I think a lot of it depends on Ronnies preferred system. We played with attacking wingbacks last year but that could have been more based on playing to the strengths of Mata and Tinnerholm. If Ronnie wants more of a stay back and defend LB I'm perfectly fine with the team spending less on that spot and prioritizing money in other places on the field.
NYCFC Players Wanted Thread
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I think a lot of it depends on Ronnies preferred system. We played with attacking wingbacks last year but that could have been more based on playing to the strengths of Mata and Tinnerholm. If Ronnie wants more of a stay back and defend LB I'm perfectly fine with the team spending less on that spot and prioritizing money in other places on the field.
Hard to imagine he is intended to walk right into a starting role.
22 years old at that price with only 19 first division appearances in the Danish league and only 5 appearances for Danish national youth teams over the past 3-4 years seems like a stretch to be a plug-in starter.
lol what? people were burying mata countless times, not just the tigres game. there was a time some even preferred ben sweat. he was good but to say one of the top LB i think it was a stretch, almost every off season many wanted a new LB due to injuries or his occasional bad performances.
The contradictions of Matarrita are that
- he was a good offensive LB who rarely generated goals or assists
- he had a good defensive work rate all over the field but gave up on a couple of plays in key playoff moments, and then
- overcompensated for that by tackling a player who got past him in the penalty area in another key playoff moment
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I agree. I think last season being an outlier in both staying healthy and the lowest number of big moment mistakes is causing people to overvalue Mata. We have seen enough of him to know his strengths and weaknesses. He's a super athletic lb with the ability to make some very impressive contributions in the attack while hustling back on defense. He also has a strong track record of being injury prone, serious mental lapses in big moments and he goes at 100% all the time causing him to be totally gassed by the 70th min in almost every match (which is when the mental lapses usually start). I appreciate the effort level but a 26 year old player should be capable to picking safe moments to reserve stamina to last the full 90, Mata has never done that.
In the regular season and less-impactful games? Sure. In playoff games and in derbies, the guy just lost his damn mind. He's the kind of player that will get you to the playoffs, but I don't think he's the type of player that can win a title in this league.
I really think it depends on how Ronnie plays the new left back. If he sends him up into the attack regularly I don't think any lower budget player we sign is going to replicate what Mata did on offense and we will notice a big different. If Ronnie uses a system where the LB mostly stays back when we are on the attack, possibly making a back 3 to allow Tinnerholm even more freedom to get forward the loss of Mata will be less noticeable especially if the new lb is solid defensively.
The thing with limiting our backs going forward to one side is that it's easier to defend. If we are playing that style then we need threats from both sides. If the opponent knows only tinny is going up then they lock him down and we've lost two options we normally have. That's huge for a team who struggles to create when we don't use our backs. Going up the middle has never been a true strong suit for us but having the threats on the width made it possible.
Without wing backs attacking, we need to reply on our midfield more. But ronny plays a double 6 and maxi just doesn't have the legs. We are gonna have a lot of problems or playing a lot of long ball and hoping for the best
I agree it's a concerning approach but there are many top flight teams that play off balance systems with high offensive output. Given our players it's a risk as we are dealing with a considerably different level of talent. I'm also not optimistic given what we have seen so far that Ronnie has the tactical coaching ability to pull off a system requiring that level of nuance (I'd feel much better if it was Dome designing it).
I do however think there are some things to like about an unbalanced approach. Letting Tinnerholm, possibly our best player last season, do what he does best with less responsibility on D is great. We also saw Ronnie toy with 3 at the back a few times last season. If he wants to try that again I'd much rather see him do it with a wing back staying back as opposed to the 3 CB 2 wing back calamity we saw him roll out last year. That nonsense left use so empty in midfield we couldn't get the ball out of our half.
I spent a decent amount of time rewatching the MLS is Back games, as well as the games in August-September and during that stretch at least (would need to watch more of later games to determine if we continued this or not, and frankly I'm not going to do that), Ronny loved to switch the field to the opposite winger and fullback.
That often came via two manners.
- A slower buildup that enters the final third with a switch-of-play ball to the other fullback and winger to try to generate a 2v1 or 2v2 entering the box.
- A quick buildup down the flank (usually down the right side) that played the ball into the middle of the field near the center line and that player immediately (sometimes blindly or without looking much at all), playing the ball back to the other sideline to generate a fullback/winger break. Since most of the buildup started down the right, that was often played to the left where Matarrita and often Mitrita were.
- Now, on this. Both Mitrita and Matarrita were built for the break, so maybe that was something Ronny did to try to maximize that because he had those players. Or perhaps it is something that he generally wants to do, and those guys just happened to fill those roles.
- On this buildup, there was also an option to keep it down the "original" sideline to either play the fullback (often Tinnerholm) behind the opposing fullback, or to send a through ball to the striker behind the CBs.
Also, to reply to my own reply, do we expect a coach that could barely find minutes for Joe Scally to give this rando Danish kid 90 minutes?
I agree that there is a strong chance he's a back-up, which is more concerning because if the new guy is the backup does that mean Thórarinsson is the starter at lb? If that's the case it's going to be a long season and I agree with K Kjbert that we are all going to miss Mata.
me thinks this is the case. Gudi is our LB starter and he's going to get burned many, many more times than mata ever did. Mata may have had blunders but Gudi is going to make our head spin with as many times he gets toasted.
I can’t take credit for it (it was the brilliance of the Outfield) - but all this Mata talk can be summed up as:
“how do you solve a problem like Matarrita?”
he literally is $100 dollar foot, ten cent head.
“how do you solve a problem like Matarrita?”
he literally is $100 dollar foot, ten cent head.
If this guy is bench-quality and Thorarinsson is the starter, I agree with you. If this guy (or another unannounced signing) is the starter, then the jury is out.
Can we give post of the year to just this phrase?
System-wise we are going to need attacking fullbacks. Ronny has stated his preference for the get-in-the-box type of wingers which means you need the fullback to overlap wide.
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