Are there better left backs than Fernandez? Yep. Are any of them on our roster? Hmmm...not so sure about that.
i wasnt able to watch the whole match was our goal converted off the only decent cross all game? not true
There were a couple of other decent ones, I thought, but I seem to recall those coming from Espindola or Rolfe. A lot of the crosses from NDL, Korb, and Fernandez probably had to be fished out of the Anacostia.
I'd take Fernandez off that list, and qualify that move by saying his crosses aren't as good a quality as Espindola's or Johnson's, but it's not for lack of trying- and he's miles from either Porter-bad or Korb-bad. What's more, at times you'll see the entire back line-even Parke- look to him to provide the ball that connects with midfield or up top when Kitchen and/or Arnaud can't seem to be made to care about taking possession and moving it forward through the midfield. His field-wide crosses to the right are usually spot on, and rarely square- and THAT particular quality we've been missing for ages, and what I meant by comparing him to Agoos. To take issue with his play last match, sure, he had some howlers on defending, and too many 15-30 yard pokes that missed his teammates and went straight to the opposition. And it's his touch that sets up Espindola to make the cross on EJ's goal. But I'd draw the line at trashing his quality on his crosses- they're better than those from most of the team, certainly better than DeLeon's. In fact, if Espindola was subbed off, etc.. for left corners, I wouldn't be surprised to see Fernandez as our next best option.
I'd tend to agree, and I didn't record the match to confirm, but I thought I remembered a couple in a row in the second half that weren't close. But yes, even if I am correct, it was because he was having an off-day. He's not normally on that list.
We can agree that Cristian can cross the ball competently. However, he can't defend one on one consistently and lacks pace to recover from initial postioning mistakes. Now, if his ability on the ball requires him to be on the field, how do you help him cover on defense. Use Rolfe? Complete waste of his offensive abilities. NDL? His defensive prowess is worse than Cristian's. So do you take one of Rolfe or NDL off the field and replace with Neal? You lose offense that way. I'm not saying dump him, but his weaknesses provide a golden opportunity for someone else on the roster to step up his game and take that spot.
You can double with Arnaud or Kitchen. It's not an uncommon practice to double wingers when they get around the 18 anyway, regardless of the player being doubled. It's not always possible, like in a quick counter situation for example, but I'd go as far as to say most teams will double that winger more often than not.
This concept of 'doubling up' really needs to be expanded on. If a player's bread and butter move is to 'cut in' to the middle of the field for a shot (Pontius), then getting picked up by a DM or CM as well as an outside back or winger when they make a cut is not 'doubling up.' If you're playing an empty bucket or defensive minded formation with a lone forward and withdrawn AM/F then that forward is simply outnumbered in the front field. That's not distracting two defenders and it's not being doubled down by virtue of their great skill. Clint Dempsey is causing people to double up on him in meaningful ways. So are Higuain and Saborio.
Christian's crossing ability allows Rolfe to move more into the middle of the pitch, where he has more options and gets a better look at the goal. In other words, Christian provides the width on the left side so Rolfe doesn't have to. Of course, there are two downsides to this arrangement: Christian can get caught upfield, and even if he's not he isn't a premier one-on-one defender.
Fernandez isn't a terrible defender, IMO, and his crosses are lovely. (As a matter of fact, I'd like to see what he could do with free kicks.) But what needs to happen, and pronto, is that he has got to stop passing balls to the other team in extremely dangerous positions, something he did 5 or 6 times (!) against Montreal. He had one slow roller to no one in particular at the top of the penalty arc that damn near gave me Brown Underpants Syndrome.
Mapp has arguably been at an MLS Best x1 level this season. That he is saddled with a terrible team makes his play even more impressive..
Last year they might as well have doubled on him. Putting defenders on most of the rest of the team was more of a waste of defenders.
1. One of the things I watched for against MTL, since I had the pleasure of actually being in attendance for once, was whether or not Eddie Johnson received extra attention from defenders. Now, there is the probability that what we look for, we find, but I did see this a handful of times. When other players had the ball in transition and EJ made a run, I saw MTL defenders gravitating toward him and away from whoever it was they were originally marking-- including Espindola. One reason this became apparent to me was because I was so frustrated at the person with the ball, multiple guilty parties, because they didn't recognize this shift in the defense-- they either passed to EJ anyway or passed backward. 2. One thing that absolutely grated on me with our crosses, whether they were "good" or not, was that about 80% of them had no real purpose. It was look up to see if there are black jerseys in the general vicinity of the box, yes?, okay cross the ball-- to nowhere in particular. Instead it should be look up, find a player, cross the ball with a purpose to that player. I mean, I can get away with the first method, but I'm 39, out of shape, and barely made it to D1 level ball, but these guys should be more precise.
I'm sorry, but you must be wrong about this, as we were informed by the plonked troll that this doesn't happen.
Plonk is a bit of fairly ubiquitous internet jargon. It was coined on Usenet newsgroups ~25 years ago, and spread onto web fora after they appeared. It's the metaphorical sound that's made when a user falls to the bottom of a killfile/ignore list/e-mail address blacklist/etc.