TFC Postmatch

Gotta think White and Sweat are two that come to mind. White had definitely looked better this year to last year. Don't really have anything to compare to for Sweat, but since he hadn't managed to get MLS time with any other team, he must be playing better
Harrison is better this year as a winger than last year. Some could be from being physically bigger/in better shape, and some could be coached-up on the tactical side of playing the position.
 
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Player development is extremely difficult to parse out and assign to a coach. That's not disagreeing with you I just go back and forth on whether it's possible to attribute anything to PV as far as raising anyone's game and how much is down to natural development/opportunity/system. Curious who you feel he has developed to perform better individually or who "his" system guys are
He has gotten the whole back line comfortable with playing from the back. Including the keepers. That's no small task. We can see the improvement there over the course of his tenure. Harrison has obviously improved since hes been here. Those are all I have for player development, but that wasn't what I was talkign about. I mean the game to game chessmatch. He's installed an effective system, but he's not responsive to challenges from better strategic coaches. Our system and talent will beat most MLS teams. If another coach can stop him from Plan A, and start attacking our weaknesses (definition of basic strategy) he doesn't seem to have a plan B.

TO tried to clog the middle and play up the wings to our weaknesses. We should have been good enough to win the middle and go straight at their 3 man back line. Not sure if our guys were just not up to it last night (herrera looked as bad on the ball and in challenges as ive seen him), or the plan was to go wide (into their teeth since they had extra wide midfielders) but he got taken to school last night.
 
#AskVieira: Patrick, which one of the world class coaches you have played for taught you to take off all your offensive players and just add defenders with no shape or reason?

I thought TO did what they had to to beat us. Here is their successful passing in the 1st half:
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as expected, they didnt get anything up the middle and were forced to try to go up the wings. Unsuccessfully I might add. here is their missed passes, 1st half: (they were trying speculative long passes to no one.
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We really shut them down in the first half. Now both teams go to the locker room and make their adjustments, here is successful passing 2nd half for TO:
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How do they completely gain control of the midfield, and start abusing the right side of our defense? Not sure, but we had that game in our pocket in the first half.

Here is us in the first half:
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Looks very good to me, attacks coming from the middle and both wings, tons of possession in their half. Now lets look at the results of Patrick's tinkering: 2nd half NYC:
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No possession in their half. We allowed TO, with a full B team to do whatever they wanted. The answer was fresh attackers in the 2nd half. Tommy has not been good this year, was not good again last night, and to top it off was walking around exhausted. How the fuck do you put Lopez in for him? How do you take Maxi out, the one player who was doing anything offensively?

I agree with most of what was said here (herrera bad game, RJ bad on defense), but let me add some things I haven't heard: What was Johnson doing on goal #1? He was screened in front, but took his time moving to the side of the goal that the cross was going to. What was up with Jack? Great game 1v1, had some awesome moves with the ball, created space, then just wasted it. Every shot he took he had multiple open teammates calling for the ball.

I'm fucking pissed off at this game.
You just described jack in every game. And the issue in the second half, they took over the right side the moment RJ moved to the left and white and Lopez played on the right. rJs best defense came pressing high at midfield so they wouldn't get there. Lopez and white gave them all the space in the world
 
It seems very evident that this lineup cannot win the cup. We can beat any team and we can lose to any scrub team, that is not a formula for winning in the playoffs. It will get you through the regular season just fine.
He has a point man. Anything can happen at match day. Their goalie can lose his mind in the 91st, pick up the ball and throw it into his own net twice to give us the win. Makes sense I suppose
 
White looked better this year than last year. I guess that's true, he did have a new haircut for his spell on the bench recently. When he's listed as RB, it doesn't mean Right Back, but Rightfully benched.
 
Frustrating lost opportunity with a tough schedule. I definitely think this team is a contender - to think otherwise is to ignore MLS history.

Speaking of MLS history of teams getting hot at the right time, my bold prediction is for Montreal to be the team of the second half. Dzemali has been awesome, and they have 9 home games and 7 away games left. Plus, they are going hard for another piece of the puzzle, with the rumor they made the top offer to Wes Sneijder. If they add another piece this summer, they'll be really dangerous.
 
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i will give credit to mikey lopez for the run and ball he played to herrera. that was his only contribution in the past 2 seasons with us. thats all i have to say really.
He's been actually pretty good with space in front of him. The issue is he's poor in the midfield where he always has a man in his face or is being closed down.

I felt bad for him this game. I don't think he's a horrible RB, but something was up tactically where TOR would play the ball to his side with 2-3 players and would be coming at him, with Mikey the ONLY PLAYER ON THAT SIDE OF THE FIELD. It boggles my mind that you make defensive substitutions and clog the back line and there's still so much space for Toronto to attack a guy with 2 games of back-line experience.
 
i forgot to mention how awful white and lopez were when they came in. they got beat. every. single. time. the ball was on the right side. of the field, which led to the penalty. its not like they were going up against giovinco. i would've said, ok its giovinco its understood. but they got killed.
 
He's been actually pretty good with space in front of him. The issue is he's poor in the midfield where he always has a man in his face or is being closed down.

I felt bad for him this game. I don't think he's a horrible RB, but something was up tactically where TOR would play the ball to his side with 2-3 players and would be coming at him, with Mikey the ONLY PLAYER ON THAT SIDE OF THE FIELD. It boggles my mind that you make defensive substitutions and clog the back line and there's still so much space for Toronto to attack a guy with 2 games of back-line experience.
we tried playing a 6-3-1 with mikey/white marking each other. one was too high, the other too far central. once lopez got beat, there was a lot of space in between him and the next defender
 
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I felt bad for him this game. I don't think he's a horrible RB, but something was up tactically where TOR would play the ball to his side with 2-3 players and would be coming at him, with Mikey the ONLY PLAYER ON THAT SIDE OF THE FIELD. It boggles my mind that you make defensive substitutions and clog the back line and there's still so much space for Toronto to attack a guy with 2 games of back-line experience.

I knew PV was going to look at Lopez's performance against Minnesota and say "hmm, maybe Lopez is a right back", forgetting to realize that he looked good against basically a NASL team. And he predictably looked like crap against better players who actually attacked, rather than just playing against a beat down Minnesota.
 
My brother is a big Chicago Fire fan
This him?
soupInChi.png
 
Vieira refused to talk about Shelton, said he wants to focus on today's game.

Khiry was originally listed as being out 4-6 weeks.

It's been 13 weeks since his injury and still no update.
He was in the most recent Inside Training video, training with the team. Or at least warming up with the team
 
On the first quoted paragraph, I don't think anyone is saying that we are a lock to win the shield or MLS Cup. Just that there is no proof that this team can't. I find that silly.

I honestly thought we played very well up until we scored our second goal, then we let our foot off the gas. I think the subs were awful and didn't help, but the team kind of gave up IMO after we had the lead. We generated many great chances and limited theirs.

I thought based on the way the game was going, our subs should have been: Lewis on for TMac. Tommy was winded and we needed someone to stretch the field. We needed to keep better possession, but we also needed an outlet for someone to run onto the ball when we needed to play it long. Then I would have brought on Pirlo. Give us some better, more meaningful possession and slow things down. With Bradley and Cooper out of their midfield, he was less likely to get physicaled off the ball.

Lastly, with 7 minutes left, bring in Brillant. I know a lot of people don't like him, but I will point again that when he's brought on in the last 10', we have not conceded. He would have won that ball in the air that led to the penalty, or rather Sweat wouldn't have been there and it would have been Chanot or Callens there.

Headed to Puerto Vallarta for a wedding and hope to have enough mezcal to forget about last night's disappointment.

I vehemently dismiss the notion that it's "proven" that this team and lineup cannot win the cup. This team played well then shit the bed. Other teams have done that. Hopefully we won't do that in the playoffs.

Let's see how this team responds on Saturday.
Solid post. Agree with your assessment of the subs needed.

I would agree that the pre-sub-debacle portion of the game looked OK if we hadn't given up so many easy looks on goal for TFC. The Giovinco chance. The Morgan goal. The Spencer gaffe.

I may be misinterpreting the argument. I don't think it's possible in MLS or any playoff league to prove a team can't win. Until it's mathematically impossible. I thought that people were saying that it's proven that this team can win it all and that others were disagreeing with this. I would wade back through the threads to figure it out but a) I'm on a mobile phone and b) there's too much toxic waste to get through.

Ultimately, burden of proof locus aside, I think there's a set of people who seem to think that our ideal system (4-3-3 with Wallace and Ring Herrera Maxi) is just fine and that we just need to see more of it together consistently. And there's a set of people who think that we can't afford to be complacent. And those sets are likely fuzzy.

I'm probably in the second set. I'm a pessimistic tinkerer. I think we should keep trying to get our best 11 on the field in configurations that make sense. We should also have better contingency plans so we're not relying on Plan A plus Paddy's in-game decisions to take us all the way.

All of this points to us trying some new things when circumstances (injuries, opposition team strength, schedule, etc.) allow for it. And I want us to figure this shit out as early as we can so we're not throwing up Hail Mary's in the playoffs like last year.
 
Solid post. Agree with your assessment of the subs needed.

I would agree that the pre-sub-debacle portion of the game looked OK if we hadn't given up so many easy looks on goal for TFC. The Giovinco chance. The Morgan goal. The Spencer gaffe.

I may be misinterpreting the argument. I don't think it's possible in MLS or any playoff league to prove a team can't win. Until it's mathematically impossible. I thought that people were saying that it's proven that this team can win it all and that others were disagreeing with this. I would wade back through the threads to figure it out but a) I'm on a mobile phone and b) there's too much toxic waste to get through.

Ultimately, burden of proof locus aside, I think there's a set of people who seem to think that our ideal system (4-3-3 with Wallace and Ring Herrera Maxi) is just fine and that we just need to see more of it together consistently. And there's a set of people who think that we can't afford to be complacent. And those sets are likely fuzzy.

I'm probably in the second set. I'm a pessimistic tinkerer. I think we should keep trying to get our best 11 on the field in configurations that make sense. We should also have better contingency plans so we're not relying on Plan A plus Paddy's in-game decisions to take us all the way.

All of this points to us trying some new things when circumstances (injuries, opposition team strength, schedule, etc.) allow for it. And I want us to figure this shit out as early as we can so we're not throwing up Hail Mary's in the playoffs like last year.

RE FUCKING TWEET. THANK YOU!
 
How many "big games" in a row is that where we haven't been up for it? Playoffs, US open Cup, derbies.

Are we counting the shitty version of the red bulls as winning a big game this year? Maybe, but if we look like shit vs Chicago, then the coaching staff is learning nothing about preparing this team mentally.
 
How many "big games" in a row is that where we haven't been up for it? Playoffs, US open Cup, derbies.

Are we counting the shitty version of the red bulls as winning a big game this year? Maybe, but if we look like shit vs Chicago, then the coaching staff is learning nothing about preparing this team mentally.

from one post where we went at it like cats and dogs to another where i agree with basically everything youve said.
 
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In the prayer scene (1;40), I'm seeing Rodney Wallace right? In warm up gear? WTF?

Also, New York Presbyterian finally made their sponsorship payment.

And (14:02), we see Drew Moor kick at Villa's shin. Villa goes down. This is the best angle I've seen. No foul was called. Criminal.
 
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