Ex-Rev News: Rusty Pierce

Apparently the Revs management felt he had a good shot at Europe or they never would have placed his name on the Expansion draft list.

 

That may be part of the case but I think it's more likely they simply didn't think he was valuable enough to sign at the price he was probably going to demand. Or maybe Rusty believes he's got a shot at this and really wants to give it a go, so that was the motivation for not making more of an effort to resign him. Who knows.

 

I ran the numbers last year, although probably not as precisely as you'd want for a stats related project. The numbers were pretty stark. The GAA was almost a full goal a game less when he played (and he missed about a dozen games, so it was a reasonable sample size). The difference was between finishing 3rd or 4th in the league in GAA or finishing 10th. One of the reasons I did this was because I'd read an article about how Pope should be defender of the year because the defense was so much better when he played, and found that Rusty made the same difference in our defense.

While I don't have the numbers anymore, I checked other things than just GAA, and the difference he made was more pronounced. They had about 3/4 of their games when they gave up 1 or less goals when he played, and almost all of the games when they gave up 3 or more when he was out. If you recall, that was the year of our defensive meltdowns, with the KC, NJ, and DC games where we blew big leads. When Rusty played, we gave up about 2 goals after the 70th minute or so. When he was out, we gave up about 10. In the games he played, those late goals cost us about 1 point in the standings. When he was out, late goals cost us about 8 points. The first 2 games he played this year didn't go well because of the play of Heaps, Joey, and Kante, but the defense definitely picked up after he came back from his bruise.

Aside from statistics, most of the criticisms about his play are generally broad statements like "his marking isn't always that great" or "he isn't tactically that great" or "his distribution is poor". How about specifics? In the playoffs, John (who was pretty solid all year) cost us 2 penalties in the Columbus game and kicked the ball over the endline with no DC players anywhere near him that ended with Moreno's goal shortly after the corner. How many mistakes like this did Pierce make like this all year? How about last year? The year before? The first few games of the year looked like prison breaks down our left side, with people beating Joey and running unmolested into the box. How many times has Rusty been beaten that badly since he joined the Revs 5 years ago?

 

When I was lookinig at the numbers last year, the main comparison was between central defenders. For Jay and Joey, neither of them missed more than a few games, so you couldn't draw any conclusions from that. For Pierce, Llamosa, and Kante, they each played in the 10-20 game range, I think, so you could draw better conclusions. I tallied things like goals against, late goals given up, and points lost on late goals for each game, noted who played, and got the totals and averages from when they played and when they sat. The defense was much better when Pierce played. Kante was, of course, the worst of the three. One thing I noticed, though, was that Kante played with Rusty for about half his games, and his "personal GAA" was about 1.5 to 2 goals per game less in those games, and there was a dramatic dropoff in late goals surrendered in those games. The fact that Rusty was able to run down the plays that got past Kante and Llamosa couldn't probably contributed to this.

 

Don't get me wrong. I certainly hope he catches on with some smaller European club. As been shown fairly frequently in the past though, there's a lot more to getting signed in Europe than proving you're good enough to make the team. Teams really expect incoming American players to be a step above what they can acquire domestically so that they can justify the effort and expense of taking someone from overseas. This is probably just as it should be, but it can make it difficult for American players to get a foot in the door.

BTW, thanks to soccertim for confirming the stats. I wish BS had a way to perform searches of past posts.

 

That's a very good, objective analysis of Pierce's game.

As for the Revs, I don't believe that Nicol has EVER played Rusty at right back (and we all now what the competition for that spot is), regardless of formation. I don't know why, because I think he'd be close to all-star level at right back, IMO.

Pierce will find a job in Europe if he really wants it. Either one or two levels below Bundesliga, or certainly over in Sweden. Guys like Dunseth and Harris demonstrate the level of MLS players, so they'll likely to be open to more of the same.

Before he signs on the dotted line though, being a Texas boy, he should take another listen to Gary P. Nunn's "London Homesick Blues" (I wanna go home with the Armadillo, ...).

 

....or even Ray Wiley Hubbard's "Up Against the Wall Red Neck" another great song on the same Jerry Jeff Walker album @ 1975 I think....highly recommended to you young whippersnappers out there.

 

No, that just means that his agent has been talking to RSL and MLS. Pedro has been talking to the Mets but it doesn't mean he's going to sign with them.