What's really wrong with this team?

[RSL1]

The way you fix it is simple: bring in a coach that can teach tactical discipline to the whole team.

There are many problems that are a byproduct of this, including not scoring enough. Here's an example, everyone talks of the spacing between the forwards and midfielders. The reason why is because we don't build an attack. It's a straight ball through to the forward. Now, we don't need to turn into Mexico and just play needless possession, but we do need to work better about keeping the unit compact.

E.g. If our forwards pressure the ball up top everytime the opponent's defense wins the ball, it has a tendency to open up the midfield and create enormous gaps. Should we win the opponent then counter through the middle, they cut us apart. Should we actually win the ball back, then our midfield is out of position because they're scrambling to cover real estate left open by the forwards and the forwards aren't in position to do anythign other than receive a long ball because they just pressured in the attacking 1/3 of the field. It's ok to pressure the ball up top, but you have to have the entire team compact as a unit to do this.

This is one example. The defensive breakdowns are due to other tactical considerations.

The coach has NOT addressed these issues, nor identified them even. Players are good players but have no clue about how to resolve this and the communication among the team is poor so there's a lot of players moving in isolated pockets but none are working together as a compact team.

THAT is the reason why we seem to be playing a lot of one-on-one up top and why we get people deep into the corner crossing the ball and end up with JC or JK and nobody else to play through to goal. Also why our defenders are having trouble.

Tactics.

[clarette]

Well, we have no width, we routinely fail to get the ball forward into space quickly, and we play too much squirrel ball in the middle of the field, for starters...

[I_Believe_In_Kreis]

Again, my point was (a) this team gets a lot of scoring opportunities, more than most people realize, and (b) we're not scoring many goals. There is an obvious disconnect here.

I'm not saying we shouldn't work on goalkeeping, defense, communication, shape, etc. But I do think finishing work should be a priority for the coaching staff because it's a glaring weakness and IMO easy to fix compared to the other problems we're having. I come from the "low-hanging fruit" school of coaching - identify your biggest deficiency, work on it until it's no longer the biggest, then attack your next biggest. I also agree that we need better numbers on attack (basically it's a shape issue), but the fact is you don't have to worry about rebound goals until you're getting shots on frame, which RSL isn't doing. They should work on that first.

[prk166]

squirrel ball? 😕

[Aerick]

Originally Posted by I_Believe_In_Kreis

Again, my point was (a) this team gets a lot of scoring opportunities, more than most people realize, and (b) we're not scoring many goals. There is an obvious disconnect here.

I'm not saying we shouldn't work on goalkeeping, defense, communication, shape, etc. But I do think finishing work should be a priority for the coaching staff because it's a glaring weakness and IMO easy to fix compared to the other problems we're having. I come from the "low-hanging fruit" school of coaching - identify your biggest deficiency, work on it until it's no longer the biggest, then attack your next biggest. I also agree that we need better numbers on attack (basically it's a shape issue), but the fact is you don't have to worry about rebound goals until you're getting shots on frame, which RSL isn't doing. They should work on that first.

Didn't Ellinger and company tackle and overcome some of their lowest hanging fruit up to this point? Fitness, players, etc.?

[I_Believe_In_Kreis]

Originally Posted by Aerick

Didn't Ellinger and company tackle and overcome some of their lowest hanging fruit up to this point? Fitness, players, etc.?

Players were probably the lowest hanging fruit. That issue is mostly gone - although we have obvious positional needs, we don't have as many as last year. But taking care of that issue hasn't given us acceptable results (coach's words, not mine). Now it's on to the next biggest issue, which I believe is finishing. And once that's solved, you tackle the next biggest, and so on.

[Aerick]

Here's another interesting statistic about RSL:

TEAM Corner Kicks
Chicago Fire--------------------20
Chivas USA---------------------16
Colorado Rapids-----------------27
Columbus Crew-----------------21
FC Dallas-----------------------17
D.C. United---------------------36
Houston Dynamo----------------22
Kansas City Wizards-------------30
Los Angeles Galaxy--------------34
New York Red Bulls--------------13
New England Revolution----------29
Real Salt Lake-------------------39

That's right, folks. RSL leads the league in corner kicks! Perhaps we should work on capitalizing on those during practice, eh?

Additionally, that comes out to 6.5 corner kicks per game. Whereas last season we had an average of 4.2 per game. Now, I'm no expert as some of you will gladly agree, but doesn't that mean we're doing something better than last year - significantly?

[I_Believe_In_Kreis]

Originally Posted by Aerick

doesn't that mean we're doing something better than last year - significantly?

Yes! However it's not translating into goals (which, in turn, means we're not getting results). We're near the top of the league in every significant offensive statistic. But goals......we're 2nd to last!

You're proving my point - the disconnect is in the finishing. I hope the coaching staff realizes that and works on it with the team.

[clarette]

IMO, the finishing issue is partly a result of the other issues... we don't get ourselves in position to score "easy" goals nearly as often as we should.