The thing that keeps me on the pessimistic side of the argument with Porter and his "system", is that I haven't heard or read anyone articulate how his system is different. To me, when I watch (and I admit to not watching as closely this year), I don't see the players being asked to do a ton that's fundamentally different than last year. If Porter's system is so complicated, wouldn't it be obviously different? If it's not so complicated, shouldn't the players be able to make these small adjustments? I'm just really confused by the whole thing and tend to land in the camp that the players are confused and aren't getting the proper instruction from him. Combined with the some of the players just not being good enough. If anyone has read any good descriptions of the differences between how Porter has the Revs playing and how BA had them playing, I'd love to read it.
Yeah, some of these players dropped off a cliff. Chancalay was great in the half-season he was here, but he looks lost out there now. Kessler is a shadow of what he once was, Romney was solid as a rock, but he can't even get a game with team whose defense is shaky at best? Buck, Harkes, and a few other guys were also a lot better last year. We all had (still have) high hopes for Esmir after what he showed in the Slovenia game, but now I'm fearing that he'll never grow into the player he could be.
I didn’t say I didn’t see progress. I think I implied it has been glacial and wondered how such a pace would apply in the future. Right now, I think the last 4 games of “improvement” can be down as much or more due to Jones and Borero becoming more available than to any understanding of a system.
Fair points. Anyhow, I think it's time to perhaps retire the Porter Job Watch thread. He's beginning to succeed here.
If in, say 2 weeks, Polster and Kaye are the CMs and passing it back to the CBs, that doesn't include Romney. Esmir is sitting on the bench, are you going to have the same opinion?
I will admit that rkane1226 can be negative, but YTD results is not spin, that is just fact. If they finish the year last in the East (where they are now), a 3-game winning streak in June is not enough to save his job.
I’d argue that healthy realism is too often interpreted to be negativity. At any rate, the last 4 games has moved the “Fire Porter” meter from being pegged at the top of the red zone to the border of the cautionary yellow zone and the “kill immediately” red zone. I don’t see the system difference enough to praise Porter though. He could [dare I say should?] have gotten his central defense pairing settled months ago. The offense seems to be benefiting enormously from Borrero’s speed and skill. Buck played this last game because JAK was a late scratch not because Porter got it right. FAIK, Porter will win every remaining game this season, earning the right to be called a great coaching choice. But so far, all he has earned, IMHO, is a very cautious wait and see attitude. But, of course, the Krafts are asleep at the wheel so Porter doesn’t have anything to worry about.
It makes zero sense to me to not consider their recent run of games. It's downright dismissive to me.
I'm not dismissing it, but I also can't judge Porter solely on 3 games and dismiss the first 13. I want to see what they do against CIN and CLB before I am ready to declare that the ship has been righted.
Do you really fail to see that the above is downright dismissive of all but the last 4 games, league and Concacaf combined?
Not at all. I'm torched about the beginning of the season. But I've seen enough in the last four for me to support the idea of staying the course.
Sure, but a closer look at the stats, breaking it into 1st and 2nd quarter, as Porter does, gives a much better view. Well, he didn't have Arreaga months ago and Kessler had injury problems. Seems like the cdef started improving as soon as we got Arreaga. Yes, that's certainly true. But, the flip side of that is that Porter should get some slack because of the preponderance of injuries we had over the first quarter. We lost multiple left backs at one point (and Peyton Miller hasn't even had a chance to make the bench yet). I think one view of how this season has gone could be that Porter is having to fix a lot of Onalfo's mistakes, in addition to doing his own job.
So, this all started in response to “Porter is a System” coach. And I pointed out a couple times now that he is benefitting from getting certain talented players back. But none of the questions/comments about whether his results are system based (players learning it) or talent based (Borrero and Jones for instance) have really been addressed in favor of declaring (on insufficient data) he is a good (great?) coach. Or, perhaps, in favor of trying to call valid questions “negative.” I don’t think any of my posts have said, “Fire him right now damn it!.” But I do have a ton of questions about this “system coach” theory. I think he is benefitting from having better talent available. It remains to be seen how consistent he can be with that. I think he should have realized Romney was a good central defender months ago. I have to agree with the facts that Arreaga has been around less time. But he stumbled into this pairing, IMHO. If he saw Romney’s merits (good coaching) he would have paired them up right away. Instead, Romney was in the doghouse, maybe on the trading block.
I also look at the improvement in form and see it correspond to players that Porter has largely overlooked due to personal preference be replaced by players who the world at large have wanted him to play. Romney and Kessler started the year, and when Arreaga came Porter summarily benched Romney, said some mean things in the media, and only reinstated him when Kessler became unavailable. Likewise we just had our most enjoyable performance of the season due to a CM of Harkes with Buck. This only happened because Polster had a suspension and Kaye had a last minute knock. We'll see if he sticks with what worked, but we spent 16 weeks with Porter's horse hitched to Polster. I guess where Im going is that even indpendent of injuries, Porter just doesnt seem like a very good evaluator of the talent he already has. Is that because our better players dont fit the tactics he wants to use? If thats the case should he be so attached to those tactics at the expense of playing a weaker 11 every week? Thats my criticism of Porter. Before we even get into player availability caused by soft tissue injuries, which he promised before the season could be prevented and are the manager's fault.
For one, there's been this narrative that Romney was in the doghouse, but I think that is pretty unsubstantiated. I think the truth is that Porter wanted better distribution from center backs, particularly getting transitions started. Romney is a very good defender - I don't think anyone would deny that, even Porter. But, he tends to be very conservative with the ball - and that, in combination with the players around him, has made us very slow/limited in transition and easy to press in our own end. So, Porter was looking for better passing options among his defensive corps. I think what he's stumbled upon is that Arreaga's transition skill can compensate for Romney's lack of it, when paired together - making them an effective pair together. Should Porter have just been able to figure that out in training? I'm pretty skeptical of that - this seems like something you have to learn in real competitive games. I feel like he's working through the same sort of thing in dmid, where he's been trying different combinations (I think he's been kind of stuck on Kaye/Polster because both Buck and Harkes, until recently, were pretty underwhelming when given chances).
Agreed that the Arreaga-Romney pairing has worked recently and hopefully this might be the "new normal," but where does that leave our million-dollar man, Kessler? Can't have a guy making that kind of scratch sitting the bench, can we?
Well, these are all valid opinions and I get that others have more patience than I do. Coaching is a harsh job IMHO. So while I get your argument about Porter trying things out and recognize that some of that might be necessary, I don’t think an entire pre-season and a third of a season is what coaches can be afforded these days. Harsh as it is, he has to get it right quicker IMHO. A plus to taking an MLS coaching gig is that more time is certainly available than in the top 5 european leagues. Back to Romney, I was surprised by your comments about passing out of the back. The way I remember the successful/winning REVs of last year, I thought the build out of the back more or less sought out Romney. It seemed to me that he was a preferred passer out of the back. Either way, I don’t think any of the other, pre-Areaga center defenders were BETTER passing out of the back than Romney. Doghouse or not, he was certainly benched for a significant time. Nothing on the team looked very good when he was benched but I don’t really recall thinking he was THE PROBLEM. Certainly Porter can/should bring in a better passer but IDK why he couldn’t find that pairing more quickly. It isn’t all about Romney so please just take those as observations. In general, IIRC, there was an argument that Porter was a “system” coach and that players were taking time to learn that system. 1. Can someone describe what this System is? I don’t see it. 2. Can someone explain why a set of professional soccer players take over 1/3 of a season to learn it? What is so unique and different about it? Why does Porter think its so important? 3. If the REVs turned over 1/3 of their starters due to injury or transfers/moves, would we be facing a 1/3 season learning curve again? Should we be happy with that, if true? I think Porter is benefitting from getting players healthy and his selections correct about 100 times more than the impact of any magical system. He should be congratulated for improving the goal keeping and bringing in Areaga. There should be a footnote on that which reads, “Why didn’t you do better in the offseason?”. Otherwise, I think, in the context of a very harsh set of job expectations for coaches, he stumbled upon his center back pairing, he is still struggling with his midfield, he is benefitting from Jones and Borerro being back (talent, not system). I don’t think he has shown he can achieve a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts when he had the lesser players. I don’t recall really seeing him coach his way to a win with amazing, in game, adjustments. So, maybe he is an adequate coach but I see nothing special. A few wins doesn’t wipe everything away. The jury is (and should be) still out. Change of topic sort of: If, at the START of the season, I told you the REVs were going to finish with 14W-17L-3T what would you have thought? Is that what you would have expected or wanted for a result?
I am not a fan of the Polster/Kaye pairing but before we call for the switch to Buck/Harkes I think I need to see them against a team that applies more pressure than Vancouver did. Vancouver is a very low pressure team that give their opponent time and space in their own half. I want to see if Buck and Harkes can play as well under more pressure.
To be fair, he didn't have a whole lot of off-season to work with. And that's on Onalfo, Kraft, or whoever else dragged their feet in hiring the next coach. They all knew Arena wasn't coming back, and the interim coaching situation we had was only going to be temporary, but they spent all that time "measuring." Meanwhile, whoever the new coach was going to be didn't have a say in which players they were going to keep or let go... Yeah, at this point we'd be lucky to get there, but I would have predicted something more along the lines of 17-10-7. Shows how much I know!
Another Monday morning, another Revs win and another nail in the coffin of this "Porter Job Watch" thread.