My turn to weigh in: First, I commend KC for playing well. Did not expect that much pace and explosiveness from their attacking players, despite capitalizing on our players slipping twice. Second, we played piss poor team defense throughout the game. As Colorado exposed our lack of quality in playing three in the back, this is further evidence that 4 defensive backfielders is a must. I question the logic behind replacing Erpen, albeit a piss poor excuse for a defender, with McTavish who I consider a midfielder. I knew we needed more offense at that point but it showed a bit of arrogance on DC's part by pulling a defender after leaking three goals in the first half. Third, I miss Novak. The few times the camera caught Soehn, he looked calm and a bit confused. I would rather see fire and passion. It starts from the top, and despite DC having a group of veterans, other posters here have remarked that they sometimes look complacently comfortable, and thats when you need a hard ass coach who will make it known that these results are unacceptable. DC did not look like a veteran group out there. There was no identifiable leader to rally around. Gomez had that excellent free kick, but he was a bit invisible for chunks of the match. Lastly, I know Troy had a solid MVP season last year, but the last two games , he has looked shaky. I know the defense left him in the bad positions, but some of those one v one situations I expect him to make the save. I can't help but feel his confidence might have taken more of a hit than anything. Bottom line is, whereas last year, when a team had a breakaway on him, I felt relatively secure with him in front of goal. But lately, when I see a goal scoring chance from an opponent, I fear the worse instantly. I wrote of the first loss to fatigue and lack of Gros. I am writing this loss off to the wet pitch and unlucky situations. But deep down, I know that DC has serious defensive problems and I expect Soehn and the team to set aside their arrogance and experiment with a 4 back formation, before its too late...
I don't think that he had a terrible game on the wing. He was not beaten once, he held possession fairly well, and he actually crossed the ball into the box (one of the crosses was pretty bad). He didn't beat anyone on the dribble, but that didn't seem to be his job.
I, for one, am glad we have two weeks off. We need to make some adjustments, and this break will give us time to put them into effect.
Well, that sucked. I don't think we can panic yet, but my irrational optimism is totally shot. I was hoping to hold onto it a little longer. We need to fix our defense, and Perkins isn't in the same form he was last year. I don't think a 4-4-2 matches our personnel very well. If we're going to switch, I think a 4-3-3 is the way to go. We don't have outside midfielders, so lets quit playing with them. I don't know that it would make a difference - we just aren't playing well - but we need to do something to solidify our backline. Emilio and Olsen were good. Moreno and Gomez looked fine, though not spectacular. Fred got better as time went on, and is going to be a player. Namoff was so-so, but in general the defense was terrible. McTavish didn't do much. Everyone else sucked, a lot.
I, for one, did not weep at Nowak's departure, as I suspected he'd both burned out his players during the course of the season and perhaps had lost them in the lockerroom. If Soehn develops the Dave Campo perpetual WTF? look of surprise then I'll be worried about his on the job competence. That said, Soehn hasn't done anything in the first two weeks of the regular season to harm Nowak's coaching reputation.
Teams know to swarm Gomez and bottle him up. When that happens Moreno drifts back to take up the slack. That leaves us with one true forward, Emilio. Even though poor defense was the problem tonight I think Tommy should consider pairing Gomez with another attacking midfielder in the center - perhaps Fred, or Dyachenko when he recovers. Moreno goes back up front. Any two of Olsen/Gros/Casals become our wings.
Good post and I agree with most of what you say. I also think that our defense was pretty solid last year using the same formation and personnel. The issue I have is people calling out the formation as the problem. Like I said in my first post, you can be as attacking or defensive out of any formation you line up. The formation is just numbers, how you play out of that formation is tactics. JMO.
Gros needs to spend less time standing around by his marker. McTavish played well. He did what he was supposed to, nobody bothered to get the ball out to him. He was tracking back well on defense and moving into open space on offense, but our guys just weren't getting the ball to him. Fred does two things so many players in this league do not do: he make intelligent runs off the ball and he moves to the ball when it is passed to him instead of standing there. all their goals sucked. i got a free magnet, though. so i got that going for me. which is nice.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, he seemed like he was holding back in FSC's post game interview, and still managed to get out a "damn". He did look anxious though, and I imagine that's not unsual for a brand new rookie head coach in his position. I think he will be okay and I think he let them have it in the locker room. The post game press quotes will be a good read on this. While I agree, as I have before, that we don't have the players for a 442, it is looking more and more like we don't have the players for a 352. I'll go ahead and say that Adu is better than Fred on the wing-- now and maybe forever. That doesn't mean we made the wrong move, however. I think we've got players in positions that do not utilize their strengths. And formations in real soccer are nothing like formations in video game soccer. Formations aren't that big a deal, but they are representative of the instructions you give the players, where they are to spend most of their time, and gives them an idea of what is expected of them. Having Olsen on the outside in a 352 carries a pretty different set of assumptions from having him outside in a 442. But lets' see if Tommy pulls the trigger on a change, and if he doesn't let's relax and see if the players step up their game.
It has looked to me that the coaching staff have been asking Benny to step forward more often to help Gomez in this fashion and prevent Jaime from coming so deep so often. It has looked like it was working at times, but I'm wondering if that is part of why BC looks so out of form? Maybe he doesn't have the chops to do the job himself or is still picking it up? I doubt it though, because most of the reason BC has been a nonfactor is because of his poor touch/passing and teams using wide play to go around him.
No offense to "the_phlip," whoever the hell he might be, but color me a little skeptical that Will Chang would be commenting on the team's formation on the elevator ride in front of a bunch of strangers.
Everyone seems to be focused on the defense, so let me attempt to switch the field of play... wait, DC United never switches fields (hyperbole, of course). We seem to love to play in small groups, a la "joga bonita," until we eventually give the ball away. Our movement of the ball look so slow and labored. I know the conditions sucked so just get used to it and bang the ball a little more crisply. Try some variation and make a penetrating long ball every now and again. God, I miss Etcheverry!!! His cadence was perfect: dink, dink, dink, dribble, dribble, Boom! Every time KC got the ball they looked like they were off to the races. Every time we got the ball it was like tick...tock...tick...tock... The silver lining is that we did start to show more urgency in the later stages of the second half. Even Fred seemed to climb out of his shell, if just barely.
Pretty much where I'm at. The 4-3-3 probably suits this team best, allowing a guy like Fred to start and be near the opposing goal, which is where he needs to be. Also, I've been thinking and saying for 2 years that Gros would be a better fullback than midfielder. Seriously, teams have just gotten used to United and their style. Blaming this on Soehn is a bit silly as everything fell apart the entire 2nd half of last year and in the playoffs the year before when it counted. That being said, Soehn needs to make an adjustment. This isn't just pure chance.
Since no one wants to say anything nice about him, I will observe Erpen had a nice assist. Wish FSC gave a replay to see whether it was offside. The rest of Erpen's game was, well, less than stellar, and I'm usually in his camp. Unfortunately we didn't really get to see McTavish put through his paces in the defense since KC was sitting back in the second half. In the first half with McTavish on the wing, Erpen and Olsen pretty much never passed to him. It was very odd. Erpen didn't even look at him. Pretty soon Burciaga figured this out and McT had acres of space, but still was not involved. He seemed to have a fair amount of trouble coordinating the defensive assignments with Olsen and Carroll (i.e. who has the right wing, who has Burciaga). Apparently I'm the only one but I thought Jaime played much, much better than in previous games. Very few turnovers and was willing to take some shots. Payne and Kaspar must be tearing their hair out...at the end of last year the defense was pretty solid but we couldn't score. So they left the defense the same and made some great acquisitions for the offense. Now we can score and we can't defend. Great. Since I can come up with absolutely no satisfactory explanation for the drastic downturn in performance from Carroll, Erpen, Boswell, Namoff, and Perkins, I'm gong to stick with blaming it on the weather until we get to watch them play a game where it's not raining. If they're still playing badly after that I plan to blame CSC, then global warming, and if all else fails, MLS' lack of promotion/relegation.
McTavish played well. He did what he was supposed to, nobody bothered to get the ball out to him. He was tracking back well on defense and moving into open space on offense, but our guys just weren't getting the ball to him. I remember twice when he made an overlapping run to the corner and Moreno "Ignored"....I mean..."deicided" to turn it inside
Here's a thought ... Remember the second half of the 2006 season? We were the worst team in MLS so you might have blocked it out. Anyway, seems to me the team we saw today was pretty much the same team we saw then save one difference: Emilio has enough individual talent and guile to create goals out of thin air. What's the only reason we all though we were so much better? A couple games against Olimpia (which right now look like the exception to the rule). Last year we were worn out by an excess of Nowak intensity. This year we just lack intensity. Right now I think we could use a bit of Nowak at practice, and Soehn's really got his work cut out for him because I'm not sure that's really his thing. That said, if Soehn makes major lineup changes when we go up against the Crew I think it'll reflect very, very badly on his coaching capacity. This, what was on the field today, is Soehn's lineup. Those were the players he chose - his first choice players. Being forced to backtrack on that lineup? It wouldn't be encouraging. Adjust at practice. Tweak the lineup. Anything more and you're ... well that's stuff other MLS teams do in the vain hope that they'll magically strike upon the right combination of players. We should be smarter than that. If we're not it'll be a very long season. Or a very short one, depending on how you look at it.
Note though I specificly cited a reason for the change despite the personell largely staying the same: the coaching change. Soehn's more laid back approach changes how the midfield battle plays out. Last year, when DCU was on, DC forced the opposing teams to drop 8 guys back, usually pretty deep, seperated from the strikers. DCU had the strikers covered 3v2. When the other teams would get forward, it was often slowly, so that the wings could drop back and cover. The key to that was the high pressure that kept teams hemmed in. This year, teams can move the ball more fludidly as DC is applying less pressure (which is a result of a more laid back approach from the coach). That gives the wings and midfielders more chances to sneak up, and get 3v3s with tbe back line. Any loss in an individual battle in a 3v3 leads to a goal scoring opportunity, because no one is free to cover. DC could ratchet up the pressure and succeed with a 3-5-2, but they were driven toward that by the hard charging Nowak. Soehn on the other hand seems to let players relax more and try and play a more technical brand of soccer. Thats not nescessarily a bad thing, but it changes the way they need to play the game. I think a 4-4-2 with a more balanced defensive approach fits this style more. So switching to a 4-4-2 from a 3-5-2 is done in order to keep an extra man back, so that the defense has an extra man to cover with in transition. Pull a man back, concede more possession to the opponent in the midfield for more defensive security.
Goff's report... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/14/AR2007041401754.html