I know this thread is supposed to be about defense but I think you've hit on a big issue. Bradley at his best was never a 10 or a 6. He was an 8. The times we got the most out of him was when we told him to basically just run around and make things happen, hit a few long shots, make some tackles, etc. He and Jermaine Jones were neither one very disciplined so we tried them as a double-pivot and sometimes played a Klejstan or JFT or someone of that ilk in front of them. Then, when it came time to get serious, we brought in Beckerman and just defended and asked Dempsey to do Dempsey things and create/score goals. To me, that version of Bradley is a lot like the current version of McKennie. If we ask him to run around, make tackles, late runs into the box, win some headers, we can maximize him and he will be a really good player. If we ask him to be a 6 or a 10, he is too undisciplined. We can have one of those guys on the field and he's the best at it by far. The problem is the last game we were playing with three. None of Bradley, Roldan, or McKennie are that well-equipped to be anything but an 8. If we had Tyler Adams (or Morales, Canouse, etc) at the 6, McKennie at the 8, and Lletget at the 10 (he may not be great but he does fit the role better than anyone I've seen, come on Ledezma), then we have a functional midfield that could actually be better than the sum of its parts. Right now, our midfield is consistently less than the sum of its parts, really that could be said of our whole team in general. We could take the 2014 Klinsmann approach and play a real 6 and two 8's like McKennie and Holmes and just leave Pulisic, Morris/Weah, and Sargent/Altidore up front to try and get some goals and they might but if we want to "improve our style of play" it needs to start by putting together a functional midfield and not just playing a bunch of 8's and calling them something else.
I don’t think Jones was a 6. He is a quintessential 8 and hopefully what Weston will become (or exceed): a disruptive high motor player who takes calculated risks and can contribute both offensively and defensively. If he was a 6, why did Klinsmann but a slower 6 behind him and Bradley?
A chunk of our problems right now is simply amnesia about some of what we learned last year. team that beat Mexico 1-0 last year (how soon we forget): Zardes Weah McKennie Adams Acosta Trapp Lichaj Miazga CCV Moore Steffen team that tied France 1-1 last year: Wood Green Adams McKennie Trapp Robinson CCV Parker Miazga Moore Steffen you'll notice a bunch of elements of these teams that have just disappeared under Berhalter. Wood and Green up top, gone all year. I guess they have an analytics problem because they had 4 goals last year for the NT. Just like Sargent and Weah chipped in another 3. Adams being injured. Weah gone. Lichaj CCV and Moore in the back. CCV and Lichaj were also on the field for Portugal 1-1 2 years ago. To me you could start Lichaj Long CCV Cannon Moore and Miazga off the bench and you wouldn't allow a lot of goals and you could either concrete the shell with a negative midfield or you could trust them and send 6 people forward A lot of the problem is the snobs love Yedlin Brooks Dest Robinson who should basically wear Kick Me signs. CCV needs to work on his timing but the difference between him and other CBs is he is on his man and if he's a step late it's a foul and the guy is on the turf. He is not beat and chasing. It doesn't look pretty but people need to get over wanting defensive work done pretty. I think one thing this whole team needs to learn is when to just put someone on the ground and end a counter. I am not going to defend some of what last year involved eg Ben Sweat but a lot of what I see is like people went out of fashion with the coaching change and I didn't know players were like bell bottoms. The decaying results relative to even last year suggest he has gone in the wrong direction. I trust some of these guys are "U23" but so are people who routinely play on the senior NT. The likelihood of CCV participating in U23 quali from Stoke is probably nearing nil. This is a sop because a coach can't pick the right people.
see to me the premise is crocked that what we need to do is stack DMs in front of an offensive minded backline for its protection. so the defenders are picked for "offense" and the mids for "defense?" why not pick defenders who can defend and then free yourself to do whatever you really want with the midfield. i'd rather have specialist attackers good for a few goals and assists a year out there, including at mid, than be picking mids for protecting the weaknesses of defenders good for maybe a goal or assist once a year. we are overselling the tangible benefits of the backs "going forward" and then leaving out mids with attacking attributes to compensate, when mids contribute tangibly to our stats much more regularly just by being further upfield (assuming they aren't nagbe types). or you could put another layer of Morales Holmes Adams out there, in front of the brick wall choices, play team defense, and look for 1-0 counter wins like we used to do. but this is not pretty. we're trying to be pretty. (in which case where are the snobs not screaming for prettier mids than this bunch?) personally i think our problem is we're treating identity like a separate issue from the pool people who would play it. i get the snobs say we want to become prettier and more possession oriented. which is nice on paper. but as a mental exercise, name any other way we could possibly play ball, without looking at the pool available. pressing, fall back and counter, etc. etc. and you'd know roughly as much ahead of time whether you even had the personnel for those ideas just the same. you could pick it from a hat and wouldn't know if it would be any more or less suitable, because it's goal-driven as opposed to derived from the personnel at hand. we're going to be a mess until system matches personnel and performance dictates which ones. and then i think berhalter is such a shoddy coach you have personnel choices that are either wrong or cross purposes with his supposed identity. if the idea is possess in the midfield find the 3 guys in the pool who can get a ball, turn in traffic, and complete their passes. if they are 20 years old or don't exist, well, maybe look at the roster before coming up with the system. or play the ones who fit age be darned.
i also think that we should consider, as was previously done with FJ (and to some extent yedlin), using these kind of dest/robinson players as subs further upfield. though i have seen some inconsistency, robinson can hit a cross, and dest can hit a shot. ok, you have a use, but rather than try to have a defender you hopelessly try to shield from defending, why not push them to an advanced wing role. sub for pulisic or morris at F or M depending on the formation. it keeps them involved but removes some of the risk. and for me it kind of calls put up or shut up on their contributions. ok, i can see you have some issues defending, and you can work on them and maybe we revisit defense later on. but right now let's push you forward and see if you're better than boyd or arriola or weah or some such wing choice. if you are as advertised, we gain an impact wing sub. if not, well, we tried you everywhere we could think of, go work on your defense like people always pretend yedlin is.
while i am thinking about it, we don't play a 451 or a 442, where the striker is supposed to be more central and the wing players from more backward lines are the ones who primarily go wide and create. we play a 433 with wide forwards. in that context i don't understand subbing fullbacks. in a 433 that is swapping out the second or third line back -- by design. if we are chasing a game, the primary offense is those 3 guys across the top. i don't understand being reticent to sub every last one of them. you create a formation that runs on those 3 players, be ready to sub every single one if that's what it takes. yeah, if there is a tired mid, sure, sub him instead. no sense allowing a goal because the middle line gets tired. but traditionally you don't sub backs, and subbing backs in a 433 is as likely to help the offense as swapping out the fullback or tight end down 20 points in a football game. the normal response is put in more specialist wide outs or run your RB out there in motion. i say this because i can see the response from berhalter to a suggestion to sub in robinson or dest as a 433 forward late, being, ok, no, only as a back. like they do with lovitz. that predilection to swap out a fullback to try and create danger says something in and of itself about how he doesn't understand why this doesn't work. also, related point, he has some tendency to sub in a DM as a wide forward, for a specialist attacker. roldan has served this role. those players tend to have no influence on the game. those players are completely unsuited to playing wing forward except as moderate disruptors. i'd think some of these wing backs with some offensive tools would make more sense as forward subs than interior DMs moved wide, who are as useless as t*ts on a boar hog. particularly if we are chasing a game down a goal. we should only be subbing backs for injury and should only be putting DMs into the game to just smash things up 3-0 and trying to stow the game away. his subs are all wrong. and part of that relates not just to selection but to his idea of where chances are generated. of the players of what types you need on the field to create.
Fully disagree with putting Wood and Zardes in that category, they both put in honest shifts out of possession for #9’s. Morris is more borderline. His tackle success ratio playing wide is 65% but he’s not frequently diving in. He averages .8 interceptions per 90, which is in the middle of the pack for MLS wide attackers. He gets .5 clearances per 90, which is around the 66th percentile. At his position type he’s 6th in league for crosses blocked but below average at 44th out of 75 for passes blocked. He’s 11th in aerial duel participation and 8th for duels won, which matches the eye test. His success rate in the air is 59% when playing wide. It looks like all of his defensive stats have improved this year. I’m going to say he ends up being decent for his role. It’s not just individual capacity it’s the team setup and the interplay of threat and matchups. Maybe the best we’ve played over the past decade featured a front 6 with 4 attackers: Altidore, Davies, Dempsey, and Donovan. At the base of midfield were two basically 40/60 attacking/defending rangy CM/DM’s. That worked because 3/4 of the attackers were good at defending/worked very hard. 2/4 had field stretching pace. The front 4 had a mixture of passing and run-making and 1v1 creators and chance takers. Then on top of that we were collectively good in the air. It worked because of the collective qualities of those players. So we have to build from what we have. Pulisic and Weah are not the defenders that LD and CD were in their primes (Clint even started out as a CM/DM). Sargent isn’t Davies but he’s ahead of Jozy, despite often looking a little lost. We could go Sargent/Altidore, Weah, Pulisic, and Morris. That would take some significant improvement from the last 3 guys to work (and more sharpness from CM) against a good attacking team. Right now I’m still leaning towards a trident front 3. Basically the front threes I think of are Uruguay when they still had Forlan or Napoli when they had Cavani, then to a lesser extent and mostly when it comes to positioning Milan circa Kaka and some of recent vintage Atalanta and Betis when pressing. Maybe some of what Liverpool has done in past seasons to manage Salah’s workload could apply to Pulisic but there are missing elements. What France did last year also isn’t forgotten. Long story short 3 CB’s and a slightly defensive CM should balance out having 3 attackers as long as 2/3 of them are working hard out of possession at all times. At wingback you want guys who can win individual duels on both sides of the ball and run all day. Having 3 CB’s and 2 DM’s can help cover for some mental lapses out wide as well.
I can live with a front three that are good harriers. Our attackers should be good at pressing but I can’t recall the last time we’ve been effective at it vs. a decent team. I don’t like if we have a front theee and set up midblock as we’re asking guys to do something they’re not good at. lastly, my point is that I’d like to understand why we’re switching from a 442 with a solid back line and very good goalie to a 433 when our goalie and back line are weaker defensively than they’ve historically been.