Keaton looked very good this preseason. Feels like we need to spend money on a 6 next to him tho
To me this circles back to pressing. Nick threw defenders forward so you risk the other team breaking behind our lines. Might as well have the upward playing players contribute on both sides. His way just kind of took them out of the defense altogether too much. And as you note it led to more and better chances allowed without the upside.
He drove me crazy last year at times with how languid he played, but I agree he's looked much more on the ball and front-footed in preseason so here's hoping Jansen is able to unlock that side of him consistently.
I'm not a tactics expert but I watched Cushing coach for 3 years and I can't tell you what we were trying to do on offense. The players often looked justifiably frustrated. Jansens system in theory seems to give players more creative freedom and it sounds more exciting as the team will be playing on the front foot. As a player id imagine its a lot more fun to play Pascal ball than Cushing ball so hopefully that brings the best out of guys like Keaton.
I've often wondered if Nick's constant emphasis on position did Keaton -- and everyone else, for that matter -- a disfavor. We often played like everyone was thinking about where they were supposed to be instead of doing what they were supposed to be doing.
If there's one thing I want to see more than anything else as this campaign gets underway, it's our guys just being ballers out there.
[Full disclosure: I like Nick, and I thought he was going to be our Jim Curtin and stay as gaffer at least through 2027, and maybe beyond. And it's possible he would have taken the shackles off himself this season. But alas, we'll never know ... ]
I liked Cushing too, but no matter what he claimed, he was fundamentally a conservative defensive coach. Sure, last year he set us up with a more attacking approach, but whenever a substitution presented a choice between staying on the front foot or tightening up defensively, he almost always opted for the latter. Even in his most attack-minded moments, Cushing’s approach was still cautious—raising the attacking line slightly but never granting true positional freedom in pursuit of offense at the expense of defensive structure.
Given how risk-averse he was in his decision-making, I imagine he emphasized to the players that staying disciplined and avoiding defensive lapses was a top priority. This was a stark contrast to the Vieira era, where the mentality was, "We’re going to play our way, and that comes with risks—sometimes we’ll concede, and that’s okay." With Cushing, that level of boldness simply wasn’t part of the philosophy. Hopefully, Pascal's more dynamic approach energizes some of the more creative players like Keaton.
All true. And it's more than a little ironic, we ended up conceding so many late, damaging goals last season anyway.
Fortune favors the bold, I guess.
I wonder about our conditioning, too. There have been more than a few comments about how intense Pascal's training is compared to what the squad had grown used to. We may have faded late in matches simply because we hadn't trained hard enough.
