P/I/P Match 2: Revs vs TOR, Sun 3/3/24 2:00p [R]

Yeah. Also, Curt doesn't pass my sniff test.

 

Wings of a sparrow gets canceled for foolish things like this. Also, the capo has gone stale, recycling the same songs over and over and no naughty chants yesterday. The Fort is becoming lame.

 

Seems like something that can be coached out of him.

 

Yes, I loathe that as well. There is an option to turn off the score but that still doesn't totally fix the issue.

Let's put it this way. I love my Revs, but the rest of my family (including my wife) don't feel the same way so I'll often concede doing what she wants during road games and then I watch them after she goes to bed.

BUT it drives me crazy when I'm trying to get to the game and you have to get past some of the thumbnails for their videos for goals scored. So last week before clicking on the game I see a thumbnail titled something like "Bentake 90+2min goal".

So I have the scores turned off but still can't completely get around spoilers. There should just be a full NO SPOILER option or something where they don't show any headlines from the last 24 hours or something. It was refreshing being able to watch the mid week CONCACAF game on DVR knowing I wouldn't be spoiled.

 

As a team we seem to have good depth, but I think it was clear on Sunday that we are lacking depth at the forward position.

I remember thinking....ok, we need a goal. Who are we going to look to come off the bench and provide a spark plug. Nacho Gil? ok, yes, he should bring some energy, but what about fresh legs up top....nope, no one. Our other subs were Lima and Kaye, not exactly guys who push the offense.

 

I know this is nothing new since Tajon Buchanon left, but another early concern is their inability to beat anyone off the dribble with SPEED. If you look at their attack on Sunday, instead of seeing someone penetrate the D and create a shot, there was a lot of 'penetrate, Defender catches up, pass back and reset'

 

At the season-ticket holder event I asked/commented about bringing in Vaclik, never playing him a minute and not giving fans/media any kind of explanation (imagine that happening with any of the 'major' sport teams in this market!).

Onalfo did give some explanation, which amounted to 1) we didn't really expect to sell Petrovic, but we suddenly got blown away by the offer [I guess the implication is they didn't have a lot of time to scout and/or didn't have a lot of options?], and 2) Vaclik came in out of shape and didn't get along with "our" goalkeeping coach.

I bring it up here, because no matter how you spin it, all of that reflects really poorly on Onalfo and his staff.

Yes, and it was a glaringly obvious need - just for a competent 3rd option, not even a starter level player. Only Houston has as few forwards on their roster - some teams have as many as 8 forwards (note: our website shows 5 forwards, but one is Esmir - who isn't a forward and they haven't used him as one, one is Bolma - who hasn't been used on the first team [and if he is, that will block us from adding another international player, from what I heard] and the last is Malcom Fry, who hasn't even made a bench yet.

We also cleared out the Revs II forwards, trading away Jordan Adebayo-Smith because we didn't need him, right? [Minnesota has used him off their bench].

They already knew (or should have) that Wood is pretty injury prone at this stage of his career.

Yeah, agree - but we're really in a tough spot for this series, most likely going in again with no real striker. And, if we're lucky enough to have Bobby Wood back, we can't really expect him to be very sharp - or go many minutes.

I kind of felt that none of our shots were quite good enough - Polster's was maybe our best chance, but his shot wasn't to a corner or post.

Yeah, he needed help from Esmir, but didn't always get it quickly enough. That said, Insigne is the #1 guy you don't give space to - and he did.

We were supposed to be making Insigne have to defend, but after the first 15-20 minutes, they were the ones forcing us to need Esmir and others to defend.

Folks in my section were screaming to stop doing short corners ("... they never work"). But, direct corners rarely work too. In fact, corners are highly overrated - people get way too excited about earning corners.

Agree on the tea dump - pretty lame. Maybe they can get more creative, but it just seemed like our weak attempt at sawing the log or something. We already have our muskets - we don't need to get too kitchsy.

I think it all comes back to missing Vrioni. Without him, we absolutely need Esmir in the attack.

 

Yes, the Saturday Q&A was very interesting, I thought, and maybe a little more honest than in years past. As mentioned, their party line on Vaclik was he came in out of shape and didn't get in shape. Their word on Bou was that they wanted to resign him but his agent (and presumably thus Bou) still wanted DP-level money but in management's opinion he is too injury-prone to warrant that and Chancalay has a similar skill set but is much younger, So, tough decision, but he's gone, says Onalfo. When asked why they didn't get a forward in the off-season and will they have a signing "in the window," they hemmed and hawed that Porter has only been with the team for 5 weeks (whose fault is that?-ed.) and Porter said "we WILL have two 'signings'---Borrero in April and Bye in July" but "of course we are always looking to get even better" in terms of personnel. They said that MLS cash rules are complicated for fans to keep track of but the bottom line is their transactions over the last weeks have been aimed to create enough "cap space" to put Onalfo and Porter in a position to be able to make an important (international) signing even though it, I think, can't be a DP.

Porter was asked about the 1-forward setup and basically said that neither he nor the rest of the soccer world are too excited these days about a 2-forward setup. He mentioned how his successor at Columbus played a 3 EVERY game all year and won the cup and said his lineup would slip into 3-forward mode from time to time.

Porter's answer on how a team tries to deal with Messi and Suarez was kind of funny---those two pretty much won't defend but will hang high to start the counter so the Revs have to be constantly aware of that, and they (and especially Messi) don't stay put in one assigned position so it is crucial for defenders to not leave their D-zones unattended and to limit the attacking opportunities and touches, but then he said it ultimately comes down to "pray" because those guys are great and they are going to score.

Several fans went to the Bruce questions, and Bilello said it was not the Revs' investigation it was MLS's and that the Revs are an MA business just like every other MA business and so privacy and other laws have to be followed. He said the MLS investigation found some fire amid the smoke and Bruce admitted there was some fire in his resignation letter. The questioner was mad that Bruce was "let back into MLS" a month later [for consideration by DC] and Brian said that was a published statement/rumor that was just flat out not true. He wasn't let back in (and still hasn't been, was implied). They dodged the question as to why the fans were not given more official explanations of what was up with Dave VdB and Shalrie and why was Richie ("who didn't have the locker room," as the questioner said) elevated to coach but did kind of admit that, especially after Bruce resigned, they were thrown into a situation in which they thought they needed to act quickly to restore a sense of normalcy and forward movement and sometimes mistakes are made when decisions are made quickly. All three (Bilello, Onalfo, and Porter) predictably said that they were more interested in moving forward than rehashing the past. And Bilello got animated when saying that he personally was very angry over the Bruce thing and of course the fans and the players had a right to be angry also, but he was angry that the players (and the fans) were put in such an awful position. He did not explicitly say it but his meaning was clear, at least in my and my wife's interpretation: he was angry that the fans and team but especially the players were put into that awful position by Bruce himself [as found by the league investigation and admitted in Bruce's own letter]. That was my take and I may be misrepresenting his position and/or what I heard. His response reminded me that several posters to this chat board posted similar sentiments here last season..

As I said, an interesting session. And many of the best non-Bruce tactical and "get to know Brandon and Caleb and Curt better" questions came from young kids. I enjoyed it.

 

Wait, so Porter says that Columbus won the cup by using 3 forwards, but we don't even have 3 real forwards on the whole team?

And the whole Bruce thing is very depressing. Not that there was ever going to be much real info, but basically Bilello is saying that it was Bruce's own damn fault (which may very well be true) and it was the League who got involved and messed things up. I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to know what exactly Bruce did to warrant blowing up the whole team and banning him from coaching.

Finally, based on the above, I have zero confidence in Onalfo. They didn't expect to sell Petrovic? Even us fans knew that was a very real possibility that we'd lose him during the season. Yet he was caught off guard and hadn't been actively scouting possible replacements? All I can think of is Mike Burns being astonished that a decent, but way underpaid player with a Portuguese passport would try his luck in Europe and make 5 times his Revs salary.

And who gives a big, fat contract to an out of shape keeper sight unseen? I'm sure he saw the highlight video where he made some fantastic saves in 2018...

 

Yeah, this isn’t encouraging. First, it comes across as kind of arrogant and self-satisfied, and second, it completely ignores the gaping hole that needs to be filled in our roster.

 

But we're too stupid to realize that, don'tcha know?

 

No wonder Bilello and Onalfo took so well to Porter.

 

It may be true but it may well be untrue and probably is less true than one thinks.

The analogy that keeps coming to mind here is the American Justice System in general. Over 90% of criminal cases get settled by plea bargain. And some interesting facts and statistics come out about that process, including that INNOCENT people take pleas!!! The pled charge is the result of a negotiation. A very HORRIBLE crime can be pled down to something much simpler or, as just mentioned, an innocent person can accept a plea that saddles him with a "guilty" verdict. Why? because he/she/it thought that was their best option at the time. Either way, I think it is dangerous for people to assume too much about what the FACTS really were when all they know is the plea result.

I can't find statistics on employer/employee bargaining relative to (alleged?) abusive practices in the workplace. Do the accused employees feel similar pressures to accused criminals? Like the criminal system, is the first offer usually the best offer? I feel there are similarities but can't prove it. Bruce felt pressure from the situation, deserved or not. He wanted it to end. MLS probably did too After a negotiation, he and MLS agreed he'd resign and write a very bland letter that he probably sinned at something at least once in his life. Either give me real facts or I have no pity for BB and, given his history, I'm inclined to feel he is just bull-shitting the room (insert some politically correct words that equate to "technically telling the truth but in a way that makes everyone assume what he wants.").

In short, Bruce taking a plea isn't going to convince me away from the opinion that if Don Garber or BB's lips are moving I'm probably hearing either a lie of a very very krafty (sic) version of the truth. Give us facts.

If he did something truly horrible, he sure got off easy and MLS is at risk that the facts will come out somehow, despite all the NDAs. MLS doesn't seem like that type of risk taker to me.

 

Corners are just a numbers game. If you score on 3% of them, by earning ten in a match, you have a decent chance of getting a goal off one.

 

We ought to follow Aston Villa's example and hire a set-pieces coach. If we can't afford more players, at least we can spend money on another guy with a clipboard.

 

I was that grumpy old guy ... Needed to get it off my chest.

I think we pretty much know unofficially - at the minimum, he harassed, belittled and intimidated Richie in front of other coaches.

Yeah, I'm not sure if he was just saying that they had to rely on what was available on the market or whether they had little notice to start looking for someone.

But, you know, Vaclik was pitched as a quality replacement.

Yeah, they have to own up to giving a 2-year guaranteed contract to someone who wasn't capable of doing the job (forcing them to give up salary cap money and burn their one-time buyout opportunity before the season even started).

And, if he didn't get along with the goalkeeping coach - did they even meet/talk before deciding to sign him? The rumors were that Hitchcock was left out of the loop. So, you can look at this about 6 ways that they screwed up - not to mention that they felt no need to explain or take responsibility with the fans or media.

1) yes, it's true and I agree, and 2) yes, it is kind an arrogant response - but that seems to be par for the course.

And, it seems kind of unnecessary to be so smug: it's clear that they are setting themselves up to try for another signing - why don't they just say that there's a reasonable chance that they could sign another player?

FWIW, I heard on a podcast that if Bolma doesn't make an appearance with Revs I, they still have an international slot they can use.

There's a pretty well-known book out that analyzes soccer by the data that crunches the numbers on corners and pretty much concludes that they are very over-rated by most fans/coaches. I have to SMH when fans in my section get all excited when we win a corner.

 

If I recall correctly, set pieces (including corners) were one of our strengths last year. Of course, now we have Bou removed from the equation and he was a big part of the free kicks.

So still not a bad idea, but I thought I read that we were in the higher end of the league on scoring off corners. I recall we even had a goal off a 'short corner' (I hate those) when Borrero burried one against Montreal.

 

My comment about Bilello whitewashing the Arena situation, blaming Bruce had to do with Bilello trying to spin-doctor it. Yes, Arena did "something" wrong, but there are a whole lot of unanswered questions as to what it was that was soooo bad that they had to blow up a team that had a pretty decent shot at a title.

Regarding plea bargaining, yeah, you would think that as the suspension was going on, they might have told him, "look, your job is on the line. If you [express remorse, apologize, eat a little crow, pay a fine, whatever] you can go back." Sure, Arena is stubborn and wouldn't be happy with that (but he made an apology statement anyway), but it would have put an end to it all. If Williams was the aggrieved party, they could have given him some kind of buyout and put in a good word for him for another job (which Arena allegedly did with Hartford).

It's not like getting the electric chair for jaywalking, but maybe like getting it for speeding. Taking the analogy a step further, was it drunk driving that resulted in a fatality? Until we know what the deed is, it's hard to know whether the nuclear option was the right measure.

 

Think of it this way: what's the opposite of a corner? It's a goal kick, and where's the joy in that? Even if the chance of success of a corner kick is low, it's at least a dramatic moment with a potential for success.

 

For sure, just need to keep it in perspective.