Lineups, Formations, Tactics, Stats, etc.

Found our starting lineup photo, pretty sure when everyone plays us, this is what they put on the white board and have a good piss laugh before the game.

From left to right

Ebobisse, Espinoza, Cowell, Gruezo, Yueill, Montiero, Akapo, Rodrigues, Beason, Truaco, Daniel

 

John Doyle (pictured right), is no longer with the team.

 

The one holding the cookie must be Akinola.

 

Double ouch! Bert always came off as holding midfielder or GK. You know, a "know you all" type.

 

We are now 3rd to last in the west on GF, and will likely fall to 2nd to last next to completely moribund CO because Dallas is behind us by 2 goals but has 2 games in hand.

We are sort of mid-pack on GA.

So I guess we could say that we kind of fixed our defense but kind of broke our offense at the same time. :-(

 

That is Luchi ball through and through. His career goal differential is about plus 2 a year. I wanted the Quakes to hire him, but as Technical Director to mold the academy. He sees himself as a tactician.

 

Yeah I wonder how much could be fixed though with a few attacking upgrades. The Nathan injury probably cost us a significant attacking upgrade because we used considerable cap resources on Mensah. As I’ve been saying imagine if we had even a “3/4 as good” Espinoza on the left side. For all of Cade’s promise when it comes right down to it. he’s really killed us in terms of goal productivity. He probably has about the worst g-xG in the league.

 

I want us to trade Cade because he doesn’t fit our system. He ought to be playing striker, or on the right. He doesn’t do so well on the left.

If we trade Cade, we get back a raster slot and a pile of cash. That lets us get a quality left-winger. (I don’t mean Bernie Sanders.)

Also, I want us to ditch Jamiro in the off-season. No whining @JazzyJ! We need more production from that spot. There’s are a few other pricey guys we can ditch, like Mensah and maybe Gruezo. Maybe JT? (I bite my tongue!)

Luchi has evolved a little. We’re playing a 4-4-2 on defense, which is good. BUT, the forwards in that formation are Jebo and Jamiro. Which means that Cade is playing defense.

I’d like to see us play more 3 defenders and whatever is going on in front of them, but Rodrigues (Hodrigues?) needs to stay home in that situation.

More Munie, less Mensah. That means more Beason too.

Go Quakesfans!!!

 

The Quakes under Gonzalez will likely always be stagnant. Show images of being brilliant, while consistently being boring, sub-par and lack creative dexterity.

He had a much better roster to work with in 2018. He finished 4th in the conference and 6th overall in MLS his first season, but was eliminated in the knockouts. He made some significant moves his first year as well, bringing in 14 guys and 14 guys were removed. Some really questionable ones like trading Walker Zimmerman to LAFC, Kellyn Acosta and Mauro Diaz.

He however had Dominique Badji, Victor Ulloa, Jesus Ferreira, Maxi Urruti, Cristian Colman, Pablo Aranguiz, Tesho Akindele, Ryan Hollingshead and Santiago Mosquera push their attack and they were still extremely boring.

In 2018 Dallas was a dominate team all the way until about August they were 11-3-5 until August 4th and the wheels on the bus came rolling off and went 4-6-3 the last 3 months and fell into the playoffs and got beat by Portland. We're on the same path as these guys, do pretty well all the way and start to fall apart towards the end.

2019 They were even worse finished 7th 13-12-9 and eliminated again in the first round by Seattle. They started out great though 5-2-2 until May hit and it was all down hill, they had a June push going 2-0-2, then it was real bad from there on out.

2020 The Covid year they went 9-6-7 not too bad, but everyone made the playoffs that year for the most part and that season should be considered a wash, because the following year... he got fired in September. He was 6-9-6 before he got fired. They were shut out a lot.

The biggest concern I have with Luchi lead teams is the lack of offensive creativity and ability to score even with a team on paper like Dallas during his tenure that had Pepi, Akindele, Ferriera and Mosquera to consistently put the ball in the neat.

Strengths he has, he's a defensive coach first. He relies on good goalkeeping. He had Megiolaro, Mauer and Gonzalez.

I don't think we will ever achieve greatness under Luchi Gonzalez like we've seen with Frank Yallop who can get the absolute most out of his players and find a cohesive unit of offensive players that combine well that raises the level of play abilities.

Luchi is great at developing players at the academy level, he hasn't done too well at the professional level either.

We will see in 3 years time if he's true to his level of coaching if we mirror what FC Dallas did under him, mid table team not much excitement and boring ass play.
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I'm not on the FIRE LUCHI train, but his level coaching us vs Dallas is about on par. To me Luchi's practices aren't very technical or tactical, they're very situational which is alright, but you need a balance of different styles of practice. Fitness was much better under Almeyda and tactically we were superior to what we have now on offense, Almeyda couldn't figure out defense.

The way I put it, Luchi has perfected the compound defense and absorb n release offense which is run and go without any creativity or idea of what to do. He also should let Ian Russell work with the offensive schemes a bit more.

In all honesty, I wish the roles were flipped, Ian as head, Luchi as assistant to focus on defensive tact. It would be a better balance that way. Ian isn't an absorb and go coach, he pushes a mid defensive line, with high pressing wings and attack its a lot more fluid. Daniel would need to improve with his footwork if we used the Ian tactics.

 

No, I've already been on record as saying that we'll probably not re-up on Monteiro and I'm OK with that. I don't think he's been great, but not terrible either. But I don't mind if we go another direction.

We will very likely not re-up on Mensah unless it's for a way, way reduced salary. We're stuck with Gruezo for another few years I think, which is not the worst thing in the world. He's fine, but I don't think he is playing anywhere near at a level to justify his salary (by far the highest on the team, and supposedly record transfer $). That was a nice fleece job by Gruezo's agent, coupled with Leitch maybe getting overly set on a specific target and allowing himself to get fleeced. If you've convinced yourself that you really need Gruezo to fix your d-mid problem and you don't have other options on the table, you're ripe for fleecing.

 

Fantastic post and breakdown. You rock

 

I hate colorado so much

 

once the Quakes hire a new scout to replace Bruno, S/he should reach out to Matias Almeyda to see if he has any other player friends in Argentina who might be willing to help out our attack, for cheap.

 

Oh yeah, let's bring back the FoM network!!

 

I know what G+ is and it's about a lot more than G and A, but I'm not sure how valuable it is when a guy with 13g, 13a is 36th out of 67 in G+. Maybe it's not the greatest single metric to evaluate a player? Just a thought. Put another way, I'll take that trade-off any day of the week - 13g, 13a vs. mediocre G+.

 

Can you imagine the numbers without Espinoza's stellar year...

Montiero is the big whiff...regardless if you view him as an ACM or attack minded 8. I'm a Leitch supporter, but it was an ill advised DP gamble on Montiero...and I said that from the start. Now it's on Leitch to correct that mistake.

 

Gruezo is almost as bad, which is why Luchi started to pull him from the starting lineup towards the end of the season. And we haven't even gotten to his defense, which is decidly unremarkable.

Gruezo and Monteiro have both underperformed. We can swap out Monteiro this year but we're stuck with Gruezo for a few more years, at our highest or 2nd highest salary (maybe behind Espinoza with Espinoza's new contract), and we our record high transfer. :-(

 

Well, Gruezo is a Dmid...He shouldn't really be in the convo for xG even though he is a DP. He's just okay, he didn't play to his pay scale. Way better than Remedi, but not close to Judson in his early seasons...who was an absolute steal as far as salary to performance.

 

My understanding of G+ is it's a measure of any contribution you make to a goal happening, even if just a simple short forward pass. And he's being rated there against other d-mids.

But I also feel like his defense was just so-so at best. He doesn't tackle much - 6th on the team in tackles with 24. By comparison Judson had 16 tackles in 1/5 the minutes. And he was 10th on the team in duels, with one of the lowest duels win %'s on the team, at 41%.

So in short really he's just not fighting for the ball. The Quakes really need their mids to be ball-winners so that we can launch counters. This has been true forever. We're never going to be skilled possession team that can slow roll our way to goals.

 

https://www.americansocceranalysis.com/what-are-goals-added

"Goals added (g+) measures a player’s total on-ball contribution in attack and defense. It does this by calculating how much each touch changes their team’s chances of scoring and conceding across two possessions."

"Just like goals added rewards players for improving their team’s situation in possession, it also rewards defensive actions that break up opposing possessions. A defender who turns a dangerous situation for the opponent into a neutral situation for their team by winning a tackle will earn goals added by the exact same method as our passer."

I would guess that if you're value was being perfectly positioned every time, and the opponent didn't even try to pass or dribble near you, this wouldn't show up in g+. But that would have to be some damn good positioning to save Gruezo's ass!

 

Good call-out. I think it's a bit less valuable as a defensive measure. It's not clear what they're measuring other than tackles. Also, who the heck is collecting all of this data? That seems like a herculean task unless it's somehow automated.

FWIW I looked at some of Gruezo's defensive numbers from his last full year at Dallas. Seems like everything's lower now by roughly 30% - tackles, duels, interceptions, etc. I guess he's probably lost a step relative to those days in Dallas and is probably not the same player that Luchi remembers.