would do more for the almost nothing we had to offer, but that's hindsight. Ali is a good sub, but I don't know that he's up to starting. Problem is, I think he's developed as much as he's going to. Moreno. Jaime is one of the most exciting players on the team, when he's fit and has his head in the game. He's got all of Marco's skill at dribbling with greater speed, a head for goal, and (a bit more) cool than the hotheaded Diablo. But Jaime has been showing up season after season out of shape and not fit to play. I expect that's had a lot to do with his injuries and his inability to fully or swiftly recover from them, and I expect it's also a spiral thing, especially after some of the interviews with Gazza that I read during *that* whole fiasco. If you're not playing well, or you're injured, and you don't have a ton of self-discipline to being with, then it's no surprise if you don't put your nose to the grindstone and start shaping up. But I think we've really gone beyond the point where we can carry Jaime for a whole season on the prospect of getting maybe half a season of good games out of him. He's a golden goose, but he's laying lots of bronze and silver eggs. If Ray can get a serious committment out of him to train properly during the off season and come to camp ready to play, I'd say give him one more year. But I really have my doubts.