LucaAltieri

Probably a good idea. I was at the Sounders/Union game on Saturday. Union is an awful side. Just spent 90 minutes trying to brute force the ball over the line. It was joyless.

You can jump on the bandwagon of any team so long as they weren't an MLS team 5 years ago. You can still claim to be getting on at the ground floor.

It can be.

Ok, ok. Take Smith off the list. I still think our current lot are a bunch of bottlers, worse than the last relegation side in terms of character. Considering we had Joey Barton and Michael Owen at the time, that's some achievement. Smith and Butt were bad and shouldn't have been anywhere near a Premier League first team, but there's a difference between being past your best and simply not playing to your ability.

Raylor played half the season and Smith had 30+ appearances, if I remember right. I did point out they weren't suddenly amazing players, even at championship level, their influence was more just having steady heads about the place. We miss that.

The problems we have stem less from talent and more from character. Colo is the poster boy for this. We need leaders, not just skillful players. No shuffling of the tactics or replacing fringe individuals is going to help us. We bounced back last time because of the likes of Nolan, Løvenkrands, Raylor, Smith, and Jonas. None of them were suddenly fantastic players. They were just even keeled and competitive. Then players like Carroll, Simpson, and Guthrie stepped up and started to show some promise. Responding to the reaction of those around them. The players we have on the books don't demonstrate any of those qualities. We have players with promise who can potentially step up in the Championship and perhaps also keep it going if/when we make it back to the Premier League but what we're lacking is the kind of player that can inspire them to do that. Too many bottlers. The spine of any team needs to be strong, confident players. CB, CM, CF. You can get by if one of those is a little weaker, but we have none. Shelvy can be that CM on his day. But we have forwards lacking in confidence and a defence that shits the bed every week. We have the talent. We have the talent to stay up, really. We just need to bring in the personalities. We're lacking the character.

Ahh, the romance of the cup: US style.

Not terribly hard to predict, but I'm calling it a win, anyway.

33, but I made some stupid guesses which, had I bothered to think about it for more than a second, I'd have got right. The only other country to host a world cup without previously qualifying? Largest nation by population to never qualify? I was missing sitters. I got all the MLS questions right, though

They like their over-the-hill Brazilians in Orlando.

And it's not like anyone is fielding their regulars for a kickabout in North Carolina.

https://www.facebook.com/SoundersFC/videos/vb.34459843588/10153507334718589 That first penalty. Jesus fucking Christ.

I'm confident we won't lose to the Mackems. But winning means scoring, and scoring means creating chances. We didn't see much of that today.

That variation could work, too. Either way, I think the general principle needs to be "Get Perez on the ball," and then have Gini and Andros bombing forward immediately when he does, then a target man option to play off of. He's got the skill to thread a ball through or keep running with it. He needs to be the engine in the final 3rd. Not quite sure how we got to this point.

Depends on the role. If deployed purely as stoppers and instructed to play simple balls forward, they couldn't do too much damage.

He is absolutely the key to generating any sort of attacking play. I think he's wasted a bit as a wide player. I'd have him central. His close control is too good to have him doing the job a speed merchant could do. We need that sort of composure in the thick of it, central, building an attack from just in front of the defenders. Mitro and Sissoko both have a decent touch but offer no penetration. One of them needs to be dropped. Our best chances comes from playing either: Colback -- Shelvy Townsend -- Perez -- Gini Mitro or Colback -- Shelvy Townsend -- Sissoko -- Gini Perez In either scenario you've Perez dropping deeper to run at the defense and playing the ball off of a target-man type in either Sissoko or Mitro. If they crowd us out centrally you've still got the wide threats of Townsend and Gini. That forces the defense to stretch or leave attacking options for us on the wing. I'd also fancy seeing Gini cutting in from wide playing the ball off of Perez or Mitro/Sissoko. Not relying on Mitro or Sissoko to create anything themselves, just being there to bounce the ball off.

Relatively speaking.

Poacher? He's got absolutely no f***ing poaching instincts man. Michael Owen scored more goals with his head than this guy in the same amount of games. He's good everywhere except in the penalty area. I'm here tbh. I like the lad but he's awful in the box. Doesn't even look useful attacking goal with his noggin. If we're talking about his form with us, I can't really argue. My entire point is that he's not able to play his game because he's got no time or space because we're shit. We didn't sign a player who was good at hold up play but shit in the box. We signed a player who could put chances away too. I agree that he only offers hold up play right now, but the reason for that isn't because he's fundamentally only capable of that side of the game. The team plays a role, too. As does his confidence.

I wonder if you CAN coach attacking players the same way you drill defensive ones. The latter can be improved by discipline, the former is literally a creative art that some players just fucking have. Of course, confidence goes a long way, as well. I'm just thinking about HBA vs Cabella/Thauvin, etc., HBA would wake up and have a worldie even if we were bottom of the table. You can organize elements of attacking play. Practice passing combinations, strategic runs to either get in behind or pull defenders to make space, getting players wide to stretch defenses. But other than that you're right, you rely on a bit of magic sometimes. And that can't be coached. Players either have that confidence or they don't. A highly drilled attack is sometimes a limited one that will eventually be found out once the formula is cracked. Individual skill prevents against that. Even if you know what someone is going to do, if they do it well enough there's fuck all you can do to stop them sometimes. That said, in the right context a simple, straight, 10 yard pass can be more effective than 5 perfectly executed stepovers that put a defender on his arse. We need a game plan or some general ideas about what you're going to try to accomplish when going forward. We don't seem to have that. We just get to the final third and wait some someone to do something. Anything. And it doesn't happen.

Poachers thrive on their instinct, this lad doesn't have it. Oh, and he's slow as a boat. I'd argue the opposite. He's not as polished as he needs to be and had been getting by heavily on instinct. So now he's in a poor side with limited chances he's struggling to make things happen. I'd bet my house that if you dropped him into a versatile attack of another team he'd start banging them in. He's just not a Demba Ba who is going to create something from nothing.

We're relying on him too heavily to get in behind defenses. We need to work on other options going forward so his role can decrease and he can just focus on his defensive work. When that's sorted maybe then have him contributing more to attacking play. He looks shit because he's on the ball so bloody often, trying to create something and generate some forward momentum. Imagine if Gary Neville at the height of his career had played a similar role with nothing but dross in front of him, little movement from teammates, and the right wing was all his responsibility. He'd have looked equally limited and gash. Neville looked decent because he was involved going forward sparingly and as a third runner - an extra option. He wasn't the primary option of attack.

I haven't lost hope. His fundamentals are ok. He's got a half decent touch and can strike the ball. He just looks lost - like he's not sure what his role is or where he should be. A lot of the time he's marked out of the game or he's making stupid impossible runs to try and find half a yard of space. He needs to have more movement around him and just let him be the poacher he can be. He's just not going to be able to do that until he has time and space to latch on to half-chances. We're not going to get those half-chances until we've got more movement from the midfield breaking the defensive line. When our attacking play in general, as a team, improves then so will his performances.

Rafa needs to spend a full week working on nothing but off the ball runs. The reason we keep adding pressure on to ourselves and can't create any good chances is because we've got no penetration. Everything we do stops at their defensive line. Sissoko is particularly bad for this. When we're running at defenders we need someone to time a run in behind. The only player we have doing that is Janmaat but he offers very little once he's in. The fact we've got no penetration anywhere else means we're constantly leaving the player on the ball to try and create penetration by beating his man. It's too easy to defend against. Defenses want organization. Attackers have to create chaos. Movement, speed and creativity are what we lack. It's not hard to fix. Mitro has the opposite problem. He's making runs but they're shit. No one can possibly get the ball to him so he's effectively just running offside and eliminating himself from the game. It's hard to know which is worse.

We keep passing into pressure. It's stupid. Leicester play a high pressing game. It leaves space behind them. Draw them in then switch the play to the other side of the field. It's not that difficult. Instead we're spending half of our possession running back towards our own goal. Just have someone drop deeper, show for the ball, then switch it. How have they not figured this out yet?

He's got the right tools for the job. Our defence is nothing but tools