don’t eat the yellow snow!

And certainly stay away from the red snow…An excessive number of cautions are often a sign of frustration, and RSL has had their fair share of frustrating games this year. Our current discipline list is beginning to strongly resemble our current line-up. a quick glance shows that we have 8 players within 2 cautions of suspension (2 of which are suspended for this game), including Mantilla, Espindola, Esky, Beckerman, Wingert, Talley and Kipre. That’s a big chunk of our starting lineup. So today we have 1/3 of our tres amigos, Harris is back from international duty.

Likely lineups would include…

————————Rimando

—–Kipre———-Pope——–Kotschau——-Wingert

——————Talley————Beckerman

C. Brown(Harris)———Morales————Findley

—————————-Esky

Id far prefer to see Harris start on the left with Findley on the right, but given Kreis’ penchant for playing a man down…I mean w/ Chris Brown on the pitch, I’d say the safe money is there.

On a completely unrelated note, it’s clear that Yura Movsisyan needs to see some game time soon. Not that Yura is likely to start today’s game against LA, but for the sake of numerology and biblical buffs, if Kreis has half a heart, he’ll stick him in the game at some point today…According to the KC stats sheet, he’s played 666 minutes this year. Seriously, how does that happen. Talk about an unfortunate coincidence.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this…

No, you don’t have to be concerned, I’m not going to compliment Chris Brown or anything.  What I have to say is that RSL has made the most financially prudent set of trades of any MLS side.  If RSL has signed multi-year deals with any of these players for this kind of money, there’s actually reason for serious hope.

According to Steven Goff, These are the salaries paid for recent player acquisitions.  These numbers are based on an annual salary, not merely the end of year payout.
Wilman Conde, Chicago: $144,000/151,500

Javier Morales, RSL: 120,000/120,000

Edgar Espindola, RSL: 72,000/72,000

Matias Mantilla, RSL: 48,000/48,000

Francis Doe, New York: 48,000/48,000

Israel Sesay, L.A.: 45,000/57,083

These guys are a steal at this kind of salary…especially when you consider were paying Nick Besagno over $100K.  OK, “we’re” not paying Nick that much, but that’s the salary GA is picking up.  But we are paying Chris Brown $80K.  I think it’s hard to argue he’s more effective than Espindola.  Mantilla for under $48K?  That’s less than a third of Eddie’s salary for the most servicable replacement we’ve yet found.  Viva Argentina!!!

-Heretic

Bloggoging and entertaining things to call Razov

One of the queerest (is that even a legitimate word? Well, it is now.) event patterns related to blogging is that occasionally, somebody will say something inflammatory (calls somebody’s mother a smut peddling hydrocephalic drone or refers to an elected official as free-ranging galactic ass-weasel) enough to elicit blog responses about their blog…which naturally spirals into bloggers blogging about bloggers who blogged about the aforementioned blog, or BLOGGOGING for short. The whole thing begins to feel particularly narcissistic after a time until people ultimately can no longer sustain their righteous indignation and the whole thing collapses under the weight of it own ridicule. Some good examples of this can be found at The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster…there are some truly spectacular levels of name-calling here that reset the bar. Just read the recent and past comments.

[url]http://www.venganza.org/[/url]

I hope you will all forgive me for a moment as I continue the BLOGGOG for a moment. As it happens, RSLFM has apparently recently hit the BLOGGOGING jackpot with a comparison of Jason Kreis to Bob Murray. I can no longer resist…The righteous indignation is too thick for me and I simply have to weigh in. Not mind you on the question of whether or not there is a legitimate comparison to be made between Bob Murray and Kreis, nor whether the comparison steps outside the boundaries of good taste. Frankly I could care less. The central point of FM’s risque (or not depending on how you feel about it) comparison is actually a valid question…has the honeymoon with Kreis gone sour yet? What will be the litmus test under which Kreis’ coaching performance will be evaluated? Will he, like Ellinger be granted multiple seasons to prove that he cannot succeed? Will Checketts pull the plug on this experiment if RSL finishes far enough out of the playoff race? How many wins will Kreis need to get in order to sustain his position as head coach of the last place team in MLS? Has the search for a new head coach already begun, or is it like the ongoing search for a GM…”we’ll hire one if we can find the right guy”? For that matter, how many people still believe that Kreis can still effectively coach/manage this team? Has he lost the locker room? Many sources seem to point that way. The question of whether Kreis deserves to continue on as coach for RSL will remain valid long after the last BLOGGOG on RSLFM’s comparison comes tumbling down.

As RSLFM pointed out, when Kreis took over, he said he felt like RSL has a talented enough squad to make the playoffs still this year. After all, we only needed 39 points in all probability to make the playoffs, and that meant we only needed to put together 10-12 wins over the remainder of the season to achieve that. Almost 4 months ago on May 3rd, hardly anybody would have guessed this was an unrealistic goal. After all, we had last year’s Golden boot, we had a promisingly fast if very raw attacker in Atiba Harris, Luis Tejada was theoretically a player that once in game form could prove quite dangerous. We had several strong defenders, and a line on a VERY fast French outside back, Jean Martial Kipre. We were still weak at D-mid, but how was that any different than before? We still had some talented midfielders, including Freddy Adu…How could we not think we’d find a way to put together 12 lousy wins? Ater all, there were 28 games left in the season…surely we had to be able to win a third of them, right? Sitting now in late August, with 12 games to go, 7 of which are on the road, winning 11 (9 more) seems like an insurmountable task. We have to play Houston twice, @ DC once, @NY once, and @ Chivas once. So even if we manage to win out the others (2 against LA, 2 against Colorado, KC, TFC away, and Chivas at home), we’ll need another minor miracle in 2 of these other games against some good teams in inhospitable places to find ourselves with 39 points in the end. More daunting is that it looks likely that 39 points might not be enough to make the playoffs…7 of 8 qualifying teams are already within 3 wins of this mark (NE{39}, NY{33}, DC{36}, KC{32}, Hou{37}, CHV{30}, and FCD{36}), and Columbus is only 13 points out at 26. The upshot of course is that we’ll likely know soon that we’re mathematically eliminated from the playoffs…the only question will be how many weeks outside of the All-star break it will take.

Had Kreis been named Coach at the end of last season, how would we be judging his 10 point, 14 game performance? I’ll be the first to admit he would have had the opportunity to reshape the team, both tactically and from a personnel standpoint, but given the finish of last season who would imagine Kreis likely to totally revamp the roster at that point? I certainly didn’t anticipate the number of quality players MLS would add to its ranks with the Beckham rule and consequent exposure…Wanchope, Angel, Schelotto, Blanco, Dichio, Toja, Xavier, Reyna, Denilson, and of course Mr. Spice himself. Frankly, the league is better from a talent perspective than it was last year when Cunny, O’Brien and DeRo were the crown jewels of the league. 18 of 38 senior internationals this year are in their first year of MLS. Certainly none of the talk early in the year was on who we could acquire pre-season to match the players who would be coming over once the international transfer window opened. Sure, we talked about who we might acquire at that point, and who that might make available in the league, but after a blistering finish to last season, there weren’t thousands of angry fans hoping Ellinger would fire all of those players and find people who could play. Most of the trades Kreis has made this year, especially the acquisitions of Sturgis, Beckerman, Wingert, and Findley were made possible in large part because of the talent reshuffling caused by foreign player acquisitions. So who are we kidding? Kreis is the head coach of a last place MLS team, not some guy feeling the ropes in a job he’s had for 4 months. What fundamental and tactical changes have we seen since Kreis assumed control? Several people have argued over the months that we have a lack of quality depth, bad player chemistry, and simply too little talent in some positions. The team was built over the previous 2 seasons by Ellinger, and unlike the EPL, throwing obscene money into player acquisition simply isn’t an option. What then, if we’re under-powered, and too alkaline to win in this league, should we be evaluating Kreis’ performance on? Relative to 4 months ago, does the team play more cohesively? Do they have better discipline and better shape? Do they anticipate each other’s play better, or to better effect?

We’ll start with the Stats, since it’s at least hard data. Since Kreis’ ascension, we’ve given up 20 goals and scored 12 in 14 games. While a -8 goal differential isn’t quite the -16 that TFC is boasting this year, it still ranks 11th in the league. While giving up only 20 goals would rank us 3rd in the league, 12 goals works out to an exceptionally poor 0.85 goals per game which would rank us tied for dead last with TFC. Our leading scorers (Findley and C Brown are tied) only have 3 goals apiece, and only 2 other players on the squad have a(emphasis on the singular) goal to their name. Our entire roster boasts fewer goals than the top 13 scorers in the league. Jack Stewart and Esky are tied for the assists leader with 1 apiece. RSL has faced 96 shots on goal while mustering a whopping 61. Flat out, RSL has struggled offensively this year, even under the former all-time leading scorer.

True, the midfield, if less dangerous looks like they’re playing the same game finally, so clearly the chemistry is better, but they still struggle to transition rapidly enough to counter-attack with numbers, and they put far fewer dangerous balls forward than they did before the Beckerman and Sturgis acquisitions. (However, they give the ball away stupidly far less often than Ballouchy himself was responsible for).

After watching a striker with outstanding pace and skill in Cunningham last year, it has been very difficult to watch Esky. He works hard to maintain posession in the attacking third, but rarely improves our odds of getting it there. Findley has some good pace, but is clearly not the threat on ball that Cunny was. Part of what’s so fun about seeing Kipre and Wingert get forward on the wing this year (and it is fun to watch) is sadly that it’s just nice to see somebody do it. But at an average height of 5’9 (a figure that seems generous to me), we’re not going to win a lot of aerial battles over the middle of the defense, which limits the utility of these runs.

Defensively, we’ve done well to improve the play of our outside backs. Kipre and Wingert are a world of improvement over the Forko-Stewart combination. Pope has played well, Rimando, despite a 1.48 GAA has saved 84 shots, and most of the 23 he let in were simply too good to be saved. We are often giving up better shots than we ought to. A big part of this seems to me due to confused midfield defensive assignments which cause us to lose defensive shape, collapsing the central midfield too far into the central defense.

Morales may well make a significant impact on RSL’s ability to transition through the midfield. Perhaps if they finally manage to transition without throwing shape straight out the window, they won’t make such a mess of defending the transition. Clearly that will help RSL down the line, but it seems doubtful it will be enough to change the course of the season. Espindola will certainly be a welcome addition up front, but he’ll need some help to put a few in the onion bag. Mantilla seems more of a choice as a safety net, given the imminent retirement of Pope, though if Eddie’s back starts acting up, he could well see some significant action. I wonder if he can play D-Mid? *sigh*

I get to be hopeful that RSL’s remaining games will be more entertaining than much of the season, but I seriously doubt that we will manage more than a handful of wins. In my mind, Kreis hasn’t brought enough to this team to warrant his continued employment. I would far rather have seen RSL find a good experienced manager than hire Kreis when they did. They certainly didn’t do him any favors by saddling him with a discontented and disjuncted team that had too much history with him personally. I was frankly surprised when he accepted the job in the first place.

If I had to guess, I’d argue that the acquisition of a good GM and or President would have a lot of bearing on whether Kreis keeps his job next year…perhaps more so than the ultimate number of wins RSL manages to scrape together at the end of the year. But that’s based solely on the experience of watching office politics play a more important role in this organization than the good of the team.

-Heretic

Saturday’s viewing

Despite having a couple of games to play on Saturday, I did manage to get out to see some of Saturday’s “dress rehearsal” practice. For the first time in the countless practices I’ve been to over the last 2 1/2 years, this is the the first one which featured a full field intersquad scrimmage. Whether this was a function of the week off and wanting to maintain some game-time consistency, or merely an opportunity to see Kreis’ trialists in full field space I couldn’t say. Sadly, as my time was limited, I didn’t have an opportunity to get to talk to any of the coaching staff. More importantly, I had the opportunity to witness first-hand what until now I’ve been forced to take other people’s word for…namely the play of Edgar Espindola, Javier Morales and Matias Mantilla. I can say with great certainty that the transition to put any one of these players into the starting lineup will be far less seamless than any of RSL’s recent transactions. Findley, Sturgis, Wingert, and Beckerman all walked right onto the field to show immediate impact. I don’t expect the same from the new Argentine players. And while it’s not technically certain that Jason will sign them all, from the playing time they had, I would be surprised to see it any other way. I just wish that the play that I had seen was more of a no-brainer decision. I guess that the relative value of the choice will depend a lot on salary requirements for the three. Not that RSL doesn’t have the money, but rather that none of these players seemed to me of DP caliber and in the case of Espindola, I’m not sure he would even start.

Morales, or “Javi” is by far the most interesting player of the three. While he is clearly very composed and confident on the ball, he was having great difficulty seeing the structure of the attack. He obviously was not seeing eye to eye with his squad in the scrimmage in terms of the progression of play. His passing was surprisingly undangerous given the space he was able to command in the middle. He clearly wanted several times to hit the end of the offensive wheel coming from the rotation…(if you imagine that Javi has possessed and positioned himself to pass on the right side of the midfield, ten yards past midfield. Brown and Brown, rather than making diagonal runs across the goal were looking to run more directly forward…had they run across the goal to draw the central defenders, the left midfielder would have been open up the wing…this was the pass it looked like he was looking to hit, but the area was congested due to miscommunication. He weights passes quite well, but his accuracy on longer passes seemed suspect to me. For an attacking midfielder he was good in defensive transition, and rather than the wide roaming style we are used to seeing from RSL midfielders, Javi plays a much more naturally central role. He plays a much more consistent style than Williams, but didn’t show much flair to produce space. He and Andy are very different players, and bring very different styles to the pitch. While Andy relishes attacking and baiting defenders, Javi seemed far more content to pass and receive quickly to create the same space. He moves well off the ball and likes to maintain controlling position rather than commit to more compromised positions. I liked what I saw, but his passes were frequently off the mark and occasionally ill-conceived.

Matias Mantilla played sweeper for the duration of the practice. He was positionally sound, made some good steps forward when warranted, and generally played a smart structural game. He did occasionally step forward to challenge the wrong ball, one he was poorly positioned in the flow to handle cleanly. He has poise on the ball, and certainly did not appear flustered. I would have liked to see him play against Findley, who by far looked the most dangerous striker on the pitch for us. I also would have liked to see him challenge in the air more often to see how well he judges the ball. He did get forward on a corner and made contact…something few and far between from RSL corner kicks, but didn’t manage a clean strike. I Don’t know how well he would play stopper, or whether Kreis and Pope would be willing to experiment with a side-by-side center. Nevertheless, he seemed quite natural playing sweeper.

Espindola, the player I most hoped would show me something to be excited about looked most out of sorts on the pitch. Unfortunately about the best thing I saw from him was making a couple of very heady runs which Jamie Watson clearly either didn’t expect or flat out didn’t see. A good ball on one of them would definitely have put him 1v1. He definitely worked hard for position the entire time, but barely saw a scrap of the ball.

So now I guess I know what people meant when their response to how the Argentines looked was, “meh”. It’s not that they look untalented, clearly they are skilled enough to play at this level…but merely that they don’t appear to be likely to radically transform the way RSL plays. Presumably if they are signed, they would be unlikely to be able to play this weekend, and it’s not all together clear that, were they eligible to play, that their impact would be substantial.