My bigger issue is Solteldo doesn’t make runs himself unless it’s straight up and down the touch line. He wants to get the ball “in his office” on the left flank.Originally Posted by MightyDM
We need players who want to be closer to goal and are a threat to score. Outside of our strikers, it seems the second most likely player to get on the ball in the box is Richie Laryea. Not good.
The difference is the manager and tactics. That's it.
Armas was lost and had no intelligible plan so that was bound to fail from the moment he signed and Perez is more like an academy instructor who is relying on playing it safe as that's our best chance to get points.
One of the MLS Rumors guys on Twitter had it right regarding Atlanta's resurgence; good MLS managers don't needs fancy tactics and ideas to succeed and more of that type fail than succeed. They need a guy who can motivate and come up with a system that gets the most out of what he has in the squad. Fraser in Colorado is a good example. That's not a flashy squad and Fraser isn't re-inventing the wheel with tactics but he is maximizing what he has at his disposal. What we're seeing this season compared to last is two managers unable to maximize what they have in the squad and the squad is technically better than last season. Most players are the same as you said and Soteldo is at least comparable to Piatti and Lawrence is an upgrade on Auro. Injuries at forward were an issue Vanney had as well as Jozy never played and Akinola was often out as well. Every bit of player regression is on the manager and also the shitty fitness department.
That's not the only thing at all.
All of these already old players are a year older; when Pozuelo went down last season under Vanney we collapsed completely, went from first in the league to squeaking the odd win, and then lost in unceremonious style to Nashville in the playoffs.
We were shit for a good portion of last season, too. We were organized shit who were in every game, but we were still shit.
Yeah, the manager makes a big difference, I don't doubt it. But no one could win consistently with this dull turd of a lineup.
We have no defense. We're on pace for the worst GAA in league history and we're routinely starting a player we cut as not good enough six months ago.
As soon as we started the season without at least one, likely two, new center backs, the season was effectively over.
This is largely on the front office. Yeah, they also picked the wrong guy in Armas, but they could've hired Pineda and we'd still be losing most if not all of these games.
Comparing us to Atlanta is pointless; Atlanta's three wins all came since Josef Martinez' return and they are stronger than us in multiple positions. And they still sucked almost as badly as we do, they just have a consistent scorer, which is why they're eking out one-goal wins.
Seriously: ask yourself how much "authority" Pineda stamped on that game. We were terrible, they were equally fucking terrible. They scored on a deflected goal from our center half who doesn't know how to close a man down in the box.
No, this is largely a roster issue, first and foremost. Armas being an idiot is too easy an out for Manning and Curtis who have ridden 2017 into the dirt and the club's prospects with it.
Last edited by jloome; 08-19-2021 at 09:59 AM.
i agree there were signs last season and the year before,we barely made the playoffs got lucky with a home game and had a 3 game run with no strikers.had to freshen up the squad this season but not with lazy curtis
Pineda hasn't started yet. He starts today. Valentino has been running Atlanta as the interim. The point was that Valentino got more from the squad than Heinze with his 'ways' and supposed advanced tactics.
As for the Martinez factor, he's been back 6 matches now and he's scord 3 goals but they didn't win all of the 3 matches he scored in so it's not like he single handedly turned the squad around.
AKA the Jozy factor
aka the jozy factor for 3 yrs now,so now its mullins,dywer,acarha perruzza 0 goals combined this season,playoffs here we come.
jus play perruzza the rest of the season,see what you got
Why not both? (Squad and coach.)
Our squad wasn't good enough last year either. Multiple guys were overplayed in a difficult environment, and gradually broke down.
Our striker situation was bad last year. Our CB situation was bad. We had a more competent manager. But we also lucked into a bunch of ties and 1-goal wins last year, some of which were undeserved. I would say we played better last night than some of the games last year.
This year: our CBs are older and even worse, especially Gonzalez. Mavinga has always missed some games per season, but is missing more this season, and didn't look too great in some of the games before. He's not turning into a line leader to take over from Gonzalez. Ciman was a somewhat OK fill-in at times last year; he's gone and wasn't replaced. (Gonzalez should have slipped into Ciman's role this year; and we should have gotten a new top defender. But Gonzalez is probably too expensive for a backup role like that.)
Our striker situation is the same or worse this year. Akinola in & quickly out again. Jozy barely here; now likely gone for the season. Achara finally back; fingers crossed but he can't do it alone. Mullins isn't actually Mullinho. Dwyer was probably our most useless signing this year, when you see some of the other healthy & productive backup strikers on decent wages around MLS.
Soteldo is probably an upgrade on Piatti, also considering Piatti's age and durability. But they haven't figure out how to play together yet. Watch some of Soteldo's games in Brazil: there should be a way to fit him in more productively. Plus Pozuelo has really dropped off compared to last year. How much of that is due to nagging injuries?
Armas was far worse. Perez better than Armas but beyond that I'm not sure.
I find the average level of effort and motivation from the players to be much worse this year. Really bad towards the end of Armas' time; but not really good now either. Many of the other teams we played this year just run harder and try harder. We didn't get much of a bounce from returning to Toronto either. My guess: motivation got really bad under Armas; got a bit better when Perez took over; but then got worse again when nobody was signed in the summer window and it became clear that this year is a write-off. And perhaps Perez isn't a great motivator; or at least not good enough to overcome all the negatives.
Last edited by Auzzy; 08-19-2021 at 11:16 AM.
yes could see this a mile away,curtis and manning seem to have blinders on,btw where are the 2 AMIGOS,seem to be in hiding
BTW forget some of what I wrote; Mavinga had a very good reason to be missing last night. Fingers crossed his daughter continues to get better, and Chris will be back when he's ready for it.
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/Chris_Mavinga/status/1428379275594551296
Really should jettison all the centre forwards except Akinola and rebuild. Same for the central defenders except keep Mavinga to transition to the "3rd" CB eventually.
Middling points to the real issue at hand, which is that our roster is shit.
When you compare it with what's required to compete with Seattle, probably the most rounded roster in the league? Their second team would consistently beat us.
Not to dissuade anyone from thinking we have a glorious future, but even our better players are playing in a league that has improved every year in talent since 2017.
On a competing team in this league, none of these players would be in the first team:
Shaffelburg
Auro
Laryea (one good season does not make a player, his decisions are shit)
Akinola
Altidore
Bradley
Delgado (he is not the efficient two-way shuttler he once was, he has a limited value as a starter)
Gonzalez
Mavinga
Zavaleta
Yes, Richie has the skillset but so far he's proving he doesn't have the patience, decision making or defensive drive to be a top player. And we should, at this point of the league's development and budgeting, be able to do better at right wing or wingback (and frankly he's always shown better when forced to go back and have defensive responsibilities. Too often up front he's too far ahead of the play. Ditto with Soteldo. What's the point of true wingers rather than outside forwards if we have no targets?!?)
Mavinga's impatience and the odd brain fart are now amplified by age and, one assumes, general disgust. Omar is too mistake prone, Zavaleta is just entirely out of his depth.
Akinola has a lot of Jozy-like potential but he's still pretty raw. There's not a lot of movement off the ball to try and help his team by moving the defensive shape and he's not explosive enough speed wise to routinely just run the back shoulder. Strikers in this league should be consistent threats every time they touch the ball.
Before anyone points out that it's dreaming to have competitive players in every position, I'd say roster mismanagement is a bigger cause. Seattle is spending well less money than us. Portland, KC, LAFC, NYFC, New England all have more depth than we do and players dangerous or at least effective at all their primary positions.
Right now, we should be rebuilding around Soteldo, Pozuelo, Osorio, Priso, possibly Lawrence (although frankly my jury is still out there. He was a stay-at-home fullback at NYRB and even deputized centrally several times, so why we have him overlapping with El Jefe is a puzzler. He doesn't seem good at it.)
The rest should be fighting for a job, and likely one on the bench at that.
Also, Having Pozuelo and Soteldo makes using Poz centrally repeatedly problematic. We don't have a strike pair up front, so either our wingers have to be inside forwards and contribute goals -- at which point he and Soteldo tie each other up -- or they have to stay wide and hope Poz picks up junk.
This is why he ended up on the wing at Genk. Same problem. As soon as we brought in a second playmaker instead of a scorer, we shifted his burden back to being about goals.
If we play 442, we need two actual strikers, threats in the air and on the ground. If we have two strikers, and don't play him on the wing, we now have five attacking players going forward and only five going back.
In this league, using a lone anchor and no connecting players gets you torn apart.
So we either use him as a second striker -- at which he is unconvincing, or we use him where his skill set would be most balanced and useful, which is wide right.
Then we can play either a 4-3-3- or a 4-4-2 and still be balanced.
But either way, we need:
-- Two dangerous strikers, likely one DP and one TAM
-- a center back pairing that is competitive and tough to break down
-- to move one of either Richie (more upside offensively) or Auro (more defensively) for a more consistent starting right back
-- to move one of either Michael (unlikely) or Mark Delgado and take advantage while there's still some value to be had, for a more consistent and less error-prone holder to compete with Priso.
-- A starting goalkeeper, as Q isn't getting younger (but is still a better option than Bono, which is saying something).
(I'm sure people will tell me how great Richie is and how wrong I am, but the stats this year say otherwise. He's near the top of the league in being fouled but has created nothing offensively and is a defensive liability. He's just not consistent. If someone offered us north of a million for him, I'd pounce on that shit.)
I also get repeated strains of arrogance or petulance about calls, subs and challenges from Zavaleta, Altidore, Laryea, and Delgado. Players have to be confident, yes, but there's confidence and there's a complete absence of awareness of contributing to the problem. All four repeatedly, particularly away from primary tasks such as when pressing or defending high, slough off their responsibilities or make lazy decisions. Sometimes, Omar's in that camp as well, such as when he's beaten for pace and instead of trying to body a player wide just shoves him over.
Fuck it, gloves off. Tell the players they're playing for their jobs and that if they think they'll get a great next contract after a year of sitting on a bench they're kidding themselves.
Buck has to stop somewhere.
Last edited by jloome; 08-19-2021 at 11:41 AM.
I bet Fraser would take most of these players on his roster in Colorado barring them making too much money and they're make up games away from being 1st in the west. They would all probably perform better there.
Football is a strange game. All it takes is a few laggards to cause a whole team to look worse that what it is. I don’t think we have to absolutely burn it down but I do think we absolutely have to address the following:
- Strikers x2 (1 DP)
- CB x2
- a keeper who is the starter or can grow into the starting role in the next 12-24 months
- making sure the midfield balance is right. To be honest, I see a very limited role for Bradley here but maybe better CB’s make him more useful.
You seem to think Colorado has the same shit lineup it had before he replaced Hudson. Show me who they'd displace, because it's not a weak team by any stretch. He's not achieving miracles, he's just built a solid MLS lineup very quickly.
The reality is that he'd take some of them, but he wouldn't start any of them, not with any regularity.
No one among Delgado, Bradley or Priso would dislodge MA Kaye. Osorio wouldn't displace Cole Bassett, for argument's sake. Laryea wouldn't displace Rosenberry for defensive reasons and he wouldn't have displaced Sam Vines, had he not just been sold to Antwerp.
Akinola would not displace Rubio or Shinyashiki, both of whom can drift wide, and he wouldn't replace Barrios, who has five goals already this season.
Colorado is a much more balanced, complete team than we are.
Last edited by jloome; 08-19-2021 at 02:35 PM.
Barrios on Colorado is the ex Dallas player. He's 30.
https://ca.soccerway.com/players/mic...puerta/186485/
Osorio is way better then Cole Basset
&
I maintain that any understanding of our current roster is inherently opaque because of the transition we are in towards 2022.
Priso out for the season, for example, when he showed in that one game that he IS the future of our DM position. (his recovery time was not quite Davies like but man..he was quick to get back)
Over the last two seasons, Bassett has more team of the week appearances, more goals and the same transfer value even though he's only 20.
Jonathan Osorio is not WAY better than Cole Bassett. It's arguable that he's better at all. And Osorio wasn't on the original list, so it's not really germane to whether Fraser would take him.
My bad. Either way, he has five goals in thirteen appearances, and it seems highly unlikely he'd lose his spot to an inconsistent young player with considerable holes in his game. In fact, at 30, it seems even less likely.
Again, Colorado's roster is not weaker than ours. Their standing right now is precisely because Fraser has rebuilt the team, not turned a shithouse into a salon.
If they win the west with that line up and the 23rd highest payroll then that's shithouse to salon for me. You do remember them under Mastroeni right?
They won't win the west, barring Seattle fucking the dog.
Would it be overachieving if they did? Yeah, of course.
Are they a stronger lineup than our first team? Without a doubt. We just have too many weaknesses. They have guys competing for team-of-the-week spots regularly, but even their marginal players are at least dependably consistent at the MLS level.
We have players people are convinced should be starting who simply shouldn't be. The league has gotten a lot stronger over the last decade.
Delgado two years ago, even? Sure, still a starter. Delgado from last year and this? Too inconsistent.
Richie's skill set wasn't unknown in Orlando. He was there for three seasons and is 26. He always had the ability to dance around defenders. He played more than 20 games for Orlando as a winger and recorded one assist. He made bad decisions then. He makes bad decisions now. The fact that for one year he played as if he couldn't miss the net and dropped crosses on dimes doesn't mean he's the second coming of Wondolowski, who rotted on a bench in Houston for two years.
Maybe he sorts that shit out, becomes consistent again. But I'm not holding my breath. I bought the hype after last year, too, but he and Soteldo are both turning into tricky wingers who just bring the offensive movement to a grinding halt. Maybe it's just the harsh state of the team dragging him down, but he needs to show it with some goals and assists. He's our leading shooter this year, and yet Osorio, who's been away or on the bench for half the season, is leading us in scoring.
I dunno... if the question is whether Laryea, Delgado should be locks to start, I say no. They should be fighting for it against a stronger roster. We have very few lock starters, at this point.
If he pans out, he’s getting sold fairly quickly. Haven’t watching him play much but for perspective Osorio and company pretty well bossed a midfield of Busio, Acosta, and Lletget in the gold cup. You might look at a few of those guys and suggest nobody makes that swap and that might be true based on potential / transfer value, but Osorio’s impact on the game is right there, if not better. His insertion in the game in the 20th minute after an injury was the major turning point.
The point isn't that I prefer Bassett, it's that at 20, he would at the very least make it a fight for anyone we have other than Pozuelo to displace him. Oso is a great player, one of our few consistent performers. But Colorado is winning because that describes most of their first team.
IIRC, he was mainly used in Orlando as an AM or right sided mid in midfield 4-3-3. He was not used as a true wide player or fullback with any frequency.
Have to say of everything you wrote I disagree with this the most.
And maybe this is the point rather than their players individually are better than ours. It only takes a Zavaleta or two in order to deter the work of an entire team.
I don’t think they are so great. But they are more well rounded than we are.
I largely agree with this. Though I think Mavinga this season has been making the case that he should also be let go.
Both keepers and all the wingers except for Soteldo and the young guns should be included in this exodus.
I think we actually played very well the last couple of games and deserved at least a draw in both matches. The main issue as of late has been our lack of finish.
I would wager that if Perez had been in charge since the beginning of the season with the exact same roster in place, we would currently be in a playoff spot.
We undoubtedly have deficiencies throughout the roster that need to be addressed moving forward, but on paper, there's no chance this team should be stuck at 3 wins this late in the season.
I'm still amazed at how we went from so called potential "dynasty" to last place, not even pausing mid table for a bit.
Really shocking to see how quickly the club was destroyed with poor decision making.
It's even more painful when there's no buzz, information, personality or anything exciting with the team.
Seba was wise. “Why are we still celebrating the Victory” he said at the beginning of 2018. I think in 2018 the team wore out. And has been mismanaged since - assuming that the parts post Seba were better than they are and failing to fill obvious holes.
Last edited by MightyDM; 08-20-2021 at 02:05 PM.
Also Q looked good.
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