FunnyOriginally Posted by SenorDingDong
… but not funny
!
Funny
So we're in 13th place after 1/3 of the schedule played.
Pretty much exactly the same as last season with a roster of all kids and not much else.
A rather astute take from Doyle on mlssoccer.com:
Toronto are second in total touches, but are just 24th in non-penalty xG and 25th in touches in the opponent’s box.
They get a lot of the ball, but they don’t really seem to know what to do with it. Given the names on the roster, that’s very strange.
Yes and no. Those names that know what to do with the ball haven’t played together much. I’d be surprised come summer, let’s say, if they aren’t quite a bit more fluid and knowledgeable about other.
I think he’s missing something there (for example, lack of touches in the box have accrued over most of the season without a proper striker.)
Actually, this was more accurate about the game itself:
“If a Bruce Arena team gets a gift like that 20 minutes into a road game, you know exactly what the next 70 minutes are like: Low block, absorb, and selectively send runners forward (which is how they got their second goal, which came in the 62nd minute). The reality of the game state dictated how this one would play out more than any tactical adjustments from either Arena or his counterpart in the other dugout, Bob Bradley.”
I cannot agree with this. These guys have been training together for nearly a year and have two dozen games in that time when everyone has been healthy.
Multiple other managers in this league have injury issues and yet have managed to produce coherent, productive offenses by now.
If we look at the 2nd half last night, games played this season: Insigne, his second full game; Dio, arrived this season, one full game; Sapong, arrived last week, two full games, Servania, arrived into the season well after training camp; Coello, only a few career starts; Kobe, 2nd career start; O’Neil, 45 mins only this season before being injured and giving way to Maibike who arrived last week, Rosted, new this season; Johnson, new this season.
I think there is a legit case here.
Ah, maybe somewhat. We're still talking two full months of training together now and they look barely coherent. Montreal in its last two games has had a more cohesive performance.
If they were just a little off in timing, I'd buy that it's all rustiness. But they are often passing at an above 80% rate; they just have no idea what to do with the ball in the offensive end.
They look absolutely clueless going forward. There doesn't look to be anything drilled into them, everything looks completely improvised. So much of our attack goes up the right side as well, while our best player is on the left. Need to swing the ball out to the other side more often. I might help with Bradley back, but it looks just awful right now. Am I crazy, or did Insigne play DM for about a 5 minute spell in the second half Saturday? Sometimes doesn't even seem like they know the position they're playing. Maybe it's Total Football now?
St Louis is an expansion team this year and are top of the west
TBF, didn’t STLCITY get a jump start/warm up by being/playing together in MLS NEXT PRO for a season at least before graduating to/launching in MLS?
They played together last year as St Louis SC 2, including both DPs.
To be fair it's going to be difficult for any coach to win with this team without quality strikers. This league is all about having quality strikers, and we opted for quality wingers instead and then went through a whole series of subpar strikers. This team will struggle all year, regardless of coach. Might as well keep Bradley around for the year. But Manning definitely needs to go.
Of note, Priso, McNaughton and Shaffleburgh all started for their teams in wins the other day. Meanwhile, clueless Bradley who dumped them has won 2 games in all of 9 months...and we are in 23rd place in ppg right now. On the highest payroll in the league. Bradley doing less with more yet again 45 games into this disaster of his project.
Get rid of him and Manning. Right now. Enough of this. Stop the rot and lets salvage the season. And win.
i would agree- but BB is in charge of player acquisitions - no striker is on him- TFC had JJ this season too.
Playing together is an excuse that has worn itself out with our team. Every team has injuries and if we're waiting until we don't then the excuse will live forever because our physio staff is shit. In 2017 we had multiple injuries and call ups and our subs came in and played good for a stretch. I remember we had a team of nobodies fight hard in Colorado some years back who never played at all much less together. That's the kind of stuff MB complained about in 2015 after we went down meekly to Montreal in the playoff as excuses and needing "more men" on the field to get the job done. If we need more matches to get the team to manage chances on goal or touches in the box then all that says is that our training is garbage. Clearly nobody is prepared and by saying they need more time game together is saying exactly that. Even Bob mentioning the Rosted error and how Bruce would adapt is an excuse. Mistakes happen and they happen enough in MLS. One error shouldn't dictate a match unless you really have no plan B and low blocks happen. That's something you need to figure out how to deal with or else be trash and be sacked.
As for the touches in the box, we should have had more with any of our 9's in there. The quality of that striker doesn't effect the amount of or ability to make chances happen by moving the ball quickly and getting balls in the box. Even Dwyer during our Curtis debacle was getting touches in the box and he was garbage. The quality of that 9 will obviously effect the outcome because a crappy one will blow their chances and ruin great opportunities but presently we have about 2 or 3 legit goal scoring chances on a good day and pretty much none on a bad one.
All this is down to training, tactics, and confidence. I think we're pretty bad on all three of these.
Tell that to Nashville. They've never had one.
Red Bulls & Fire dumped their managers today so it seems they decided that this was enough time to see some results and they're the two teams right behind us in the basement of the east. And with way worse and far cheaper rosters I would add.
Needs to be a good alternative lined up and ready to jump in if this is the move. I don't want to see a Frank Lampard situation here.
Or in the MLS context - Frank Klopas.
Last edited by Canary10; 05-08-2023 at 09:37 AM.
I keep thinking about this assertion. I will concede, BM, as TFC President, naturally has input and influence. I would even presume, that for non-footballing reasons, that is, marketing, he may even over-ride or demand a certain consideration for selection. I also suspect, as some others may, that at times BM transaction fingerprints are also on scene. Nevertheless, IMHO, this entire squad, what is being finally fielded match day, is essentially from BB’s hand/of his making; in almost entirety. That is, with the possible sole exception of Insigne- timing- and of who’s acquisition I would still gladly debate and believe BB was well aware of, encouraged by and had a final say in.
Last edited by Mr. Inbetween; 05-08-2023 at 09:37 AM.
A good GM/President would have been looking at alternatives a few weeks ago but we have Manning so....
And there aren't a lot of good ones around and when good jobs start becoming available (as in not these two) then the field will shrink and we will have our Klopas but his name will be Gregg.
They said before during one of their press conferences that Bob is the guy doing player acquisitions and that Manning is involved at the DP level only. I figure that's the case since he would like to be the guy flying to Italy for fancy dinners and he probably doesn't have time to scour weird leagues for players. He would just roll out his USMNT rolodex and fire away.
This my fear.
Yes, looks like Vanney may be available shortly.
Sadly since this would be the easiest and laziest move it's very possible. It could also mean Bob moves upstairs and Vanney manages. Vanney's fastly rising career trajectory is gone now. Nobody is handing him the keys to anything now.
*And the marketing aspect would probably appeal to Manning. You could do a big press conference for this and start showing 2017 footage again.
You have nailed it. I didn’t think of this, but it would tick all the boxes.
This is what they will do in the summer.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Yeh, I'd hold fire on this until after November for a good reason
Curtin has still not signed a contract extension with Philly - his ends after 2023.
Until he does, every change during this season is going to be interim.
I would say yes but Curtain has been proven to be a system guy that has a great academy to feed the first team and a team full of good but not great players who he can get to play as a team.
He hasn't worked with a lot of higher priced, higher ego'ed players like he would have to deal with here. For sure he is better than Bob. No question there but I am not sure we would be the best option. Maybe if he came in last year instead of Bob when we tore it all down so he could do his thing form the ground up but now we're stuck in "win now" mode for a few more years.
two teams behind TFC seem more ambitious then TFC sitting at 12 points with teams ahead and a game on hand.
Exactly.
Again, Jim Curtin and Jesse Marsch are both Bob disciples, they literally learned how to coach from the guy. They both have extremely dedicated, inflexible systems based largely on pressing. It took Curtin years to turn Philly into a consistent winner because it took that long to get him exactly the roster AND feeder system dedicated to his form of high press.
And I hate to be a stickler for facts, but he's never won anything other than the eastern division. Like Bob since Chicago in '96, he's gotten close several times, but he never wins the big game.
At Leeds, Marsch was the opposite. He coudl ONLY win the big game, because only confident self-possessed teams refused to change their approach, and were unhinged by a high gegenpress all the time. Everyone else low blocked it out of existence.
In fact, the predilection of almost every team to press high in this league is why we're looking at a record number of scoreless ties this year so far. None of them know how to break down a low block o nce they have the ball. Winning it in the offensive end is pretty useless if you can't break down a defence..... witness us.
And the notion of managing a team to work with all zones of the pitch as an advantage -- by hanging back to counter, for example, or switching to unbalance a block of movement, seems lost on a lot of MLS teams.
It's why they'd still get killed by Premier League and Championship teams; I watch A LOT of them now on Fubo, and I'm telling you, the skill and athleticism levels are no longer that disparate.
What is really missing here is raw basics, which seem to be taught terribly in North America (disciplined reproduction of basic technique in short passing, trapping and movement) and tactical discipline. Without the latter, how are players supposed to develop the skill to read and breakdown defenses and opportunities in an open system like Bob's?
Seba was basically Brazilian in his approach to football, and small/fast enough for it to defeat double-teams. He was an anomaly. Insigne and Bernardeschi are not built for MLS tactics, which are typically a blend o fSouth American style 'isolate and support', tendency-based management and German high-pressing, high-intensity defense.
That's what Bob, Jesse et al all teach (and now Marsch's former assistant in St. Louis): no movement rigidity, but instead an understanding of how to take advantage of "high reward" situations, in essence a blend of total football and gegenpress.
And it's brutal. It only works if the team is technically proficient and quicker than their opponents, because it's just too reliant on individual choice and error-free execution. As soon as teams realize giving up control of the ball to a press stifles them, and that their opportunities are all removed by removing last-third giveaways, it becomes an easy tactic to set up against, using a switching counter attack, where the ball is immediately funneled in an outlet, ala a basketball fast break, to the most open, forward wide man on the wings.
That player then switches field again quickly to the other side, in the middle third, as the pressing team tries to adjust to defending its opposite. Boom, unlocked narrow block. As soon as Premier League managers realized how to do that to Leeds, Marsch's goose was cooked. It's also why St. Louis is now losing games.
It's also what both Atlanta and Philly did to us. Headman the fastest midfielder in space, advance the ball before we can get back, overload the defense. The way we play offensively, we don't have to press all the time. We set up all of our offensive movement as if we're going to camp in their end. So they just low block us. There's very little deliberate danger caused by transitional play. So the same tactic that defeats gegenpress defeats Bob ball.
Even worse, when teams PRESS US, we can't break it. We're too slow to find the open man in transition, and too slow to be supporting that man once he's converged on by defenders.
Do we really want go through this all again for another five years so Jim Curtin can build a team that fits a singular tactical approach? Hell no.
The reason people asking for someone like Tata (aside from one of the winningest records in the history of world football) is that he is both tactically flexible and loved by his players.
Neither of those descriptions seems to match Bradley, or Curtin, or Marsch. They can motivate, but that's not the same thing. At Leeds, the players talked after Marsch left about loving his passion but him wanting them to do more than they could learn and execute. It sounded quite familiar.
What we really need is either a dead cert like Tata or the next Wilfried Nancy.
Last edited by jloome; 05-08-2023 at 11:34 AM.
Since we're stuck with only ever being able to hire American or USMNT managers (that's the Manning rules) we probably would have this experienced list to choose from in summer:
- Berhalter
- Marsch
- Porter
- Vanney
- Vermes
Ooooof
I'd consider Hendrickson - Fire wasn't his fault.
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