First off, let's give credit where credit is due: New England is a terrific team, very well coached, a group where the whole is better than the sum of the parts. They play fast, energetic soccer, with strong combination play and good positional sense. It was no accident they wound up in the cup final. So, even though they are good, why did we look SOOOO bad? Some of the reasons have to do with certain key guys having bad games, but others are more systemic in nature. First, the "bad game" stuff: Our flank play was REALLY bad -- Perez and Whitfield had bad games, but Whitfield's was really a stinker. Franchino and Kamler put him under pressure all night. Evan had his one juicy chance to score, but that was about it for him. If we are going to play a 5 man midfield, our outside guys have really got to play aggressive, end to end, two way soccer. Our play out of the back was REALLY bad -- The first goal started when Perez, back at the goal line to support Andy Williams, whacked the ball aimlessly up the field, right to Rev player who then advanced the ball. The corner kick opportunity that led to Heaps' goal began with Carlos Bocanegra, quite uncharacteristically, passing right to a Rev player, and the ball gets moved back into the final third. Poor final third marking -- on all three goals, our marking was atrocious. On the first, Brown drifted toward goal, giving time and space for Twellman to nod home the second ball. Heaps was basically unmarked on his score. And Bocanegra, again uncharacteristically, was caught ball watching, as Ralston was put through by Joseph. Now, for the more systemic issues. Faria plays the forward position only partially -- I am astonished at how little checking and ball supporting Faria does. I think he checked to ball just once the entire time he was out there. Instead, like a youth player, he wants to run off all the time. Meanwhile, his runs seem to have no purpose other than to get forward to get the ball; other purposes, such as dragging a mark to create space behind, or slice far post and cutting back near post to lose a mark, seem beyond him. He can be dangerous with the ball at his feet, but he has to have time and space. He also does very little defensive pressuring in the final third. Andy Williams plays the attacking midfield position only partially -- Andy Williams has talent, but a game like yesterday's provides graphic evidence why he has bounced around the league, infuriating first this coach, then that coach. I counted only two tackles won the entire time he was in there. On virtually every challenge, if you could use that word, he was either a step too late or marshmallow soft. Even on the Kamler card, he was late-to-the-ball technique was typical. And the Ralston goal can be partially attributable to Andy, who was lazily shadowing Joseph, allowing him to receive and play Ralston through. Meanwhile, on the offensive end, he tries hard to support the ball -- and improvement over his Miami Fusion days when he stood around the field like he was expecting someone to serve him lunch -- but there was often little purpose or sense to the positions he was taking up. Give him time and space, and he can do OK things with the ball, but under pressure, he's not quite sure where to go or what to do. And he is often under pressure when receives, because he seems oblivious to the presence of his mark as he tries to support. Failure to take care of the ball -- against a quality team like New England, you need to be able to hold the ball, and possess productively when you have it. It may be tough to have a lot of the possession against them, but when you do, you need to do something good with it. Time and again, our touches were poor, and everybody has some blame here. Razov, Beasley, Armas -- the ball was just bouncing off the feet. I thought Beasley, Armas, and Curtin had the best games of the bunch. But when our outside defenders fail to mark, our flank players get turned, one of our central midfield players fails to win balls and support in a consistently productive manner -- well, it's a recipe for disaster.
After forcing myself to watch the game tape (yes, I did have to fumigate my house afterwards) and what struck me most about this game was that it was a true team loss. Curtin, Mapp and Ralph were the only players I can say played well. DMB played decently but he had to have been exhausted because he obviously wasn't his usual self. Thornton was OK but he got hung out to dry by the shoddy defense. Everyone else pretty much stank. Overall, nobody played as a team as they didn't even play well was individuals. I think the most pressing problem is our midfield. Dave has yet to find a midfield combo that works. Part of this is no doubt due to the newness of a few payers on the team and a new coach. Hopefully, this poprtion of the problem will fix itself as the guys get more chances to play together and gel. Unfortunately, the other part of the problem is on-field leadership and I'm not so sure that this is fixable in an immediate sense. What Piotr Nowak brought to the Fire was not only his tremendous individual soccer skills but his leadership and organization of the team as the captain. I just don't see that same type of intangible quality from Armas. Yes, last Saturday excepted Chris is the best d-mid in the league. But he's just not filling Nowak's "midfield general" role. Maybe Jesse Marsch would be better suited as captain and midfield organizer, I don't know. I do know that our midfield was constantly out of shape and this allowed the Revs to win most of the loose balls, pick off our passes and move the ball right through our midfield with contemptuous ease. I rarely saw that in a midfield when Nowak was in charge. The fact remains that changes need to be made there. Personally, I don't know who should sit but we have to find a way to get our younger players into the lineup. Right now, I'm leaning towards benching Whitfield or Perez in favor of Ralph just to see if he gets along with the rest of the midfield better. If that doesn't work, maybe we should bench Williams for either Ralph or Mapp. If all else fails, we should just start Pause in place of Faria and live with ugly catenaccio until we can sign some new players.
Joe, I think you've correctly identified the problem, but the solution your suggesting has already been tried (last year when Peter was injured) and I think the results were far from successful. I don't think we have the personnel on the roster to control the midfield. I think we, well Peter and Piotr, really need to go and find someone from Europe who can do the job.
Well, we all know that Jesse ain't no Nowak. Then again, it is difficult to judge the job he did last year due to all the other roster chaos and shenanigans going on. And this brings up the question of "If not Marsch, then who?". For my money, Jesse did a decent job last year under extremely difficult circumstances. Sure, he's not my first choice (which would be for Nowak to come out of retirement for one last year until we can find a true replacement) but who else do we have realistically?
Totally agree with you on this. faria---Bradley for faria --we got robbed Beasley--despite the heresy I think he could be the most overrated player in the mLs.Fun to watch but despite his great dribbing and speed very rarely does anything come of it.Too few assists and goals from his efforts. Jaqua --possible wasted draft pick Williams--appears we are finding out why he has been on 5 mls teams at age 25. Too many invisible players on offense who do not contribute. Do we ever play well in NE? Has Twellman ever failed to score against us?
Not that most people didn't already know the result, because they probably did, but "Why the wheels came off against New England [R]" kind of gives away the result even with the R.
Amen, brother! Can I get a witness? Last year. The USMNT doubleheader. Second best Fire away game I've ever been to, behind only the 0-7 thrashing we admninistered to KC.
Why are people so hard on Faria? This was his first full 90 with Razov, and I seem to recall him having at least a few decent chances including forcing one big save from The Yeti. That's a heck of a lot more than you can say for almost anyone else out there. We played ****************** as a team Saturday. I hardly think you can heap any more than 1/11 of the blame on Rodrigo.
It's more the cumulative lack of quality he's shown during the first five games this year than anything else, not just this past game where (as you correctly pointed out) almost everyone was crap. He's just not consistently dangerous. A forward should be able to create more chances than Faria does. True, he has been hampered by our defensive style of play this year and subsequent lack of attacking support and I feel sorry for the guy with his dad's situation. But this far into the season I haven't seen anything from Faria's general play that even remotely impresses me. Last year with all the injuries and roster chaos, Razov worked under even worse circumstances and still found ways to score. Faria hasn't. I think it's time to look at other options. If they don't pan out we can always go back to Rodrigo.
Five games into a rookie season, with the Fire's all-time leading scorer and a Rookie of the Year ahead of him on the depth chart, and you want to give up on him? Unbelievable. On the one hand, I should be used to these sorts of histrionic fits from the online fan contingent, but I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall here. We used the preseason to find out who would make the team, not to see how they would play together. And there was massive uncertainty about how the offense would work. Neither of our top two forwards are fully game fit yet. Through five games, we're still managing to play .500 ball, and we haven't figured it out the goal-scoring thing just yet. Big effing deal, there's still 25 games to go, and the slow scheduling start makes our current spot in the table look much worse than it is. Panic if you want, but I think you're all nuts. Every last one of you. Later, COZ
Flattery will get us nowhere So you're OK with 0-0 draws for the rest of the season if we're lucky? Really?? Come on, Coz, we're playing .500 ball only because: 1) We've played ugly catenaccio. 2) KC gifted us a win by sitting back on a two goal lead and we got lucky with some great individual long-range shooting. 3) We played SJ when they had some of their attacking players on the bench through injury. I'm sorry, but we can't count on these breaks all season long to bail us out. At some point, the Fire are going to have to play well as a team and demonstrate some purposeful, effective team attacking play and score some goals. Our results flatter us. Anyone who thinks we're doing just peachy right now and adopts a "What, me worry?" attitude needs professional help. All is not lost and the sky is not falling. Still, some changes clearly need to be made. After all, this is a rebuilding and experimentation year so why not find out which combos work best for us? Oh, and games in hand are only good if you can win them, as last Saturday proved. That said, you're right that we can't judge Jacqua on half a game.
I wont jump into the debate about how much the team completely sucks, how bad all the players on the team are, how much more the fans know then our pitifully useless coach. I will leave that to the panic stricken. The real questions aren't so much what we are missing but how do we make the most of what we have. A true offensive minded attacking midfielder would be great but we don't have one and there doesn't seem to be a good canidate out there so we need to work around that for now. We have bucketloads of talent on our team. They just need to find out how best to work together. We gave up 3 goals. Does it mean our defense suddenly sucks? No. Of course not. We have one of the best defenses in the league. We played a bad game all around and it showed. I think I will agree with Coz that Faria will be more successful right now coming off the bench as a change of pace back. Maybe we do play with one true forward, Razov and we back him up with as much service as we can. A 3-6-1 or a 3-2-4-1 if you want to look at it like that may very well be the way to go. One thing I think needs to happen right away is to get Justin Mapp on the field. Almost everything I've seen from him, at least offensively, has been positive. I really have focused on whether he has played well defensively or not, but frankly I don't really care. I'd like to see Damani have a chance as well. Maybe you don't make all the changes at once but just for fun I wouldn't mind seeing a lineup where Pause and Armas are playing their defensive mid jobs with Armas pulling up a little more to support the attack when the opportunity presents itself. Put Justin Mapp out on the left wing and Damani Ralph on the right. Let Williams and Beasely continue to do their roaming jobs in the middle and toward the front all supporting service to Razov. I know this will all get torn apart and everybody will say how right they are and how wrong I am but that's my opinion. I'm just as nuts as everybody else.
Re: Flattery will get us nowhere You're putting words in my mouth. I fully expected a bunch of 0-0 draws until we found the keys to the car, but have never said that I think it would last all season, nor that it would be a good thing. Just that it would likely be enough to keep us in the race for the playoffs. 1) Maybe it's just me, but I consider there to be a difference between real catenaccio and an effective defend-and-counter game. That said, if we're playing your much ballyhooed "anti-soccer," why are we averaging more shots per game than every team in the East except for New England, even with the typically trigger-happy Razov missing the first three? 2) We disagree on what changed the KC game. They didn't sit back as much as we attacked, and it was the much-pilloried Perez and Whitfield who changed that game. They also contributed to the better second half against San Jose. Why didn't that work against New England? Don't know, could be Kamler and Ralston, backed up by Franchino and Heaps, were better at defending the flanks. 3) Everyone gets to play SJ without DeRosario. That's not a convincing argument. Later, COZ
A couple of additional comments. First, I started this thread because I thought it would be useful to make the distinction between certain guys having a one-off bad game, and some more systemic problems that need to be addressed. In this game, I think our defense was uncharacteristically porous. I think we actually have a pretty good team, with some talent and some depth, so I am not a chicken little by any means. Second, let's dispense with the notion right now of "replacing" Peter Nowak. You don't replace a Peter Nowak. You don't go to Europe to find another Nowak. He's one of a kind. So, just forget it. Third, the idea that we failed in this game because of "lack of leadership" is a completely useless notion. We have five guys who have been with this club since '98, seasoned MLS veterans all, one of whom has been a first choice starter for the USMNT. They know what it means to win. In addtion, we have a guy playing left side defense who is winning league wide awards and is installing himself as a first choice starter for the USMNT. We have another youngster who is an electric and dynamic performer. No, we don't have a "leadership" problem -- we have some PLAYING problems. Fourth, and I agree with COZ here, we simply have to also purge our minds of the idea that playing with a single nominal forward is somehow bunker ball. We have put together some dynamic and incisive attacks with this set up. We can do it again. For the Fire to succeed this year, we really need to be able to take care of the ball. That doesn't mean eliminate every giveaway, because giveaways are part of the game. Nor does that mean dominating possession. What it means is holding the ball when you do have it, so you can organize your shape on the attack, and reassemble your shape on defense. Then you can take risks on the attack to create chances, because you are not yourself in a vulnerable position. That also means winning balls on the tackle, and causing the OTHER guy to have problems holding the ball. Chris Armas did not have one of his better games, but you know what? Despite a couple of bad giveaways (which led to nothing) he remains our best ball winner, and our best ball holder. He can even add to the attack, as he did in the second half when he put Razov through and forced a tough save from Brown. But he is not a field general. The other thing that we need to do, and I daresay Sarachan has to do, is accept Andy Williams for what he is, warts and all. He too is not a field general, though he can make the great shot or the great dribble. But he is a mediocre ball winner, holder of the ball, and attack orchestrator. He tries, but he is an opporunist first, not a deft thinker out there. He's a tweener..neither a forward nor a midfielder. For the Fire to succed this year, we must be first and foremost a ball winning team, with a well-organized defense, all over the field. We can create chances off of this approach, and succeed with it. But if we don't religiously follow this as a prime directive, especially against teams like New England, well, the results will be predictable.
Actually, nobody is calling for Sarachan's head. We all know he needs more time behind the wheel to learn about his players and who works well with whom. Personally, I wanted to see more attacking because we won't win games on defense alone. But, as I have said before and repeat now, with the players we have perhaps catenaccio really is our best bet for results this season. I won't be happy if that's that case but I'd rather see somewhat effective catenaccio than more 3-0 losses. That said, while I can't speak for anyone else, I'm not panicking. I'm just calling for some different combinations to be used to see what works and what doesn't because I don't think a 4-5-1, 3-6-1 or whatever you want to call it is terribly effective and we sure as hell saw the results last week. Not any more than you guys are creating straw men by claiming that everyone is "panicking" when all most of us are doing is calling for a few experiments to see what works and what doesn't. Well we better hope DCU never gels and that the Rapids can't replace Grimandi with anyone decent. If we continue to er... "play defensely" (I'll not use the "c"-word since it seems to upset you greatly despite being accurate) we can expect lots of draws and a few wins and a few losses. Will that be enough for us to sneak into the play-offs? I don't know and I'd rather not risk it. And if trying to win rather than not lose doesn't work, I'd rather we went down swinging than cowering in our own half of the field. Yeah and how many goals did those shots produce? Maybe our defensive posture is limiting us to mostly (with exceptions) crappy low-percentage shots. Most NBA teams will let you take 3-point shots all you want as long as you don't drive into the paint. Why is that, I wonder? Technically, the key tactical innovation of the "catenaccio" style was the libero, the extra defender who plays behind three marking defenders and has no offensive role at all. The fact the Kubik was as often to be found pushing up the field gave the lie to the jackasses who accused Bradley's Fire of "playing catennacio". I guess the same is true of the Fire now as Boca technically does not play behind three defenders. Still, call it what you like, here is what we're playing: GK D1 D2 D3 D4 W1 D-M2 O-M3 D-M4 W2 F1 This basically means that you have five across the midfield and a lone forward up front. When attacking, two midfielders usually joined up with the lone striker, to give support. Note that for this system, you would need a very good, strong, pacy striker who loves to go for goal, not a "withdrawn" froward who prefers to play with his back to goal. Strengths --------- (1) Gives defence a cover. (2) It can effectively counter a highly creative midfield. Weaknesses ---------- (1) Your attacking midfielders usually don't arrive in time to support the striker. And we've seen this in spades this year. (2) It tires out the striker which is not what you want to do when he's self-admittedly less than 100% fit. (3) The opposing team usually has more posession of the ball. Granted, they have to be able to finsh themselves, but you yourself cannot score if you don't have the ball. (4) If it becomes a 3-6-1, it still has all the disadvantages of 4-5-1 but your defense is now much more exposed. (5) If the opposition scores first, your lack of inherent offensive capacity means you're usually screwed unless risk chaos by breaking the formation to add another forward. KC didn't "bunker" per se but they did become markedly less aggressive in the second half while the Fire out needing at least two goals. But still, the goals did not come from great team play but from fantastic individual long range efforts. These efforts are usually ineffective which is why most teams with a lead are only too happy to let you play around with the ball 25-30 yards from goal. We got lucky with "three-pointers" but we can't count on them as the bread and butter of our offense all season, can we? Or maybe Joseph has given their midfield a potent attacker. Or DMB was exhausted. Or most of the other Fire players were just flat, uninterested and did not play well. SJ was also missing Ekelund, Russell and even Levesque so they had literally no attacking players to sub in. By itself, this may not be convincing but when taken in the context of the rest of the season...
True, but you can go find yourself an effective #10 who can organize things on the fly the way Armas has been unable to do this year. Well, the midfield was a mess against NE and that's Armas's responsibility as captain and on-field leader. Chris does what he does (be apest, win balls) very, very well. But, as you yourself admit, he's not our #10 (neither, of course, is Williams), his distribution needs some real work and we seem to need someone who can organize the midfield on a consistent basis. We lost last Saturday for a lot of reasons. Our offense has been mostly (the second half of KC excepted) moribund this season for a lot of reasons. All I'm saying is that Dave probably needs to experiment until he finds what works. Even Bob Bradley went through that period in 1998, rearranging his formations, dropping players (remember Jorge Salcedo, Brian Bates and Don Gramenz in Fire uniforms?) and trying different combos before the 11 game unbeaten streak. In light of what Bradley did in '98, I really don't see why calling for a similar approach from Dave is so controvertial here.
I did say POSSIBLE wasted draft choice. I'm not giving up on him but no goals in pre season or regular and just one against amateurs at UIC does not inspire confidence that we made the right choice. I wanted the guy gonzalez that la got later or even magee who has scored two goals for Bradley.
I honestly think the team should basically just ignore this game. Play the same lineup next week and adjust from there.
Isn't CJ out? Anyhow, he are my musings to add: 1. it is useless to have Williams track back to our own 18 to start the offense. He isn't good at working from that position in the field and he becomes an instant traffic cone in our end of the field if the ball is turned over. It looked to me that he was intentionally laying back to give DMB space and freedom to be A-mid. An interesting experiment, but DMB was wiped out by half-time due to his ridiculous call-up to U-23s, so I don't fault him for not shining. Williams, though, needs to sit if DMB is going to take his natural A-mid position. I don't think Williams will contribute in any other role. 2. Perez and Boca cannot both be playing Left mid. Did we think that we could defend without a left back? This is a sarcastic way of saying that those two didn't play too well together out there. 3. Faria needs to come up with a reason for being ... and fast. So far this year, he has given the word "nondescript" new meaning. I would give Ralph a start both on his own merits and to let Faria know that he doesn't own the job.
Some additional comments. First, and again, the notion that we "lacked leadership" is a red herring. It's just not very helpful, and has zero explanatory power. Chris Armas can't get Andy Williams to make a tackle -- Andy Williams has got to get Andy Williams to do that. Meanwhile, it's tough to organize a midfield when your flank players are getting turned, your one A-mid can't win a ball, and the other is exhausted from playing 4 games in under two weeks in 4 geographically dispersed venues. Second, this league is pretty much done with the idea of going to Europe and getting a #10. And rightly so. Remember the last #10 the league was so hot to get? Peter Nowak will be understood as a wonderful historical anomaly. We won't see his like again. Third, Dave should continue to experiment with personnel mixes and deployment. I thought Mapp and Ralph looked awfully good, and they could certainly use some more playing time. Aside from the 1st half in KC, I thought Logan Pause has been very effective. But I do think that if you put Andy Williams into the attacking mid position against a quality team, without some cover for him, you risk a certain level of midfield porosity. Fourth, I agree with Mono that Perez and Boca lacked understanding. It was a real problem for us that needs to be addressed. I also agree that Faria has shortcomings. I don't think they are deadly when he is deployed properly, but he is simply not active enough off the ball and intelligent enough in his runs for him necessarily to be a 90 minute forward in this league. Finally, I hope the coaches told the players to simply forget about this game, and I hope that they did zero videotape review with them. But the coaches need to take heed of the issues that this game raises, and consider alternatives to minimize the deficiences here that were glaring, at least to this observer.
This is something I agree with. Let's get Pause, Mapp and Ralph back into the mix and see what happens. And if Pause and Armas are both on the field at the same time, I think that allows Williams to play a bit more to his strength and covers his weaknesses. Perhaps Mapp will develop better chemistry with Boca then Perez is. Can only try and see.
For me, it's the lack of finishing that I have seen again and again and again and again. Nearly every game I went to last season he was at, and every game he would have these incredible breakaways, fuelled by Mathis or Diallo, who would spring him on the side. Thirty yards later he shoots wide or over the bar. Now I'm an Ante fan, so I understand about taking every shot and hitting 25%, but Faria has the speed to get down the field like mad but lacks the skills to put it into the box. I wouldn't mind the occasional post hit like Ante seems to have, but Faria would miss the entire goal from inside the 10 yard range. Not hit the goalie, not hit the post, but MISS THE ENTIRE GOAL. He needs to simply practice his shooting at goal with Henry Ring for a few days a week and improve a basic skill, and until I see any improvement in this area I will continue to have a lack of faith in him.
Well, we want Dave to experiment, and it looks like he'll have to. I had forgotten that the USMNT plays on Monday, so we may be without Boca, DMB and Armas. The Jamaican National Team has a game, so we'll be without Williams. And CJ has the red card suspension. So, the lineup is going to be interesting, to say the least. Later, COZ
Bruce won't be calling up any Fire players so all we'll be missing is Williams and CJ. Granted, missing CJ will cause problems in our lineup but I suspect Dave would have started Pause in for either Williams or Faria in any case. So, what is our likely lineup on Sunday? Here's mine: Thornton Whitfield, Curtin, Boca, Perez Mapp, Gray, Armas, Pause, DMB Razov If Dave feels we can beat the Rapids outright, he might start Faria in place of Gray. Personally, with two d-mids already, I'd start Ralph up top with Razov in place of Faria or Gray but after last week's debacle, I think Dave will be back to a more defensive posture and bring in Capano as a sub for Mapp or for DMB if DaMarcus looks tired.