Sorga works hard off the ball and had a decent game holding possession with his back to goal. However, for a guy that came in with a reputation as a goal scorer, he seems to have no confidence in front of goal. Due to our injury situation, he has a huge opportunity to claim the #9. He has to get his foot work sorted and score when he gets chances like he did tonight. Full stop. No excuses. Again, to be fair, he was still one of the better players tonight. Let's hope for more improvement next week. Vamos!
This. I think open space on the flank is always a vulnerability, when we truly play with a back 3. If you have speed in the back line, you can get away with it. We do not. SJ had the speed to exploit the space, and our defenders (and coaches) were unable to find an answer. We should have been able to address this by adjusting "starting positions" of our defenders, rather than pushing them up close to the midfield line. Maybe we were tired, but we also could have prevented some of the quick counters with more aggressive and better organized gegenpressing. One other solution would have been to have a more fluid and unpredictable back line formation by intermittently having one of the wingbacks sag back, creating a back 4 at times. To be fair, we were forced to gamble and we pushed the wingbacks and the back line up because we were losing. It's hard to win any game, much less win on the road when giving up early and soft goals. Hopefully, we will be better prepared from the starting whistle next week.
People keep talking about "speed of our defenders" and our press. Correct me if I am wrong but the whole idea of the press game is when you turn the ball over you immediately put pressure on the opposing teams player and try to create a turn over in your favor. Well on two of the four SJ goals the attacker had 976 meters of space between him and the closets United defender. In one case the defender putting "pressure" on the attacker was old and slow and behind the attacker, not a very effective method of ball pressure. Then on the fourth goal the defender marking his man in the box, lost him. Hmmm maybe new tactics are not the answer but new players.................................................... So Olsen is no longer the coach of this side and they still lose 4-1 to SJ. Yeah it was clearly Olsen all these years holding this club back.
Asad is worthless. Moreno is right there with him. We'd be better off asking the Quakes if we could borrow one of their subs
So them being "fat" is why they were slow of foot and slow of brain??? One of those two I will by. Fat is not why we cannot pass to save our asses. Fat is not why we are 973 meters away from men we should be marking. Now you can tell me fat is why Brilliant could not keep up with his man, but age and pure lack of speed have as much to do with that. I understand you are a genius and if we just played your genius system correctly United would be 3-0 not 1-2. However you might want to check that ego at the door and use a system that can succeed until you get them to the proper fitness level to play your system. Don Shula did a complete 180 when he went from a team that could run the ball very well to a team that could pass the ball. That is a coach, this ARG ego is starting to wear thin on me already.
Give it a rest. Everyone, including you, knew or should have known this would be a trying year. Losada was brought on late, the GM was just hired a few weeks ago. Losada inherited a very poorly constructed roster consisting of "Dave's Discount Bargains" and a DP that soon will be marked down as a Blue Light Special and also had 3 of his best players either still returning from off-season surgeries (Hamid and Birnbaum) or recovering from injury suffered in the human demolition derby called the Championship (Arriola). Without them this team would suffer even before the raft of injuries apparently caused by a lack of fitness of supposedly "professional" players. The recent Q&A with Arriola in the Athletic captures this very well. He said under another coach (Olsen) he would be back playing even though he isn't fully fit. Losada wants injured players to be fully fit before returning so they don't re-aggravate the injury they are rehabbing. This will be a very bumpy road, especially when relying on stiffs like Asad, Moreno and Flores to be key players. Remember Almeyda went through this same type of start with SJ and it took over a season and half for him to get the players he wanted for his system. Probably half of the stiffs out there in DCU kits won't be around for next season. In other words, Losada's fitness regime has them looking like professional soccer players rather than rec league players. Problem is they aren't very good soccer players.
Shawn after a loss in the Olsen era “Ashton‘s tactics cost us” Shawn today “ it’s all on the HC and I’m tired of his ego”
We may lose games but at least I can see the tactical framework. Look at San Jose when Almeyda took over and implemented man marking. They lost a ton of early matches 3-0, 4-0, 5-1. It takes time to implement a system and even longer when 12 players are injured. Olsen had no system. We just sucked. It was his fault.
I don't know anyone who said it was either/or. Olsen needed replacement. And so does most of the roster. And ownership. And the front office.
I think what will change is as this roster gets healthy, you won't see people be automatic selections. Both Losada and Felipe called out Sorga's miss as a turning point. This team is going to need to battle for their spots, but right now their replacement is an empty chair
- Too early for a lot of the talk about the new system. It requires a LOT of the players physically (I'd be interested in finding out how many of our injuries right now are those "getting in shape" sort), though, and it shows. - Brillant may not be a MLS-level player in this system. He doesn't have the speed needed in the backline, and his speed of thought isn't enough to overcome the difference. Looking forward to Pines recovering. - We don't have an MLS-starting-level striker. Flores may not be a great fit for this system. Asad has looked poor. So our goals right now look like they'll be either wonderstrikes or goalmouth hustle plays for the near future.
I am not opposed to his new tactics. They are fine but YOU DON'T IMPLEMENT THEM WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE THE PLAYERS TO PLAY THEM!!!! That is the coaching arrogance I am talking about. Right now with this clearly flawed roster you play tactics that you can play to get results, then reform the roster to fit your system. Ramming your head into a wall time and time again only gives you and us a headache.
None of this is surprising, and the bumpy ride is likely nowhere close to over. New coach who lacks familiarity with MLS Radically different system The new system requires a level of fitness that most of our players have not yet reached. Seven starters are out ("probable starters," according to Goff). This roster, even when healthy, was not selected by Losada and Lucy Rushton as players who will fit in this system (and the new culture he is attempting to create). West coast game with long flight and the players had to play at 11pm ET (their bodies were likely screaming "WTF?!"). Give these variables it's hard to imagine a scenario where we would get a result last night. Before the first game my feeling was that this is likely to be a rough season, especially early, but I hope to see significant improvement by fall and hopefully a few Losada/Rushton-approved summer transfers. This is still where I am. I'm still quite satisfied with our new coach. He's gets a long leash with me, at least a full season, before I reassess (unless we see things that are clearly stupid, but that seems unlikely).
It isn't coaching arrogance to try to fit square pegs into round holes at this point. As a new coach he has a vision and being a hundred percent committed to it will reveal who needs to go and who stays. Now if he built this roster and has eleven guys out then yes you would expect a reasonable coach to make some concessions. If we wanted a coach to try and make chicken salad out of chicken shit then we should have kept Ben or at least Chad in charge.
We don't have the players (healthy at least) for any system, so what even is this discussion. What are we to do? Sit back into a 4-4-2 and bore us all to the death with the same quality of play but half or less as many shots? Here are the players I wouldn't keep on this team right now: Seitz Brillant Mora Greene Alfaro Moreno Asad Moreno Flores Nyeman Paredes Perez Yow Reyna Sorga That is virtually the entire team. Meanwhile most of the guys I would keep are injured. What I would do is what the coach is doing. I would tell these guys to run it up, try to make plays at the offensive ends, show me a press, and make them fight for their lives on the team. The markets are wide open for players who fit coach's system, and in a few months he can start filling them, and hopefully keeping our better quality players on the field once healthy.
Any list that has Nyeman, Greene, Paredes and Yow on it is beyond suspect. Greene, Yow and Paredes are injured and haven't received any minutes. Nyeman is a prospect with tremendous upside at age 17. But go ahead, drop them.
While I tend to agree with this, I also feel that Brillant was set up to fail last night. I thought he was supposed to be in the middle of the three man ball line? If so, then why is he the one out there on the flank trying to run with the SJ strikers in open space? Shouldn't that be our faster, younger outside backs? Brillant never had a chance there.
When Losada said that our players are not physically fit enough I wonder if there's any correlation to that with the organization's slow timing of building a new training facility in Loudoun. Anyway, I never really expected this to be a fast transition under a new system with better results. It's going to take some time.
Imagine how many times people have said something like this over the years, with our young guys. And how many of them panned out? Najar and Hamid have been skewing this conversation for far too long.
So was Ben and every other coach anywhere. It's how you get to consistent winning that is the key. Hell, even Tommy Soehn managed a Supporter's Shield side.
Paredes, Yow, and Nyemen are young prospects with lots of development ahead of them. That doesn't mean they will work out but it's too soon to throw in the towel. Young players need time, the right environment, and the opportunity to develop. If they are making good progress year on year, then it would be foolish to cut them. However, patience at a professional level can be very limiting depending on the alternatives since more time spent with one of these players has an opportunity cost related to not working with other players with promise. If you are not seeing progress and in some cases substantial progress by 20 - 21, then some hard questions need to be asked. But it's too soon for these three. As to the other players on the pants list, I have watched some of them for 2 or 3 seasons and this season seems no different. Given they have not looked good with two different coaches and styles, it's probably time to move on; they are not going to propel United to new titles.
I agree, but as with Ben he has a crap roster. And unlike Ben he is trying to run a system his players can't handle. For those who hated "Bennyball" he ran that system because that was the roster he was given.