Minnesota - Postmatch
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I recall there being one at the inaugural season opener. I believe
Falastur purchased and was surprised by the price. ($20?)
I recall there being one at the inaugural season opener. I believe
I remember buying the programme, and I remember being surprised by its price. Couldn't for the life of me tell you what that price was though. If it was $20 then that definitely was absurd (though I'd probably have spent it, I pretty much always buy a programme).
Sweat was extremely bad tonight. Howler. Gotta be confusing at times to go from playing an inside CB role to outside back, but at the end of the day, no excuse for shitty positioning and a lazy pass.
Also look at Ibeagha who checked out marking his man on the crossed goal - even if he lost his man, he should have still been making a play on the header and he didn’t. And on that Sweat pass back, Ibeagha was telling him to pass back, pointing to the keeper. The shitty pass was on Sweat, the instructions were on Ibeagha.
Regardless, any team that can’t score doesn’t deserve to win. The Rodney Wallace tripping over the ball goal was pure luck and zero skill - if that’s how this team is rolling, then we’re fcked. We played a team that is a burst dam on prior goals conceded, and we needed a red card advantage and bumbling luck (that had a real argument for being offsides) to even score. Granted, we were a team playing without any DPs until Medina came on, but that’s just indicative that our core group of TAM and regular salaried players aren’t able to elevate their game on their own, and that’s piss poor roster creation.
Also look at Ibeagha who checked out marking his man on the crossed goal - even if he lost his man, he should have still been making a play on the header and he didn’t. And on that Sweat pass back, Ibeagha was telling him to pass back, pointing to the keeper. The shitty pass was on Sweat, the instructions were on Ibeagha.
Regardless, any team that can’t score doesn’t deserve to win. The Rodney Wallace tripping over the ball goal was pure luck and zero skill - if that’s how this team is rolling, then we’re fcked. We played a team that is a burst dam on prior goals conceded, and we needed a red card advantage and bumbling luck (that had a real argument for being offsides) to even score. Granted, we were a team playing without any DPs until Medina came on, but that’s just indicative that our core group of TAM and regular salaried players aren’t able to elevate their game on their own, and that’s piss poor roster creation.
Obviously a gut punch of a match, but I was mostly mad about the refereeing. The no-call for the penalty looked bad to me, and I lost count of the number of times Minnesota were awarded soft calls after going in studs up on our players.
After the Fire match I was ready to say we were about to go on a run, but it seems that injuries and turf circumstances forced us to play a completely reconfigured front 5, so it was almost like going back a few matches and seeing the same problems. Our build-up was solid, but there was no familiarity in the last 30 yards and we were bound to get countered. Berget looked like a deer on ice whenever the ball came his way, and in general our hesitation in forward areas made it hard to find gaps in Minnesota's defense. If Berget buried that header instead of bouncing it over the crossbar, and the penalty call goes our way, I think we feel very differently about this match.
On the bright side, Amagat had an almost flawless game. He's no Herrera but he found his own way to reclaim the ball in the center, and he showed good ability to turn and get the ball into forward space. Will this performance start to turn people around on him? I doubt it. Our fans have a tendency to scapegoat new players and stick to it. Ofori made just one error but also found some verticality to his passing and was defensively very good. Ring isn't the best option as a #10 due to the lack of quality in his final ball.
I'm excited to have Medina back. Even Rodney caused problems when he came on.
There's nothing to say about Sweat on the second goal. On the first, it was pretty typical. He's nowhere near enough to Ibarra. Problem is, when he's close he gets turned easily because of his high center of gravity. Ibeagha got caught between two players because Ofori let his man go. Rewind that play a bit more and you see Tinny released up the line in space. However his distribution is poor, which has been his norm lately, and we lose the ball with our RB egregiously out of position. I wonder whether Tinny's issues lately are more related to the shuffling of the lineup up front than anything else. Makes it hard to find his passes.
For me, it's becoming clearer that the root of our failure is our inability to connect in attacking areas. Given injuries and international breaks, I'm not sure we could have done a better job of maintaining or building cohesion - I'd have to look at our rosters and lineups week by week. That plus a bad call and a couple of flubbed chances means that I'm still hopeful we can put a run together with the right players in the front 5.
After the Fire match I was ready to say we were about to go on a run, but it seems that injuries and turf circumstances forced us to play a completely reconfigured front 5, so it was almost like going back a few matches and seeing the same problems. Our build-up was solid, but there was no familiarity in the last 30 yards and we were bound to get countered. Berget looked like a deer on ice whenever the ball came his way, and in general our hesitation in forward areas made it hard to find gaps in Minnesota's defense. If Berget buried that header instead of bouncing it over the crossbar, and the penalty call goes our way, I think we feel very differently about this match.
On the bright side, Amagat had an almost flawless game. He's no Herrera but he found his own way to reclaim the ball in the center, and he showed good ability to turn and get the ball into forward space. Will this performance start to turn people around on him? I doubt it. Our fans have a tendency to scapegoat new players and stick to it. Ofori made just one error but also found some verticality to his passing and was defensively very good. Ring isn't the best option as a #10 due to the lack of quality in his final ball.
I'm excited to have Medina back. Even Rodney caused problems when he came on.
There's nothing to say about Sweat on the second goal. On the first, it was pretty typical. He's nowhere near enough to Ibarra. Problem is, when he's close he gets turned easily because of his high center of gravity. Ibeagha got caught between two players because Ofori let his man go. Rewind that play a bit more and you see Tinny released up the line in space. However his distribution is poor, which has been his norm lately, and we lose the ball with our RB egregiously out of position. I wonder whether Tinny's issues lately are more related to the shuffling of the lineup up front than anything else. Makes it hard to find his passes.
For me, it's becoming clearer that the root of our failure is our inability to connect in attacking areas. Given injuries and international breaks, I'm not sure we could have done a better job of maintaining or building cohesion - I'd have to look at our rosters and lineups week by week. That plus a bad call and a couple of flubbed chances means that I'm still hopeful we can put a run together with the right players in the front 5.
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Regarding Amagat.... he didn’t do anything badly, but he also wasn’t impressive. He has a predisposition to slow play down with extra touches and either go backwards or play to people in the same areas - many times he failed to look up or across the field to the wide open outlet player.
Ofori played maybe his best game as a DMid - he cleaned up A LOT of mistakes from Amagat and others. It’s frustrating he has no right foot, but he’s working much better with the parameters of spinning on the ball to get a clear left foot pass.
Tinny is just a shell of his former self. His linkup play with the wing is bad and his crosses worse.
I think I see what you see with Amagat but he's still on an upward trajectory. It's also his style - he likes to get in areas, draw players and release others. It's helpful. He's not the type to receive and spread the play (a la Sands / Ring / Maxi). It's funny, some posters on here are killing us for playing wide too often, yet the one main guy who helped us move the ball forward through the center last night gets stick for not spreading it often enough.
Arguably, Ofori had more opportunities to do this, but I think he's still somewhat playing within himself. He still looks afraid to make mistakes.
RE: Tinny - I made an attempt to pathologize this. There is a clear line between inconsistent front 5s and his inability to link up effectively with his winger counterpart IMO.
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This. Amagat is the king of the 6-yard sideways and backward pass. He was part of the reason that the buildups were so slow so that whenever NYCFC got the ball within 30 yards of goal, they were going against eight defenders. MLS teams are not scoring against a packed-in defense.
Between amagat going sideways, Ofori going sideways, miscasting a CDM (Ring) to play an advanced role, no wonder NYCFC had no verticality.
At least MNU knew what they wanted to do - get the ball in space and quickly move it forward. Win the ball and bang, forward pass.
NYCFC wins the ball, passes sideways to Amagat, back to Ofori, to the wing, to a outside back overlap and they are staring at eight players in front of goal.
Isi was the only one who pushed the tempo. Ring also tried a bit.
Dome is in love with possession and not for the right reasons.
When we disagree with Doyle and Araos they're idiots. When they see what we are seeing it's confirmation.
There's a name for that.
I see his point. We are fine (ok fine ish) until the final 20-30 yards. My only concern is that he doesn't seem to be directly addressing this. If he said that consistency would help, or that he has to work with the team in those areas during training I would feel a bit better. He seems just a little complacent about it tho.
I remember going to an open training session under Vieira a while back where he just had the front 6 plus fullbacks slow-running plays in the final 30-40 yards. I thought it was a little scripted / robotic at the time but I think we need that right now to build up the muscle memory.
I put that there because it is Doyle trolling like he always does, just that this troll was actually pretty funny.
Araos sent out another tweet saying “Ben Sweat usually doesn’t make mistakes.” Come on.
Araos is 99% of the time a guy that pushes buttons with misguided takes. The other 1% of the time he says the obvious. His tweet wasn’t an opinion, just that Dome couldn’t explain his rationale.
Doyle is more a 50/50 guy. If he keeps it simple while not looking to make a theoretical deep dive, he’s good at stating the obvious. His tweet was just that. The liking of his tweet is nothing more than an affirmation of the obvious - Not an affirmation of Doyle.
Unless NYCFC makes the immediate crossfield pass, it takes them 4-5 passes to do it, LB-CB-DMid-CB-RB or a variation there of, and at that point the opposition has already reset. Ring and Isi tried through balls, but far too often the ball carrier didn’t look up to see Berget or Taty having already gotten a step on their defender ready to run on to a through ball.
I’d have no problem if our tactics were counterattacking with throughballs into space and everybody else crashing the box for the return pass - we look amazing when countering with speed - but that tactic looks like one of many that the team is trying to weave together and half the time it’s missed like the QB who can’t make the progressions through the receiving options fast enough to see the 3rd WR is wide open for the TD.
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Don’t look at it existentially.
This team can’t score. They just can’t, and yet it’s the same players that ran up the scoring the first half of the season including when Villa wasn’t part of the squad due to injury. Ball movement and possession without scoring is like window shopping without purchasing - it seems like fun while it’s happening and wholly unfulfilling when it’s over. Sure we had some opportunities last night that players could have done better with, but they didn’t, and a good team should not have to convert every single opportunity to be successful- no team bats 1.000. Were currently a team that can barely get shots on goal, let alone legitimate opportunities, and unless we convert every one we don’t currently have the firepower to win. The only change from the first half-season offensive success and now is Dome. Same players but vastly different results. It is probably a combination of tactics, lack of understanding of the system, and a lack in confidence in the system.
D
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See, this is what's been pissing people off about Dome's recent postgame comments. He continues to focus on the middle phases of the game, since that's where you can start to develop a repeatable degree of control, but our most glaring problems are in the other two thirds, from individual defensive errors and disjointed attacking play. That stuff is more random but it affects the scoreline and negates all the structural work. And it's so obvious that people can't believe the coach would shrug it off.
When Dome's upbeat about the Montreal or Minnesota games, it's because we generally controlled the midfield, pressed high, and dictated the style of the game, unlike that ugly run against Philly, Columbus, and RBNY. And he's right that over time that progress will serve us well. But his readiness to look past defensive bloopers and missed connections in the final third comes from years of coaching teams where those problems were occasional shit-happens exceptions instead of the oh-goddammit-not-again norm. Welcome to MLS, I guess.
You've mentioned that old Pep line where he told Barça his job was to get them to the final third and they could figure it out from there—which is true when the guys figuring things out are Xavi and Iniesta and Messi. I think once Dome's comfortable that we can take our playing style on the road (something we're getting better at) he's going to have to invest a lot more time in finding coaching solutions to the basic problems that his players just aren't good enough to work out on their own.
All that said, the easiest fix for a lack of talent is to field better players, and we've got those: swap Villa, Maxi, Medina, Herrera, Chanot, and Mata in for Berget, Amagat, Taty, Ofori, Ibeagha, and Sweat and a lot of those struggles with fundamentals go away. So maybe Dome's right to play it cool until playoff time. We'll see.
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Maybe we have different understandings of what existential means but I'm not sure what you mean by this.
Suggests they win because people underestimate them and / or won't play their valuable assets on what amounts to a turf billboard?
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