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| The aircraft carrying the defending skills for the second half arriving two hours late |
Today was the first TFC home game with the new manager in
charge. Paul Mariner was probably
hoping, as most of us were hoping, that he could bring to the home field all
the energy of the first half the other night in Houston without the collapse at
the end of the second half. No such luck.
I am such a fool. Take the same the players who were not
good enough for the departed Winter and tweak the formation, what do you get?
We saw it today, a slightly
tweaked version of the same old guys. It was great to see two quality goals in
the first half, but cheering for Toronto in the second half was akin to
cheering all evening for the sun not to go down.
Just some scattered observations.
Credit goes to Milos Kocic for earning the point today, he made some top drawer saves.
Long before he was taken off, something did not look right
about Torsten Frings.
How can you play the possession game when you have deGuzman
on the field? In the second half he seemed to be giving the ball away every
chance he had.
Ryan Johnson made a full effort in both halves. Danny
Koevermans was quality in the first half and invisible in the second.
Doneil Henry looked ragged in the late going. Putting Logan
Emory into the central defending role seemed to make little difference .
I thought that putting Luis Silva on in the second half was
a gamble that was going to pay off in a big way. Here is a young player who has
had his Houston mugshot splashed all over the media this week. Clearly there
are no serious consequences as he is in uniform. Maybe I wanted the Hollywood
factor to kick in, but he was a step down from Eric Avila. Silva seemed to lack
anticipation.
Just how did New England manage to dominate the last 20 minutes of the game?
I dread the midweek road game in Montreal. I will watch it,
but I dread it.
1 comment:
it was Total Preki Version 2.0, and over the last 25 minutes i'd guess we didn't string together any more than 3 consecutive passes. responding to your question, i'd say negative tactics, poor subs, and anti-football are why the last 20 minutes were dominated by NE. this is all on Mariner, who clearly considered himself tactically astute!
i don't understand how if you decide to defend a lead, you sub out your 2 DP, defensive mids: Frings and deGuzman. they both have huge experience as defensive holders. did it in Houston too, same result. definition of insanity.
and if you are going to go with ugly longballing and park the bus, you play one big strong guy up top with 5 in the middle. Why Silva as a 2nd striker? RJ was clearly sent to outside left... we won very few of those longballs into the hole. tactics and subs all wrong. as soon as Frings and Deguzman were subbed out, we had no possession.
for bunkering (which i detest), with the guys that were available, a 4-1-4-1 was clearly in order. no Emory, sub off Dunfield instead of Avila who was doing well. DK up top, Frings in front of the back 4, DeGuzman centrally paired with STINSON. RJ wide right, Avila wide left. sub Lambe in later, for whichever wide guy is lagging, at 80 min. mark. you don't leave 2 forwards on if you are really trying to bunker.
why dress Maund, Williams AND Emory as subs? no Plata? only one attacking sub option in Silva, who just lost his dad, and just got arrested? poor choice. no threat on the counter in those subs. and running up and down the sidelines screaming like a meth addict is not inspirational, it's unprofessional and indicates lack of team preparation, fixing problems on the field... and also after the fact to lay the blame at the back 4, wow. Morgan and Henry are home-grown, and Ecks and Hall were brought in by which person again?
what gives me hope is two beautiful goals resulting from the speed of Morgan and his increasingly accurate crossing, and our big men doing the business. this has nothing to do with coaching tactics, and is simply players using individual moments opportunistically.
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