Minnesota United v. Houston Dynamo, Saturday, September 25

this one could get ugly. I'm counting on Vera to be no more than 5 yards away from the back line, especially towards the left side.

Is D. Jones ever gonna play again??

 

If Ramos places Vera at the #6 then please profe, play Jones on our backline in some role either at left back or paired with Parket at centerback and shift Teenage to left back. Jones is too solid st winning the ball back and moving into transition to offensive play to keep him off the field these days. Our Swede can sit. Asher is missed as well. With Fafa in goalscoring form and Ramos actually giving clock to Quintero, we have changed in cohesion and speed of play.

 

Tough to win in this sport when you give up a goal in the first 50 seconds. More so on the road, where our team is winless.

 

What a weird game. I swear, luck is not on our side this year. Maybe we need to sacrifice a chicken.

 

https://foreverorangeblog.blogspot.com/2021/09/after-encouraging-run-dynamo-hit-snag.html

 

What planet are these people on? Suggesting Tab Ramos may be in the category of John Wooden!!!

@RamosTab has aged a lot this season. He will have success. In Houston I hope. Pete Carroll, Lou Holtz Jessie Marsch, were all fired early in their careers. Even John Wooden needed more than a decade to turn around UCLA basketball. @webtilton @soccermattersGD @eddie_robinson2

— Patrick Glenn (@patg85) September 26, 2021

 

Well, I'm not putting him in that category, but I've been saying this since we hired him. This wasn't a win-now situation, and he wasn't a win-now hire. He's a long-term hire for a long-term plan. Not saying he's the right or wrong guy, that just is what it is.

 

A planet not found in this solar system. @Brian Gilchriest is a science teacher, maybe he can find the planet in which Tab is in the same zone as Wooden.

 

I’ll respectfully disagree, I don’t think he was any type of hire, he was a “name” guy who couldn’t get any other club jobs and Houston was willing to offer him. He’s not developing guys and he’s not winning. Owen Coyle had a better record than Tab. There was no plan around hiring him because Jordan’s only plan was to stay employed by finding coaches to fire

 

There are lots of guys getting better under Tab. There's one notable guy who has tanked this season, but last year had his best season as a pro. He's trying to develop guys. Junqua, Nelson, and even guys like Jones, Pasher, Carrasquilla are all developing. Vera's had his best season ever this year. You could make a strong case Lundy was playing his best ball this year of his career.

 

Personally I thought Tab was overrated for what he did with the US U20s. He was handed in 2 year chunks most of this totally loaded USMNT and could manage just a top 8 finish every time. Particularly if you look at 2019 he was running out Dest McKenzie Richards Soto Weah Ochoa Konrad and managed round of 8. That 2019 team had a similar problem with playing defense, eg, Ukraine 1-2, France 3-2, Ecuador 1-2. I don't care who won that tournament, or what people thought, "Ukraine?" "Ecuador?" Overrated.

I'm also not seeing where the optimistic version of his tenure here is rooted. Viewed on the long term and not playing up these occasional streaks he has, we lose or tie a lot. We suck. We suck in part because of recurring tactical and personnel choices. We also, if one drops the superstitious version of "bad luck," watch a lot of results go away. So the team is not completely overmatched, it just gets steadily beat, week after week, in games where often the result is not too obvious. Some of that may be talent -- that we aren't good enough to dominate someone else -- and can only hope to fight for something. But to me if week after week the game goes south on you, you're no better than the talent I hand you. You're telling me you can't pull some tactical or sub lever and win this particular one? Does that sound like a very helpful coach?

I think some people like the style but I could give two sh*ts if the results aren't there. Tactics are a tool, not entertainment. I've been watching some Atletico Madrid lately, and that's a team that just grinds and fights and wins them late.

Sorry but like Cabrera these were both cheap hires. Little or no first division coaching experience. Here, experiment on us, see if you can coach first team players for a change. With the exception of one year when the personnel stars aligned just so, did not work. Kind of proves they aren't secret magicians.

The Wooden argument is self serving and absurd. In theory every new coach on down to HS JV or U10 select is a potential Wooden. What separates a great coach is eventually put up or shut up. SAF winning Europe with Aberdeen, Mourinho with Porto. And we aren't like marginal but miss out, we flat suck.

To me great coaches get results no matter what you hand them. And a decent one would pull the right knobs and switches to get some more results out of these close games. And would have fixed long ago some of these nagging season long issues. eg constant defensive glitches. Or stupid personnel omissions. Quintero on the bench? It's like rarely does this get close to aligning as the actual XI we should be seeing. If it improves one place someone else hits the bench. The tinkering rarely starts to smolder and instead comes across feckless like my HS coaches farting around.

I get it that we give few resources and have fired our lousy GM but other than "hand him more money and hopefully we don't blow another season" I don't see why he survives when Jordan didn't. I'm sick of slapped together and see no hint he is better than the GM or the slappies on the field. They are all of a piece. Clear house and act like a serious franchise. Hire a GM who has put together a winner before. Hire a coach with some first team resume. Gather some players with actuall standout talent. Quit trying to make a youth coach into John Wooden.......

 

It also helps when you want to be John Wooden to have Kareem come through your school.

 

Re Gilchrist's take, the wingbacks suck and so we are constantly giving up dangerous service or outright goals from wide -- we don't hold the flanks -- and then we clearly play a zone in the middle, and waaaay too often the goal scorer is sitting right between the centerbacks, who are a beat late sorting out who will track someone. I am not sold on either Parker or Hadebe. We're trending towards another 50 GA season.

In terms of should that reflect on Ramos, a smart coach would have long ago gone to a 451 for numbers back, or a 3 man CB set so people can't split the centers, or put in god forbid man marking and hold people responsible for free chances. Something where we quit bleeding. The GA has only accelerated as this season went on. it went from 0-0 games. To 1-1 or 2-2. To losing.

Likewise out wide, a good coach would have the backs staying home, or swapped out, or be experimenting, or have a trade, or figure out something effective. How many people have we run through here in two years as wingbacks, or who could hybrid wide back, and he can't find 2 capable people? That's no Bruce Arena.

I also tend to believe that when a team scores within a minute something went awry in terms of motivation, energy level, warmup intensity. That's usually one team showed up ready and the other didn't. The first 15 if you are properly organized and motivated should be a wash. People getting open within a minute is not we got tired. It's we missed the morning alarm and never woke up.

 

He's done the 3 man back line, we lost every game. He played a 4-1-4-1, we couldn't score goals. You're blaming him for our FB's (really just one, Lundy's not bad) being unable to play. Who else is he going to play there, Junqua? He did that too.

Good coaches don't get results no matter what. If they did, Belicheck would have won in Cleveland. It's taken some really good coaches 5 years to turn situations not as bad as this one around in multiple sports. I'm not saying Tab is there, what I'm saying is I haven't made a decision on him yet. Last year's roster was as bad as I've seen. This year's has had 0 goal scoring punch. That's not his fault, look at what players are doing with the opportunity they're given. It's MLS, you can't just go get another guy. We are literally 1 solid goal scorer away from being a playoff contender. You could upgrade several other spots, but without a guy that can make runs in behind and put the ball in the net, it won't matter.

 

I think there are a lot of people who aren’t fully able to separate Tab’s playing career from his coaching career. When you combine the positives of his YNT coaching career it only clouds judgement more.

 

As an old coach I can assure anyone reading that you learn a lot from your opposing coach when he(she) makes moves late on in the 90 minutes that out flank your moves from earlier and the opposition coach pulls out results from under your own grasp.

Ramos has learned to start Quintero and yet drop Jones from the d-min #6 starting role. Bizarro World soccer tactics. BOTh should be lock starters as both are the ideal foil for each other's strongest traits.

I still want to give him some cash injection to purchase the players he, and he alone, demand to improve on his own squad. More so now that our new owner has stated his course to fund the club better. So my judgment is still out on Ramos.

 

You have a lot of hard beliefs, at least in soccer. I think you judge MLS by EPL or Serie A standards where the the bar is next to perfection. You want a 4-5-1! Who the hell is going to be the 1? We don't have a striker.

If you don't think Lundy isn't having errr wasn't having a great season then I'm sorry, you simply aren't watching the whole game. I have literally missed 1 minute of action and that was only because Brian made us late by talking tactics with a drunk guy at the half. Zarek could be improved sure, but to act as though he's just beyond awful is extremely unfair.

Everyone knew, everyone, that this team was going to be an offensive dud and that's before Darwin mysteriously disappeared. So of course our opponents can commit more to the attack.

But to be honest, what tells me that you aren't watching the whole game is you not being "sold" on Hadebe. That man has been fantastic. I mean I don't know where your standard is, even Van Dyke gets beat. I swear, this team has so many anxious fans just waiting for something terrible to happen, like a bunch of damn 3 year olds when Casey Anthony walks into a room. Hadebe is good, he really is, you know it too. It's okay to say something positive for once.

 

re coaching, i don't even think he's as good as cabrera. cabrera when he had something to work with, would be bringing vicente sanchez off the bench for a technical supersub, and would sub in cubo. like you had some varied bench options that tactically adjusted us. technique for speed. accuracy for athleticism. one of the running issues with this team since roughly Late Era Kinnear has been a tendency to just grind away with the same type of players in the same exact way from whistle to whistle, just subbing in another workhorse.

i mean what struck me early on this year was even if you hate darwin, darwin poses a different tactical function vs say pasher or dorsey hustling around like wenger used to. a little slower but a little crisper and more accurate.

i also feel like the boniek-as-back experiment ended too soon, and like we haven't really tried every option to fix the defense. i have little affection for hadebe, so he isn't my first idea wide, but jones is worth trying, figueroa, vera, hoffmann.

it's odd that a team that for years had beasley as a back --a mid who got pushed back as his wheels eroded and he became less of an attacking threat -- seems loathe to stick with boniek back there for any length of time, or as you say, to try jones (or vera IMO).

 

i want you to go back and watch who gives up the goals every week and come back and tell me hadebe's fine. to be clear, defense is a 90' job and not an 89' job with an "isolated" mistake or two that end up in the net and the scoreboard reads 0-1 or 1-1. which is on "you."

it's a standards thing, i would barely be personally responsible for anything all season when i played. that's not serie a based. that's some people can mark and some can't, based.

ever since hadebe showed up we over and over allow goals where a striker or mid just sneaks right between the CBs playing zone. no one picks them up. that to me is basic bullsh*t. someone mark the runner. once is a miscommunication. several times is you are lazy, like marking air (brooks is great at clearing balls with no one on him, but can't mark a man to save his life), or don't fix your mistakes. i don't care if most of the game looks nice if on almost a weekly basis you shut off a couple times a game and allow an obvious obvious central runner to ghost right up the middle for a chance on net.

 

in terms of the wingbacks, i want you to notice how many corners we allow, how many times teams get around the flanks, how many times we get back doored between the wingback and the CB, and how many crosses we allow.

or, put it different, how little the play stays in front of the wingback.

you're trying to rehabilitate the wingbacks but to me that is the primary reason we have sucked for years. we are too easy to attack down the wings. the 433 with mids central already makes it too easy. you are handed green space wide in the midfield. you then put back there wingbacks who can't stay with their men, to watch as many as 2 wing attackers.

personally i think the fairer defense of the centerbacks would go something like, we don't know how good they would be if they had their flanks covered. defense is a much harder job when you start allowing a ton of corners, crosses, and balls on the ground behind the offside line. you start having to clear umpteen balls and not just a few, and to play facing your own net or chasing people. soccer goes better when the defense is facing forward goal side and not facing their own net trying to win a footrace.

i mean, to me, we at least tried this season at CB -- though i am skeptical it was effective. we haven't even really tried at wingback.

 

personally i was liberated of any valentin affection when i'd swear we got 2-3 goals off him one time in portland.

also, valentin and lundkvist between them have like 0G 3A all season. so if the idea is we get something positive in exchange, it doesn't actually happen. it most certainly nets out negative.

 

last, it was my personal experience growing up on a team that didn't let you on the field if you wouldn't get stuck in, that it is not that hard to cultivate team defense. what you have to do is be ruthless with people who can't defend. and then once you have a team that defends how you want, you upgrade for people with more attacking ability.

the primary differences between us and atleti are they play 352, which gets one more body back, and as many as 5 defenders at a time, and they viciously defend. you then -- like italy this summer -- need some technicians who can finish other end. but not as many as you think.

re your 451 critique, what you lot tend to miss is sometimes you need the formation to fix the defense so you stay in games where we can then figure out how to squeeze enough offense to win. barrett grasped the first half of this but not the second. fix the team defense where we are competitive in games. then worry about goals.

i also think it's silly to suggest we should push more and more people up for an offense this mediocre. that's about ensuring you will suck. weaken the defense by playing 433. then don't actually get much offense. that's like the ramos recipe. surely having already endured that idea and with the virtue of hindsight you have some other concept.

nope, 451 or 352 and catch teams on the counter.

it also scales up as a way to play if we ever do get resources. to me we aren't ever going to win as a poor or even medium spending 433 squad because some other team will pay for better attacking players. what we need is a defense that negates their spending advantage and scoring, and then play for 1-2 goals.