What happened? Back in June I attributed his poor form to being overused, but he's now had long stretches of the summer to rest. I also attributed his poor form to being misused in midfield, but he's had several stretches recently as withdrawn forward. I also kind of overlooked some of his recent road performances ... I sort of chalked a lot of that up to the whole team playing poorly. But tonight our entire team was buzzing. De Leon and Najar from the wings. Salihi up front. Even McDonald and Dudar getting into the box. But everytime the ball went to De Ro the attack went to crap. It's really shocking. It's gotten to the point where every time he gets the ball in attack I can predict which defender will dispossess him and how. He can't turn with his back to the goal. He can't dribble past people in the open field. He's always slightly out of sync with the one touch passing. His long range shots lack the zing. His set pieces rarely clear the firts defender. Again, is this the end of De Ro? Will we see him in good form again?
I don't have any answers, but I felt the same way whenever he received the ball today. Maybe he's not actually playing that bad, maybe it's that it's such a let off from the level we're used to seeing from him, it appears that he is that bad.
I think tonight at least, he was that bad. It seems every time he was making a forward pass it was going to teh other team. Of course there were a lot of guys playing terribly tonight.
He was bad tonight, and he's been bad ever since he went away to play those Canada NT games in May/June. Something happened to him then, and he hasn't been the same since, IMHO.
His corner kicks were terrible, the kind of thing you'd expect if a team was goofing around at practice and let a centerback take the corners.
All of his set piece attempts were awful, just floaters or straight into the wall. I think he's playing with a nick because he doesn't seem to drive the ball at all, he's always under it. Compare his free kicks with Bosko's goal, just night and day.
I hate to say it, but aside from his age, potential injuries etc. I feel like maybe on a personal level, he was driven to perform by conflict with his clubs and a search for legitimization among management. After receiving a 500k+ contract from United, everything went down hill, but when he was fighting for a permanent home/contract/recognition with each team, he was balling.
Aside from his set piece service and the 2nd PK I thought he played fine tonight. Not great. Not himself from last year, but not bad. Better than he has the past few months anyway.
I hope you're right. He did have tiny glimpses when he found himself in space. He can still make a solid pass when he has space, and I'm sure he could finish if he found himself open for a clear shot. The problem is he's 2nd best in almost every situation where the space is closed down by a defender. His touch is just not quick enough. It's like he's doing everything correctly, except at 80% speed. I think it's all his turnovers that frustrate him, and eventually undermine his whole confidence to even do the easy things like convert a PK. That's why I think Ben needs to find a starting 11 without De Ro as a framework going forward. A starting 11 Ben can rely on especially in the tough physical games on the road. Then use De Ro as the trump card off the bench. De Ro is still versatile so he can be useful in many scenarios. When you're behind and putting all hands on deck for attack. When you're ahead and you want to slow the tempo and play keep away. Beyond the bench De Ro can still start as you rotate players in and out, just have to pick the right games for him to start in.
I don't know about his play overall, but he flat out blew it, and nobody should be making excuses for that. He knows it. Under no circumstances can your franchise player miss that PK. Bobblehead night curse!
Go back and listen to our past few podcasts (www.unitedmania.com) and I've been saying it for quite some time. A few shows ago we did our Mid-Season grades and my broadcast partner Randy Ruff wanted to give him an A+. However, I explained at the time that I thought he had been overworked and out of synch for a while and it has continued to this day. Missed PK aside, I thought he was better last night than in recent matches and I could probably live with that type of performance from here on out, but he's a big time/big game player and he's simply fallen short of that this season. This team will rise and fall on DeRo and his performances. We don't have enough talent to overcome his poor performances. While it was great last season, we need him to again lift this team on his shoulders and take it forward. Having more talent around him this season has certainly lessened the load in terms of his personal responsibility to the team effort, but it's pretty clear now that this team needs a leader more than ever. If DeRo continues his poor run of form, then I expect the team to do likewise. In many ways, the team in April/May/June were playing above their heads with DeRo a bit part player in that success. Now that the elements around DeRo have fallen back, predictably the results have mirrored that.
I'd love to see stats on converting a PK after the first shot is disallowed. I think it's smart to not let the same player take the second shot in such a situation. Pontius or Boskovic should have taken the 2nd shot instead.
Some of the gamesmenship at certain levels includes iniating "false starts" on PK's, similar to the scrimmage line in football, just for this reason. And if you look at at the replay there was initially a Union player on the near side who took about 2 steps into the area for absoutely no reason before Geiger even blew his whistle for the kick, causing him to come over and talk to him. My guess is, as it was at the time, that they were intentionally trying to draw DC players across the line early to cause a retake. I suppose some people think this is clever, but I find it deplorable and unsportsmanlike.
Philly's play last night was overall pretty deplorable and unsportsmanlike. From the blatant shorts pulling, the obvious time wasting and the overall thuggish play, this was one of the ugliest games I've seen. Adu in particular showed zero class. And what's worse is that this was a nationally televised game. At the end of the day, though, it comes down to the ref not being able to maintain control. He was constantly warning players, but didn't really start doing anything until the situation had totally gotten out of control. You can't go from zero discipline to red cards and expect the game to stay calm.
I agree that his play of late has been disappointing, but there were flashes of what he and Boskovic can do together which were inspiring. On the play that led to DeLeon's disallowed goal Bosko, playing behind DeRo, dummied a pass from McDonald through to DeRo, who immediately touched it back to Bosko and then took off for the goal. Bosko made a neat move to get free and sent a perfectly weighted pass to DeRo, who was on the run toward the goal. It was his deflected shot that led to Geiger's incorrect call. What I take from this is that if Benny can get the two of them on the pitch at the same time (which reduces DeRo's workload), then good things could happen.
I think it's the ideal lineup, and I've been preaching it since early in the season. I don't get why Benny hasn't seen it. I'd still prefer a 4-5-1 with Salihi up top, Pontius and DeLeon on the sides, Bosko/DeRo/Kitchen forming a V in the middle, and the four men of your choice in back. Some will say Salihi is too slow to be a lone forward, but I disagree. With plenty of speed on the sides, now, and DeRo and Salihi making their usual quality runs, I think it'd be a great way to start opening up our offense AND maintaining strong lock on midfield.
Totally 100% agree. But that is our first choice lineup, and when missing even just one of the front 6 players will throw a wrench into it. We don't have the right types of players down the roster to operate that formation game to game, unfortunately. But on the right day, that's our lineup, and that's our game, and it will work. I'm almost certain of it.
Using Salihi up top in a 4-5-1 would require that the entire midfield moves upfield when we steal possession back; which we have done very poorly lately. I've been disappointed in DeRo's form. Other teams are double teaming him and just shutting down the space around him and making him cough up the ball, make him dribble through them or pass it off. We need another playmaker to step up and win games for us. Luckily Wednesday almost here.
[quote="Murr, post: 26308774, member: 101454 I've been disappointed in DeRo's form. Other teams are double teaming him and just shutting down the space around him and making him cough up the ball, make him dribble through them or pass it off. We need another playmaker to step up and win games for us. Luckily Wednesday almost here.[/quote] We have "another playmaker." His name is Branko Boskovic, and he won't be playing Wednesday. So how can you say "luckily Wednesday is almost here?"
I wonder what it would take to rescue Feilhaber from NE and plant him in the center of our midfield. They win nothing with him, and they, presumably, want to get young fast. Picks and a mess of cash? Might do it. But how would he fit under the cap? I guess Salihi would have to be sacrificed, or something I'm missing.
I picture the fron 6 like this: (3/3) -----Kitchen----Boskovic------ ------------Dero------------- (Pontius)--Pontius--(Pontius) ---Pajoy/Santos---Salihi/Tan--- Where Pontius runs free. With the addition of Feilhaber, he would go into Boskovic's place and allow us to: ----Kitchen-----Feilhaber---- --------Boskovic------------ (Pontius)--Pontius--(Pontius) --Pajoy/Santos---Dero/Salihi-- Our wing backs would have to get better, but it should score goals no problem.
That's interesting. Just scrap the wings altogether, huh? Not sure I've ever seen that. I'm thinking- ----------Kitchen----Boskovic-------- DeRo----------Feilhaber-------Pontius -----------Salihi/Santos/Pajoy-------- I love the triangles and it closes the gap between the back and the front that just isn't going away in the 4-4-2. Do I really need to say that I'm dreaming, it'll never happen, etc.?
This post is going to be a lot less impressive this morning than it would have been yesterday morning, but I'm not scrapping the wings altogether. I was expecting the full backs to be the wings. With two deep central mids and two center backs, there should always be a defender able to get into the attack. I was going to say that I expected Najar to do most of the work on the right and for Boskovic and Woolard to split duties on the left side, or ideally, some other talented LB. Having heard what Najar did last night just reinforces what I was already thinking. And in between my post and last night's game there was Ben Olsen on the Capital Soccer Show saying that he thought Najar was the future right back of DC United. So there you go. Seems like the team lined up fairly similar last night, using Saragosa instead of Boskovic and playing Dero higher, but it's pretty similar.