I think the guy knocking in the cross must have thought Maxi was going to be on the end of it.
San Jose - Postmatch
- Thread starter LionNYC
- Start date
I think the guy knocking in the cross must have thought Maxi was going to be on the end of it.
I'm somewhat down on Berget after this game, but I'll defend him on that play. It's hard to head a ball coming directly at you and chest high. Usually when you see someone head a ball below their neck it's passing a couple steps away from them and they have a chance to lunge into it, but with the ball closing straight to him, chest high-- and him clearly not expecting it there -- Berget had no chance to react and lunge. Even if he were as quick as we'd like him to be, that's a tough play. Berget's looking for a ball either on the ground or 6-7 feet off it. A ball 4-5 feet high and straight to him is no-man's land.
I don't know if he'll ever settle in or be able to capitalize on his opportunities, but he does have a knack for finding space. He did it both up front with his relative consistent splitting of the CBs and when he was on the left wing. Granted SJ was a little loose in those spaces, but he was making intelligent runs all game (which you don't see from Wallace).
Wallace isn’t usually making those runs because he’s combining closer to midfield, playing 1-2s with Maxi and Villa so someone can run in behind.
No problem crediting Berget’s movement. I did the same thing in this thread. But no reason to compare him to Wallace. They aren’t similar players. Possessions don’t usually end with Wallace on the ball. They almost always end with Berget when he gets it in the final third it seems. All a function of play style.
I do recall Berget being pretty useful in the New England game in terms of getting his head on balls that were lofted overhead up the field. I noticed it a number of times - it allows us an outlet up top with an overhead ball if we're being pressed to death (which we were). He never made anything happen from any of those, but the opportunity was there to get Maxi, etc. on a second ball once he won it from the CBs.
That and his movement are pretty much the only positives I've noticed. He does make smart runs, but seems a bit too slow to be able to capitalize on those runs. The biggest negative has been what he does with the ball at his feet. He doesn't seem like he can take anyone on 1-1, and loses the ball most of the time. He seems like more of a hold up / poacher than anything else.
I will also say that I think Berget would be more productive if Maxi / Medina / Tajouri took more chances on goal. The Rev's game was a bad case study, as we spent most of that game in our third. Similarly, we weren't bombarding the net in the SJ game either, with the goals coming from a loose ball on a corner and a lucky deflection. If we create more chances I think you'd see Berget score a few poacher goals off of poor clearances.
That and his movement are pretty much the only positives I've noticed. He does make smart runs, but seems a bit too slow to be able to capitalize on those runs. The biggest negative has been what he does with the ball at his feet. He doesn't seem like he can take anyone on 1-1, and loses the ball most of the time. He seems like more of a hold up / poacher than anything else.
I will also say that I think Berget would be more productive if Maxi / Medina / Tajouri took more chances on goal. The Rev's game was a bad case study, as we spent most of that game in our third. Similarly, we weren't bombarding the net in the SJ game either, with the goals coming from a loose ball on a corner and a lucky deflection. If we create more chances I think you'd see Berget score a few poacher goals off of poor clearances.
At the very least, Berget can be a guy who comes in when we have a lead and provide a useful outlet for long balls, holdup play and counterattacks. I think he can ultimately be more than that, although time will tell.
This board can be a tough crowd. We all know we have lacked someone who can win balls in the air and head home goals. We have also lacked a decent backup to Villa. He can be both of those things, and while he's been a bit rough in the first couple of games, he will at minimum fill those needs. We all want him to do more, for sure, but I think it is going to take time given that he's not played in so long.
This board can be a tough crowd. We all know we have lacked someone who can win balls in the air and head home goals. We have also lacked a decent backup to Villa. He can be both of those things, and while he's been a bit rough in the first couple of games, he will at minimum fill those needs. We all want him to do more, for sure, but I think it is going to take time given that he's not played in so long.
Berget may not be fully fit yet. Sure he may have just gone nearly 90min twice, but there’s a difference in fitness to complete the games and fitness needed to have an explosive first step all game.
Look at Medina, he came in to the squad injury-free, and his first few matches PV limited him to 2/3 of the match. He’s now playing well for 90 after becoming match fit. Berget came in (probably not fully fit) and promptly got injured. He’s now recovered and fit enough to play in Villa’s absence (and the squad being short handed), but there hasn’t been enough time to get match fit. If the legs are tired, they just won’t respond as fast as the mind wants them to.
Look at Medina, he came in to the squad injury-free, and his first few matches PV limited him to 2/3 of the match. He’s now playing well for 90 after becoming match fit. Berget came in (probably not fully fit) and promptly got injured. He’s now recovered and fit enough to play in Villa’s absence (and the squad being short handed), but there hasn’t been enough time to get match fit. If the legs are tired, they just won’t respond as fast as the mind wants them to.
FWIW, I would like to see Berget on the left wing with a more overlapping runs from the outside back before making the judgment that possessions end when it gets to Berget. A decent number of Wallace's touches go to an overlapping Sweat and that outlet simply wasn't there yesterday (on either side). I don't know how Wallace's runs compare to Berget, but my guess is having both Villa and Berget making intelligent runs into the box onto a Sweat cross would be very dangerous.
Having said that, if Berget is the 5th best player for one of the top 3 positions, it's a good position to be in.
Crossed out the Sweat thing because...I can't (or don't want) to go into my feelings about that.
Maybe. Or maybe they get in each others way. I, too, think they might work as a partnership. But I don't think I'm willing to shift our system to a 4-4-2 for it, and I don't know how you sacrifice Isi or Medina or Moralez at this point.
Maybe with a back 3-5-2, you could force some things. But even in that scenario, would you rather Berget and Villa be up top or Villa and Isi/Medina?
I absolutely agree that Berget is quality depth. That's why I said his role for now, assuming a healthy Villa, is probably best as a last gasp sub. So he spot starts with injury or comes on to knock some long balls down at the end. Totally a good situation for us.
Although, at this point, agree with everyone that his spot starts should mostly be wide with Medina playing as a 9.5. Seeing his positioning and Isi's unanticipated immediate ability to deliver a final ball, I don't mind Medina as a false 9 at all when Villa isn't there.
I've gone from lamenting us not getting a Firmino-type signing in to start now with a view to spelling Villa and replacing him next year, to thinking we may have stumbled into two guys who could potentially become that with Medina and Isi. Medina is the more likely, of course. He just needs to add goals. Isi doesn't quite have the same other-worldly pre-cognition abilities, and I think that's a steeper hill to climb. Perhaps, though, the hill isn't that steep if we look at it as the combination of the two filling those various gaps we have and will have.
TL;DR: For me, Berget is pretty much a late sub with a fully healthy squad because I won't sacrifice any of the other options to force him in.
Did Tinny play some games that Berget didn't or are we accounting for Tinny joining training earlier as the reason we're excusing Berget's struggles as rustiness?
I want to make a joke about "holdup play and counterattacks" and how you weren't simply making a grammatical choice to forego an Oxford comma, but I'll save it until we have a larger sample size.
To follow up on your post, as a late game sub, Berget would be fantastic when we pull an outside back and go 334. He’d get the 2-man partnership with villa with outside wings spreading the defense and delivering crosses (unless TMac is also subbed on and he’d then end up clogging the middle with his runs, but I digress). He could be very effective with the give/goes in tight spaces, drawing the 2nd CB away from Villa, and cleaning up rebounded shots.
But hopefully we don’t have a lot of situations this year where we find ourselves on the outside looking in and needing to go 334.
Pretty sure Berget joined preseason rather late and then promptly got injured. Tinny also had the first few matches to get matchfit, but he may just be a natural fitness monster like Ring.
Just too lazy to sort the timeline myself. To be clear, I believe we're conflating two things. I don't think he looks lacking in match fitness, I think he looks like he's rusty (hopefully it's that, and not lacking the skill to play at the pace of our other attackers because that would make him a slower, slightly more technical Shelton).
As for your suggested deployment, that's about how I see it, too. Hate to harp on the parenthetical above, but he does need to improve his touches a bit if he's going to play any 1-2s with our current attacking options. Let's keep going with rust for now.
Ulrich beat me to it.
No Oxford comma.
I think rust is probably a good way to put it. He showed up and promptly got hurt and didn't play or practice for most of the preseason and the beginning of the regular season. Then, Villa gets hurt, so instead of being able to ease him into game action, he has gone 90' x 2 right away. Not easy when you haven't been playing or practicing. He can't have his best touch, and he doesn't really even know his teammates. Heck, even Ibrahimovic looked clumsy on Saturday whenever he was trying to put more than one touch on the ball.
Of course, it could be those turn out to be empty excuses and Berget doesn't rate. The point is that we just don't know yet.
I think we're going to see more from Berget once we have down our overlapping runs. He seems like a guy in positions like Lampard, hanging around the PK mark and getting on the end of a ball from the endline. We've got the guys to get there and to pass back to the middle, but SAS isn't one of them. Sweat may be our best to feed the middle from that deep. Isi is Mendoza with vision and it's everything you'd hope it'd be. And we haven't scored fewer than two goals in a game yet this season. That's pretty pretty... pretty good.
Adding to the Berget discussion...Berget is #5 on the worst Audi player index scores of the week. The other guys ahead of him either directly caused a goal against or got a red card. Yikes.
San Jose has more Audi Player Index Points then us. It's a garbage metric.
His score is so bad because he missed his chested shot in front of the net. That was like a -240pt play. They don’t give positive points for good runs off the ball that aren’t rewarded.
Edit: -210pts on that one play.
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Do me a favor -- explain how the Audi Index is put together and I'll take it seriously. Until then, it's a fake metric meant to engender debate, not to thoughtfully evaluate players and performances.
