...By comparing Baby Bradley and whoever Bob plays alongside him to Fletcher and Carrick of Manchester United: Bradley responded with passion when asked whether he thought the team should get more attacking prowess out of central midfielders such as Bradley, Ricardo Clark, and Pablo Mastroeni. "I get annoyed with everybody that goes into that line of thinking," he said. "We have two-way players. Players that make it hard when the other team has the ball. Players that do a good job of finding some of our more attacking players and I find it hard to understand why that becomes such a topic all the time." A bit later, he pointed to a Manchester United squad that starts defensive-minded Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher. "Do you think there's a constant discussion about the need to be more attacking?" he asked. "They have guys in the center who are smart. Who are good passers. Who tactically are smart." My opinion - Carrick and Fletcher (or Hargreaves or Scholes) are more than just guys who "find more attacking options." Bob, those guys ARE attacking options, too. Here's the thing - a kid like Bradley or Kljestan could be attacking options, too. But Bradley has to adjust how he plays them. As he played them in games that mattered this past year, he often kept a short leash on them, not allowing them to get forward and factor into the attack. Hopefully as he gets more comfortable with Kljestan and allows for more forward movement from him. Time will tell.
The article is clearly crank journalism, with Bob's responses just made-up by the reporter. How do I know? Here's the deal give-away: Ha. Funniness aside, our "two-way players" lack the ability to make an impact going both ways. That's the problem. Mike and Sacha are very young and will, hopefully, develop into better players. But right now the rest of our offense is underwhelming enough (especially at forward) that the lack of a dedicated attacking mid is killing us. Hopefully that changes, Mikey and Sacha (or Mo) turn into world-beaters and we have our cake (defense) and eat it too (offense). We're a long way away from that right now.
It probably matters who the attacking options are as well. Six defensive players may seem like a lot, but if you put 4 extremely gifted offensive players in front of them it's not such a big deal.
You can't really say that Bradley kept Kljestan on a leash in the games that mattered, because Kljestan did push forward in the only two games he started centrally this year. Maybe the strength of the opposition makes it so that we can't take too much out of those matches, but then at best you could say that the evidence is inconclusive. I'm sure we'll get a clearer picture in Februrary.
he's got a great point...EXCEPT FOR IT DOESN'T WORK WITH HIS SON. He can get up, but he sucks at defending, and I hope he gets pulled from the starting X1, sooner rather than later. And please, don't insult my football knowledge by comparing your son to Michael Carrick
It was a comparison of roles, not overall quality. I'll never understand why posters here don't understand that simple distinction.
he's defending his formation by comparing it with man u's. That's not a simple distinction. He's basically saying,"we'll win b/c manure does it" BTW, his son does not fit the role anyways. He can't defend, which is pretty damn important as DM
Bingo! The offense has never clicked, despite featuring some of our most vaunted talents, and too much is demanded of the central midfield pairing. Attacking with four, keeping six behind the ball is like the Golden ********ing Mean.
There are a million of us monkies typing away on this site, and I don't think that joke has ever been played. So repped.
One player who brings something a bit more to the table in that deep-lying midfield position is Torres. His work with Pachuca at the Club World Cup has really opened my eyes. He is very composed in tight spaces, and has the kind of vision with his distribution that can quickly launch a dangerous attack. I would like to see BB experiment with pairing him up with a more traditional destroyer type back there.
I was just thinking the same thing, though I'd like to take a couple longer looks at him starting with the upcoming sem-final game. Torres seems to play deeper than his other counterparts and puts the ball in better positions on his passes. The discussion on the 'two-way mids' is a good one, my guess is this will end up being a 4-2-3-1 at the end of the day with two deep lying mids.
That's about right with our current player pool. The only two players who have a real chance of forcing a 4-4-2 are Cooper (and we've only seen him alongside Jozy once) and Davies (who we just plain haven't seen enough of. Yes, I am assuming Jozy is our new go to starter. The 4-2-3-2-1 seems to fit our players much better right now.
When Bob Bradley talks it scares the sh*t out of me. He always talks about our solid defense, which on paper it is solid, but on the field the other teams are getting too many chances. Look at the Argentina game and you can see what a quality team can do to Bob's "solid" defense. Thank god for our goalkeepers. Now Bob is getting upset because everybody but him can see a lack of offense, but him, and keeps questioning him about it. If Bob can't see these problems then he can never fix them, and that is completely destroying what little hope I had that this World Cup would be different. I just can't believe how this guy is living in his own little world and gets mad if anybody counters him on it. Bob is our emperor with his new clothes and I'm afraid it is going to get worse before it gets better. Sorry about the rant but hearing this guy talk just p*sses me off.
That 4-2-3-2-1 is deadly when a team can pull it off You may be right as far as being the best formation considering our players - at least against top competition
It's all about getting the refs to not notice. We could try having a few players hid behind others when the ref counts guys for the first whistle. Heck, we could hide both Torres and Beasley behind Gooch. The main disappointment to me is how MB gets handled. BB's 'experimenting' with CMs has involved rotating who plays with MB. There hasn't been much of a chance to see how a Torres or Sasha look teamed up with Edu, Clark or Szetela. Now we're getting into games that really matter and I doubt we'll get to see much more experimenting. Maybe the upcoming Gold Cup...
Yeah, in BB's mind, experimenting = who plays with Mike? Ridiculous. There are so many things wrong with the empty bucket with our personnel, it's not even funny. I guess we'll learn our lesson in Confed Cup, but I doubt it will change anything in Bob's mind. BTW, why does everyone here like Klejstan? Every time I watch him play, I think he blows, but I don't see him all that much at the club level.
I have to agree with the Sasha assessment for the most part, but he is working hard to have a better well-rounded game. I was high on Torres, but haven't seen enough of him to know if he's an improvement. In general most posters put a higher value on offensive ability than defensive and Sasha has shown some tactical, attacking ability. The desire is to get away from the 2 dmid set-up and play more of a diamond midfield. The problem is that there are relatively few 2-way CM's in the player pool and thusfar Sasha tends to be one of the better options.
Great find, Nutmeg. Bob is engaging in a classic strawman argument. Sure, some of the more, ahem, naive and enthusiastic posters suggest lineups filled with guys who haven't made a tackle in their professional lives. But that's not the main criticism. The real criticism is over roles, not personnel. We were playing with 2 central mids with bungees cords tied around their waists, and as a result, our attack was about as predictable as it could be. Not too effective, either. To Bob's credit, he's loosened up the bungees. So I'm relatively happy. For now.
Yes . . . Or at least just a Y? Bueller? That would probably help solve Nutmeg's "dump the puck" criticism, too, because there would be better lanes in the midfield. ETA Dave is right that they've had a bit more freedom lately, but I dunno if that's only because we qualified so he didn't care, of if he's actually working up to that.
Bob's M.O. has, for the most part, been fairly predictable. Put your most talented (i.e. European based) available players on the pitch in a formation that plays to their strengths and take what the other team gives you. Honestly, if Bob could play for a tie every game I think he would. Which is not really a criticism. He hates to give up goals and would rather sacrifice the offense for better defensive shape and stability. It's a coaching decision that not everybody on BS agrees with but, well...there it is. He can't turn our players into Brazilians or Italians so he's working with what he has. When a coach becomes available that has that magical power I imagine we'll be after him.
The whole podcast in which Bradley discusses these things can be linked from: http://www.dunord.blogspot.com/ in which he discusses many otehr aspects of the National Team. And he does get his hackles up when asked the question about whether the midfielders can be more offensive.
Right on. I'd even venture that he's worked hard to create a platform for our attacking players' talents to shine and it hasn't happened. We don't have guns right now.
Hell, we don't have even have bullets. At the moment, we have a sharp stick and get lucky to hit the right spot occassionaly.