General MLS Discussion

[gbservis]

I saw a couple of the Coachella games and one of my takeaways was that Ojeda stood out to me as looking good, looking dangerous, so I guess I’m with Doyle here. But it’s hard to say he looked much improved because we barely saw him last year

Ojeda started 11 games last season and played in 22. He was a fairly consistent starter up until the Tigres game when Nick figured out that he needed all the veterans on the pitch for the offense to be functional and he benched the young guys. There is some serious revisionist history happening in relation to how much Nick played the young guys. He clearly started to season with the intention of Ojeda being the starter and he had to give up on it because Ojeda didn't play well enough.

 

[mgarbowski]

Ojeda started 11 games last season and played in 22. He was a fairly consistent starter up until the Tigres game when Nick figured out that he needed all the veterans on the pitch for the offense to be functional and he benched the young guys. There is some serious revisionist history happening in relation to how much Nick played the young guys. He clearly started to season with the intention of Ojeda being the starter and he had to give up on it because Ojeda didn't play well enough.

Ojeda averaged 44 minutes per game over a 17 game period between April 13 and July 17. Then 14 minutes average over the final 10. He had a pedestrian 0.29 G/90 and 0 assists for the year. He had the fifth most minutes among forwards, behind Santi, Wolf, Martinez, and Bakrar. Maybe coaching failed to develop him as it should have, but that's a training issue not playing time.

There's maybe an argument Cushing should have moved on from Wolf at the end. Wolf scored 4 goals in Games in games 13-20, then just 1 over the final 14. But Wolf was 0.42 G+A/90 and Ojeda was 0.29.

The season last year was very uneven and had a couple of major break points. Jones and Martinez started playing much more around Game 11, part way through 10 games of which 8 were home. And the team killed it. Then Jones was hurt just before 8 Away games in 11. And the team suffered. And in the middle of that drought came the Tigres game you mentioned, when they looked very solid and crisp. I think Nick overreacted to that. But I'm not sure where Ojeda gets so many more minutes from. In retrospect Bakrar, but he got his minutes early and honestly, he had to. Plus those 2 are not interchangeable.

 

[moogoo]

I didn't think Ojeda looked any different in preseason than he had previously. That said he does sometimes look close to breaking out and I can see where the prediction comes from. It still seems wildly optimistic that he will be YPOY, we saw enough Matinez + Bakrar lineups in the preseason to indicate that Pascal is entertaining the idea of starting Martinez at LW with Ojeda on the bench.

i think the difference in ojeda so far is that he's more willing to take on defenders 1v1. last year he was more timid and if he wasn't sent into space with a through ball or something, it was rare to see him try to beat some one 1v1 and he would just pass it back for safety. this preseason, he seemed to square up more and try to get around a defender, which is nice to see. we need more of these types of players because it disrupts defenses and creates opportunities.
definitely not saying he's changed night and day. but if there is any difference, that was what I noticed.