Actually the reason I rate Beasley ahead of Shea as a RM... is that Beasley has played the position semi-adequately at the club level, while I've never seen Shea even play it. Thus I have the 4 guys that I've seen play the position ahead of Shea, who I've only seen as an LM.
That's an interesting hypothesis, and I'm trying to think of what it could possibly stem from. Could it be something that Martin Vasquez is whispering in Klinsi's ear? Kljestan and Vasquez (as asst. coach) were together at Chivas USA for nearly 3 years. Did they ever have any kind of personality clashes?
As I've previously pointed out in threads about the Ecuador and Honduras games: Klinsmann is not playing Williams as a right winger. EDIT: Exactly.
This didn't work at all against France because you had Ribery on the wing keeping Dolo back so we ended up with nothing on the right in attack.
I thought your post was really well reasoned and stated, but this one is actually an area that's a negative in my mind. Not so much playing the dedicated 6, but the fact that due to his personnell decisions we've essentially traded the double 8 for the double 6. The result being we're losing 1-0 instead of 4-2. It's cut off our nose to spite our face.
Nah. I'm rewatching the game now. The central midfield is actually quite fluid and organized, something one would almost never see under the old regime. Klinsmann needs to do something about the forwards and wide mids though.
this ^^^^ Its almost as if Klinsman is trying to put his stamp on this team just for the sake of stamping. Kudos to Altidore for working his ass of last night.
Forward players for the US are typically on an island against top teams, hence the smart move by Bradley to move Donovan and Dempsey to midfield.
I have to disagree. He is below the Mendoza Line for me. His defensive prowess does not make up for his fear on the ball, poor passing and total lack of offensive contributions.
Rasta made 31 successful passes for 7 unsuccessful with plenty of the former being forward passes. He's performing his job--generally that of a deep mid--well. This game he got forward a bit more with Edu playing more of positional role.
System looks decent enough as the team no longer looks like a deer in headlights. Player selection sucks.
Except he is. I watched the game, it's clear as day the kid is lining up on the touchline and is the offensive catalyst for the right side, which produces nothing, shutting down half the field.
The white board shows him as sort of third pinched in CM, similar to what Bradley plays at Chievo, but his actual play on the field and his heat maps show him playing an advanced attacking role on the wing. So basically he's either playing the CM role completely against instructions or he's very playing poorly as a wing player. Neither option is really good.
Of all of the players in the pool, the system appears to maximize the strengths of Beckerman and Shea. Edu, Williams, Dempsey and Altidore are being either played out of position or not being utilized to their capacity in this system. We don't have a real 8 in the camp. Bradley and Jones, our two most pedigreed midfielders are on the bench. 2 shots on goal yesterday. 2 goals in 6 matches. Four 1-0 losses . .
first, passing stats like this are dumb for this sport. second, williams is not comfortable playing a wide MF role (however you interpret the end-all "whiteboard"). you dont need stats to watch a game and see a player being used out of position and struggling. if the idea was to have extra defenders for ribery (not sure it was since we've played this way lately regardless), i'd have rather had an attacker out there to make ribery have to at least worry about coming back past midfield... having johnson on earlier try and take on the defender (nice to see btw) may have limited ribery's impact more than having another DM out there.