Rev News, 11/3

pace Shawn

Gus wrote:

I don't think that word means what he thinks it means.

 

Interesting comments by Nicol. I felt strongly that this team needed someone to slow the pace of play for them. When they lost Hernandez they lost this role and things fell apart. Cancela has solved that, but with Twellman on the field there was still too much premature attacking play, resulting in innumerable turnovers. Losing Twellman forced them to be more patient, with good result. Fabbro's contribution to their good play is nearly as important as Noonan's. I think Twellman's injury has helped this team immensely.

 

Re: pace Shawn

Probably just some local fisherman out for a pleasure cruise.... at night.... through eel-infested waters!

 

It may be heresy in Revland but Socdoc is right re. the pace of play. What we are seeing now is the best Rev team ever, inc. the halcyon days of last year's run. The big coaching issue for the future will be how to integrate TnT into a fabric of play that is subtle and multi-paced.

A great problem for a coach to have but a problem nonetheless.

JIM DOW

 

very much agreed.

 

I think we need to be careful not to discount what Twellman brings to the team. We have no good reason to suspect that Twellman would fail to fit into the current system. I think he would thrive playing with the current Rev style. The trick is really convincing the team to use Cancela when Twellman is in the game.

For the most part we've seen precious little of the two on the field together, and most of that was early in the Cancela days when the team didn't really know what to expect from him or have the will to adjust to him during the difficult spell. Twellman was the known option that had brought them success in the past. I think to some degree, Twellman's injury forced the team to give the Cancela-driven style a chance. Now when Taylor returned for the game or two in early Sept, particularly the 0-0 Colorado game, the team immediately reverted back to the "feed everything to Twellman" style, and it almost worked, but for a missed PK and some expectedly rusty finishing on Twellman's part. Since the broken foot and Taylor's subsequent loss for the season, the team has been forced to learn to exploit the more Cancela-driven style to wonderful success.

I think the team, including Taylor himself, now are convinced that they can win with the new style and will not revert to the uni-dimensional attack once Taylor returns next season. I think Twellman will have no problem learning to fit into and benefit from the new style attack now that the team is hopefully committed to it.

 

This is completely speculative. Goalscorers are notoriously egotistical and I have seen enough of Twellman haranguing of his teammates to believe that he's no different.

I think it's a very open question as to how all the pieces will fit together next time they're all available. When Twellman came back from the broken face, he became a drag on the offense because they tried to do everything through him.

The big change in the offense post-Twellman, is that, in addition to being more egalitarian, they are playing the ball shorter and playing it to feet more. This suits the abilities of Cancela, Fabbro, Joseph and Noonan.

Players have complained from way back (i.e., Hernandez' divisive, but accurate rant to the press) that Nicol encouraged the backs to play long balls, directly to the forwards, bypassing midfield. Hopefully, even Nicol has now seen the better way - or maybe, prior to the Joseph/Cancela tandem, he didn't feel he had the midfield skill to play possession through the middle.

 

I know it is speculative, thus the use of the qualifier "I think...". My point is that any opinion of whether or not he will fit into the newer style is specualtive, since we have yet to see him play with the team committed to the new style.

Yes, good goal scorers are by nature egotistical. But I think any goal scorer would be willing to touch the ball less, if those fewer touches were in better positions. So Twellman is likely to buy into a system that creates opportunities that even a Fabbro can finish (looking at it from the theoretically egotistical view point of a good goal scorer). Again, we need to wait until next season to see how it plays out. I'm just not ready to dump Twellman (or to dump on him) because the team has finally been converted to a new style while he was injured.

Nicol may have been encouraging a more direct style earlier in the year, but did he really have the option to play the current style to success with a central midfield of Hernandez/Cullen, Hernandez/Joseph, or Joseph/Cullen. (Obviously, Hernandez thinks he was the answer, but...) Nicol was the one who sought out and signed Cancela, he's the one who worked him into the lineup immediately. I think Nicol saw that he had the defensive midfielder he needed, in Joseph, to allow for a Cancela-type midfielder to prosper, and thus went out and got him. Nicol was converted long before Cancela and Joseph arrived, he was just waiting to have the parts.

 

well it sure is a nice thing to worry about