Fontas allowing a free header from Morris, 2-0 Seattle. It appears Seattle may be slightly better than a good 3rd division side.
yeah. Just totally exposed by any competent passing and speed right through our defense. Just awful. Don’t walk away from two many games, but this team is har Sri watch.
man when we started this season I thought we had a legit defensive POY in Isimat Marin. That's now two goals today where he's just looking at the ball, ball, ball, ball, ball and doesn't give an f where his player is.
Holy shit, if the Mauri rule was applied to Isi on that debacle in front of goal, he would be gone tomorrow.
CB play was embarrassing. Either Isi is injured/sick or he quit on the season. Fontas was his usual shitty self. Flip side, has Shelton set a record for games started at CF with no shots in goal?
so i just checked on mls.com for all the years until 2010 and he is indeed the record holder for minutes played without goal or assist as a centre forward. only other centre forward that i could find that is coming close was rios from san jose in 2021, but shelton already surpassed him by 100 minutes. So I guess congratulations are in order? Also, if we win the open cup and get the wooden spoon, is this considered a double?
Trophies are trophies. Maybe we're tanking the season to get the top draft pick? In defense of SKC: We weren't wholy rubbish out there, we had some decent moments, some decent ball movement. we are so incredibly toothless, though, that it doesn't matter. a healthy Pulido and Kinda and we might have been competitive today against a very good side. Beyond the CBs, we had the same weakness we've had all year, there was no butt-saving from the 6. Nothing was getting clogged up. i like Walter, but that's not his role.
PV went into the game with no answers sitting on the bench if things started to go down hill,,,,which they did. I really have not be impressed by Ndenbe all season and this game was no different. Isi seemed indifferent and much to casual with a lot of his play. I had to laugh at Fontas because his defending was poor, so I guess he tried to play forward by dribbling into the box for a shot. That didn't end well either. As a whole, for 70 minutes, SKC held it together pretty well, but after that, they just looked tired and out of ideas. Schmetzer is a smart coach and he prepared his team to smother Salloi and JFR all game long leaving Shelton as the only threat (or non-threat). That produced only one shot on goal for SKC even though the possession was right at 50/50 for the game. The game ended much the way I expected.
I didn’t think they’d played bad for most of the game. They hadn’t played good, but there had been worse performances this season. the CBs though still don’t fill me with any hope, despite his play at times last year Fontas has, dollar for dollar been one of the worst signings in team history. Isi has his moments but leaves plenty to be desired. The only CB that has given me a semblance of confidence this year is Ford.
I agree. Ford has shown a lot of promise and could develop into a really good CB but needs a good experienced CB to pair with.
On the attacking side, the biggest problem with this team is the lack of threat through the middle. JFR and Salloi are the only threats to worry about. Shut them down, and SKC are done
Yep, PV even alluded to it at half time that Seattle was basically man marking the two of them. KC had moments of being able to get them space, but nowhere near enough for it to make a difference.
Seattle also did a good job of sending two men into the space Logan N vacated when he went forward, meaning they're forcing Fontas to defend two while running, when we know he has trouble with one while stationary. This pulls Isi out of position, and there's no 6 providing cover. What I found interesting is that our 4-1-4-1 didn't provide offensive or defensive stability. It did provide a base from which to work possession. But in the attack, it was requiring moments of brilliance, and as they were smothering the only people we have capable of providing those flashes, those moments didn't really come. Defensely, we're a mess. zusi and Logan are still tasked with bombing forward. Walter does not drop back between the CBs in the way that Ilie did to provide a back 3. He wanders, because that's who he is, an 8. I will disagree, I don't see the blame here on individuals. We know what Fontas cannot do, it isn't reasonable to expect him to do more. Seattle is very good, IMO the best side in MLS, though LAFC just added a 32 year old, low mileage Bale. Given what they can do, we were not set up to win this game, we were set up to look good for stretches while we lost. The biggest mistake of Vermes managing career is quite clearly dumping Mauri so late, without a plan to replace him. It's obvious we only have one player who can play the 6, and he's a mess. The fault lies not in our stars, but our structure and roster.
Forgot to note, using the term "stars" there in the hyperbolic English tab way of the word, meaning, really, anyone who ever plays
The Mauri decision was a clear disaster but its only part of a pattern that PV and the gang have with oversees transfers. Quick run through the major transfers (additions) over the past 2 years: Foreign players The good: Walter OK: Isi, Ndenbe, Tzionis (would be higher but PV doesn't play him) The bad: Voloder, Vujnovic (somehow can't beat out Shelton), Mauri MLS players: Good: Ford Bad: Sweat Awful: Uri Looking at the No6 position specifically, PV let a solid player go to LAFC because he was too expensive, and replaced him with two players on my bad/awful list. To get better, SKC needed to upgrade from Ilie. Instead, we took giant steps backwards. You can't do business this way and expect to be anything but a wooden spoon contender. The list above doesn't include PVs single biggest roster mistake, giving the slowest player in MLS a long term, and expensive, contract. Fontas, and his contracts long term negative impact on this team is the gift that keeps on giving. PV is clearly not good at being the sporting director. How does Illig not see this?
I put Mauri in in a different category of bad. PV loves Fontas. I would agree, he's wrong and Fontas is overpriced often useless defending (man can pass the ball, though, have to give him that) But that's a disagreement. Mauri was a player PV was willing to jettison after one horrible outing, despite the fact that he had one player on the roster who had ever played that role and that one player was both hurt at that time and had a recent history of being injured a lot. He knew that he only had one other player for that role, and he knew he was an injury probability, and he knew that his system lives or dies on an effective, smart 6, and he waited until the last second to dump Mauri, knowing he had no replacement on the roster, and still doesn't. If he had other 6s, and i thought, why aren't they playing, this would be a different sort of failure. but he tanked his squad by failing to 1. Dump Mauri over the off season (if he disliked his game that much, he had to know already) or early in preseason, and 2. replace him! It's a collosal error, IMO
When any team has a predictable one dimensional attack, its much too easy for the opposition to shut it down. I don't think anyone outside the organization knows the real back story with Mauri and PV. There must be more to it than the one game before Mauri was canned. If the decision was made because of that one game, then PV is an idiot. However, I don't think PV is an idiot, but I do think he is a bit arrogant in his opinion of what he thinks he can do with the organization. He basically made a decision that not only tarnished his reputation as a coach, but in the process, dumped the reputation of the club and cost his organization money. Not many clubs would keep a coach under those circumstances. In addition, when the club was consistently winning, people could put up with PVs sideline behavior. But now, with the team performing so poorly, PV comes off as a boorish, hysterical clown.