ESPNFC states the obvious: "New York's defense, and in particular its lack of attention to detail in key moments, is killing the team right now."
http://www.espnfc.us/blog/the-match...tars-and-supporting-cast-pummel-new-york-city
In my opinion, as I've said many times, the *other* thing killing us is lack of discipline in positioning and poor use of the pitch. Here's Whoscored?'s average positioning for the match. LAG is blue, NYCFC is orange:
Now, while LAG is sorta clearly in a 3-4-3, notice how much of the field they cover and control compared to the lumpy mush in the NYC midfield. Jacobsen, Pirlo, Mix, Poku and TMac are all essentially huddled in the center circle while Villa is left, again, on his lonesome up front. To their credit, Facey and Hernadez did remain relatively disciplined, but since Angelino and Iraola were mostly going forward as wingers we were left with a
back two, and lord knows that our central "defensive" midfielder Jacobsen would rather do anything other than defend. Facey and Jacobsen were more or less left to deal with Lleget, Keane and Dos Santos by themselves.
On the attacking side, we left massively unexploited space on either side of Villa, clearly. If Poku and TMac would have spread out to their respective right and left more often, Villa could have had far more support. You could also interpret this as Poku and TMac being unwilling to take the fight to Leonardo and González, conceding that territory to them most of the time.
Kreis has got to got to got to drill the team on more intelligent use of the space, and insist on more discipline in positioning. We may have three world-class DPs (sometimes), but Kreis isn't Cryuff, NYCFC isn't Dutch, and we sure as shit clearly don't understand Total Football.