Toronto FC Preview

First off, here is the broadcast information if you will not be at the game.

04/30/11, 7:00 PM

KONG 6/16, 97.3 KIRO FM, La Gran D 99.3 FM

Toronto is an interesting team. They only have 1 win this season, at home over Portland. When they have lost, they let in a good number of goals. 3-0 loss to DC United, and 4-2 to Vancouver. Both games were on the road. They have 4 draws, of which three are 1-1 and one 0-0 to the LA Galaxy. They don’t appear to be a great road team and also don’t seem to pose much of an offensive threat.

It looks like they play in a 4-5-1 formation that turns into a 4-3-3 when they attack. When looking at their players, it’s hard to peg one guy as someone to watch out for, because they keep rotating their lineup from game to game. Also worth noting is Tony Tchani is suspended for this game for the 2 yellows he picked up last week. They have speed on the wings, so our outside backs will be tasked with shutting down their flank play.

When looking at the Sounders, they are numerous questions going into this game.

Who replaces Zakuani, and how does the team respond to playing without him? My guess is that either Alvaro Fernandez or Erik Friberg will slide into his space for the time being. Over time, I think players like Miguel Montano, Mike Fucito, David Estrada and Lamar Neagle will get a shot as well, but will probably have to prove something as a substitute first.

Also, word out of the Sounders camp is that O’Brian White had surgery for a blood clot Wednesday night so he is out indefinitely. The obvious move is to bring Nate Jaqua on for him, but we are now really lacking offensive depth. It may not be a big deal, but this week we lost 2 players that have combined for 4 goals and 4 assists.

Ultimately, I think it’s time for Montero to step it up a notch and start knocking in some goals. Talent wise, he is a player capable of scoring 15 goals a season, but he needs to start producing at a better rate. Having another creative attacking player like Rosales should help pull some pressure off of him.

Defensively for this game I have a few questions. Will Tyson Wahl start in place of Leo Gonzalez again? Will Ianni start instead of Parke again? I don’t know if Sigi was just sending a message to these players to pick up their game, or if they may be losing their starting slots. I think Gonzalez is the better defender between himself and Tyson Wahl. However, Gonzalez is losing his speed and is susceptible to quick attacking players.

At the end of the day, this is a very winnable game for the Sounders. A loss in my eyes is unacceptable at this point. Maybe I am a tad bit over the top, but these are games that must be won if we are going to be a team challenging to be one of the best teams in the league, which I think is within our ability. My prediction is a 2-0 win.

Sounders Forever!

Tuesday's Sounders Thoughts

I decided not to do a player ratings post from the Colorado match. Following the tackle on Zakuani there was just little to really look at with how the team played. On one hand I was a little miffed that they played so poorly, even when up a man. However, you could tell there was just a lot of emotions going on and it really effected the team. Its never fun to see a high level player get injured like that, but when it happens that early in the game it has to take something out of you. I am looking forward to seeing the teams response to playing at home this week.

Overall, I think we have achieved what we wanted to out of this 2 game road trip. 4 points against 2 good teams on the road is a good achievement. As you can see in one of my earlier posts, I talked about the number of points I would like to grab over this 5 game period. I wanted to see us pick up around 7 or 8 points at a minimum. A win against Toronto puts us at that 7 point mark before we go on another 2 game road trip against DC United and the Columbus Crew. 9 to 11 points is now reasonable.

I will put a more in-depth preview of the Toronto game up in a few days. Hopefully between now and then we find out that Brian Mullan has received at least a 5 game suspension.

Go Sounders!

That tackle made me mad, so I wrote about it

As we all know by now, Steve Zakuani is most likely out for the rest of the Season with two broken bones in his leg thanks to a bad, bad tackle from Brian Mullan.

There are a few main points I want to get. First off, the tackle was terrible. Just flat out malicious. Mullan lost the ball, and was mad the referee didn't call a foul. That's fine. The reaction of then flying into the player who has the ball halfway up his leg, over the ball, with your studs up is a tad bit of an over reaction...*saracasm*

After the game Mullan stated "I’m sorry for Steve. It was never my intention to injure him in the least. It’s a tackle that I’ve done hundreds of times and would probably do again. I had no intention of hurting him. It’s a freak, freak thing, and I apologize and wish Steve a speedy recovery"

The key part here is the "...It's a tackle that I've done hundreds of times and probably do again."

The sad thing is, its probably true that its a tackle that he has done alot, although perhaps not with as much maliciousness behind. MLS is a physical league. However, it steps past being just a physical league when tackles like this one today happen all the time. I for one am sick of it. The league allows teams to punish attacking players by fouling them. It is a tactic, but MLS has allowed it to a point where going in for bone crunching tackles is considered normal. These tackles happen to often, and many times are just yellow cards. If Mullan had made the same tackle and not broken Zakuani's leg, does he still get the red? Any one who has followed MLS for a good period of time knows that is very likely that it would have just been a yellow, especially given how early in the game it was.

Mullan deserves at a minimum, a 5 game ban. Knowing MLS, it will probably be 3. In the end, 1 player helped out the rest of the league by taking out an attacking player for the rest of the season. MLS, I really hope you see what is going on here and act appropriately.

Extensive Game Review and Player Ratings

For this weeks game I decided to take a much more indepth look back at the game when I did my player ratings. First off, when I was re-watching the game, I actually kept track of how many passes each player made, and how many were completed. This was purely out of curiousity, but after doing so, its definitely something I want to do over the following games so I can start seeing if there are any trends with specific players.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with the result. Going into this game I felt like this was a game we could win. Unfortunately, the monsoon like weather made this game pretty ugly and I am going to somewhat write off this game. Getting the late goal and sealing up a point on the road is pretty good. Also, I think the Union are going to be a team that is generally going to be pretty hard for most teams to beat. They currently are tied with New York for the lowest goals against average.

Now onto the individual players ratings.

First, let me give a few guidelines for how I kept track of these passing statistics. In general, I only counted situations where the player actually had a reasonable chance to control the ball and distribute. For example, a player maki
ng a slide tackle, or sticking his leg out to defend a cross and end up deflecting the ball to one of his team mates would not count as a completed pass. However, in a situation where the sounder player was able to step in front of their man and steal the ball while looking down the field at the rest of their team, I would count their pass as either completed or incomplete. This is because in these situations, they had a reasonable ability to control the ball, and distribute.

O’Brian White- 5.5
This was just a tough game overall for White. He didn’t see much of the ball, partially due to the Union Defense and partially due to poor service. Overall, he completed 5 out of 9 passes. Out of all the Sounders players on the field, he definitely saw the least amount of the ball. He did an ok job of holding up play when he was able to get the ball, and won some balls out of the air, but he just wasn’t able to get all that involved. Not entirely sure that I would peg this on him, as our midfield wasn't all that great from an offensive standpoint most of the game. Some may call for him to move to the bench in place of Jaqua, which isn't that far fetched, but I still want to see more from White.

Mauro Rosales- 6.5

Rosales had a pretty good game overall. He was a bit of our lone creative attacker for the first 65 minutes of the game. Once we brought on Montero, you could tell that our offense started to click a bit more. In the first half especially, we had a difficult time moving the ball down the field. From a passing perspective, Rosales completed 11 of 18 passes with most of his completed passes coming in the second half. Rosales is not going to be a player who will single handedly win games for us, but he is definitely a player who will improve the overall quality of our team.

Steve Zakuani- 6

Zakuani is a bit of an interesting case. Statistically, he has a pretty good game. he completed 23 of 26 passes. However, it seemed he lost the ball quite a lot off the dribble. Many times he was in a position where his options were either drop the ball back to Gonzalez, or beat his defender off the dribble. While he gave the ball away a good deal in this game,This was a game where I was OK with it, to some extent. In most circumstances he was in a position where if he beat his man, we would be springing a decent attack. Due to the Union defense and the wonderful weather conditions, this did not happen all that much. He received a "MLS" assist with his pass to Montero, which then went to the head of Fernandez. Ultimately, Zak probably didn't have the greatest game, but it was passable.

Brad Evans- 5

Just going to put this out there front and center. I am definitely having a love/hate relationship with Evans this season. In year one, I thought he did a great job. Year two he was injured, and so far this year I keep going back and forth from "he has been pretty good" to "Oh my gosh why are you playing?!?!" For example, to start off the game, I think his first 3 or 4 passes were all to the Union, and he was dispossessed numerous times. However, he then shows up late in the box, and has opportunities to score, but just can't seem to be able to put it in. Historically, he has scored most of his goals by being that guy arriving a second or two after the forwards and wingers and putting home the cross. A few times over the course of this game, he appeared there, just never really did anything with it. In all fairness, it was really only 1 or 2 half chances at best this game. On the positive side he played better in the second half, and completed a good number of passes, 12 of 15 to be exact. He was only 11 of 18 in the first half. However, when we look at Osvaldo Alonso next, we will see a different story.

Osvaldo Alonso- 7

By keeping track of number of passes completed and attempted really helped solidify some thoughts I had about Alonso. He's a stud, plain and simple. Easily the most under rated holding midfielder in the league, although I think that is starting to finally change this year. I have heard one or two national broadcasters name him as a top 3 holding midfielder in MLS, which he most certainly is. Let's just look at his passing stats, and then dissect them. First off, he had the most touches on the ball than any other Sounder on the field. He completed 25 of 31 passes in the first half, and 16 of 24 in the second half so he was right around 75% overall. A couple of things worth noting. In th first half especially, Alonso did a masterful job of winning the job and distributing at the same time. Many times he would win a tackle, but also gain the ball from it. Many players are able to win the ball, but are they in a position where they can redistribute from the tackle? Alonso is constantly winning the ball and immediately able to move the ball on to another player. He had one bad tackle that set up the goal. Kind of a stupid tackle, but its better than just letting the guy shoot. Had he not scissored the guy with his trailing leg, it would have been an amazing tackle.

Erik Friberg- 5

He completed a decent number of passes, but his crossing was rather inconsistent. He hustles and runs a lot, but in the end he didn't really do a whole lot this game. He does a great job helping us maintain possession with good 1 and 2 touch passing. However, something I noticed in this game that is worth watching in the future is his ability to move off the ball. In particular, he played a few balls into Rosales where he would then play the ball into space, and Friberg would still be in the same general area from where he played the initial ball. Not sure how much of this is miscommunication between players. I have seen him make great runs, but if memory serves me correctly, its been when he has played in middle. Just something worth keeping an eye. In a similar light as Zakuani, this was just a bit of a game to just write off for now, because playing on the wing in these conditions is just incredibly difficult as everything slows down and you can't play as fast as you like. Neither team really had any kind of success on the wing throughout this game.

James Riley, Jeff Parke, John Kennedy Hurtado- 6.5

I decided to do all three of these guys as a group because as I was writing this, I realized that I was pretty much saying the same thing about all three. Overall, they all completed a high perceantage of passes. Almost all their passes that were incomplete were long balls that have a lower percentage of being completed in the first place. Defensively, they didn't really have anything all that dangerous to deal with all night. There was one instance early in the second half where Parke and Hurtado let Le Toux get in behind them, but luckily the shot left a lot to be desired.

Leo Gonzalez- 6

Played pretty well. Like the rest of the defense, never really had anything all that major to deal with. Perhaps he is deserving of a 6.5 as the rest of the defense, but because he was the defender taken off when they went to a 3-man back line, as well as not distributing the ball that well at times. A lot of times when he won the ball, he would just launch it up field rather than see if he could find another player to pass to.

Kasey Keller-6.5

Only thing that you can really say this game is that maybe he could have done better on the goal. He got caught stepping to his left, and wasn't really able to dive back to the right. The ball did take a small deflection, but Kasey just wasn't really able to get back across the goal. This is really nitpicking his play though. Overall, he played fine. Probably should have a higher rating, but all his other saves were nothing to write home about. Never had to make that save that kept us in the game, partially due to decent defense, and lack of any really offesnive firepower from the Union.

Substitutes

Fredy Montero- 7

When Montero came on the field, our ability to attack and be dangerous sky rocketed. Montero slid into the forward slot where Rosales was playing, with Rosales dropping behind him to be the attacking midfielder. Unlike Rosales, Montero had someone who could now supply service to him. There were several balls that Montero received from Rosales that either gave him a decent look at goal, or put him a position to play a dangerous ball in to someone else. He had the assist to Fernandez, which was a pretty nice ball. Had a few other opportunities to score himself, but wasn't quite able to get the final ball in there.

Nate Jaqua- 6

Jaqua did a better job winning the ball in the air than White did. This was a game in all honesty where Jaqua may have been a better fit than White to deal with the Union's physicality. While they are both target forwards, White is more suited to a game where he can pull the center backs out wide where he picks up the ball before passing back to the midfield. Last weeks game against the Fire was a pretty good example of this style of play from a target forward. Jaqua did a good job of just being physical and getting his head on the ball. Unlike white, I feel like Jaqua isn't as much of a scoring threat with his head as White is. It will be interesting to see if Jaqua will start on Friday.

Alvaro Fernandez- 7

You could tell when Fernandez came on to the field he was desperate to show Sigi that he should be in the starting 11, while also fighting hard for his team mates. He had an immediate impact and was running all over the right side of the field. He combined well with Rosales on a number of occasions. Ultimately, he stole the point by getting up well and putting the ball in the back of the net. By playing well and getting the goal, I think he is really going to give Sigi a major headache over who starts, now that he should be able to start again.

Looking back at this game, a draw is a pretty good result. I would like to have the three points, and Philadelphia is a team that I think were should be capable of beating. However, once you take the weather into account, and the style of play they utilize, getting the draw ends up not being that much of an issue to me. This Friday they have one of their harder road games, playing the reigning MLS Cup champions. All in all, by getting a draw at Philadelphia puts them in a position where picking up around 7 points from this 5 game stretch is plausible.

The Importance Of The Next Five Games

Saturday begins the start of a relatively tough 5 game stretch. Here are our next 5 games.
Away to Philadelphia Union
Away to Colorado Rapids
Home to Toronto FC
Away to DC United
Away to Columbus Crew

Following this 5 game stretch, we have a 3 game home stand, started off by the first visit from the Portland Timbers. Going into this stint at home, I think we need to do a good job of grabbing a good chunk of points. There are 15 points possible here, and I think we need to a minimum of at least 7 or 8 points to put us in a good position for this home stand. How do I see this happening?

Ideal Scenario:
Away to Philadelphia Union- Win
Away to Colorado Rapids-Loss
Home to Toronto FC-Win
Away to DC United-Win or Draw
Away to Columbus Crew-Draw or Loss

Looking at these 5 games, the only team that I think is legitimately better than the Sounders is the Rapids. Everyone else is still unproven in my eyes, and I think the Sounders are in a great position to pick up points on the road. I think picking up at least 2 wins and a draw over the next 5 games is reasonable, if not the bare minimum we should pick up. In the end, I think we could feasibly pick up anywhere from 9 to 12 points with wins over the Union, Toronto, and DC United.

Over our first 5 games, we have only gained 1 point per game, which currently puts us 12th in the league if you go on a single table standing. We are 6th in the Western Conference. We need to start raising the number of points per game we pick up, both to put us in a good position in the playoffs, and because if we want any shot at the supporters shield, we obviously need to pick up more points.

Secondly, we have a three game home stand coming up. Ideally, we should not lose our home games. Following this 5 game stint, I am thinking we should have 7 to 9 points coming our way. To those wondering, these games are against Portland, Sporting KC, and FC Dallas. These won’t be easy games, but I see 2 wins and a draw being more than reasonable.

Why This Matters

We need to move up the table. We are currently 12th if you looked at this from a single table point of view. Secondly, just from a playoffs standpoint, we want to position ourselves to be one of the top three automatic western conference berths, and not a wild card. Last year a slow start over the first ten games or so made the end of the season a bit too dramatic. Let’s position ourselves to challenge for a supporters shield rather than a wild cup berth to the Playoffs.

Perhaps I am just a bit of an overzealous Sounders fan, but I want to see us move up the table! Is that too much to ask?

Seattle Sounders @ Philadelphia Union Preview

First off, here is the local broadcast information.

KONG 6/16, 97.3 KIRO FM, La Gran D 99.3 FM
Game time: 1:00 PM PST

On to the game preview. The Union are currently 1st in the Eastern conference with 9 points, and 4 games played. The Sounders are 6th in the West, with 5 points out of five games played. So far, the Union have won 3 games by a 1-0 score, and their 1 lost is also by a 1-0 score, at the hands of the LA Galaxy.

The Union can be a fairly defensive team, as evidenced by all the 1 nil results. They appear to generally line up in a 4-4-2 formation with essentially two holding mid fielders. They have started some games in a bit of a 4-3-3 With Mwanga, Le Toux, and Ruiz all playing up front, but it looks like they are getting away from that, and playing with Le Toux and Ruiz as the two forwards. Also, generally their central midfield is Stefani Miglioranzi and Brian Carroll, but it is possible that Carroll will miss this match due to injury. Last week, they played Amobi Okugo in his place when he left with injury, so he may get the start this week.

Things To Watch

Union Forwards- Le Toux and Ruiz haven't really got it going yet for this season, so they are a bit of an unknown quantity. However, Le Toux is an ex-sounder, and Ruiz has a good deal of history in MLS. Le Toux is a player who likes to float around the offensive third and try and get in behind the defense. Ruiz is a bit of a poacher who will mainly be in front of goal looking for service, but he is not a target forward. He is also a player our defense will need to very careful with because he goes down easy and we don't want to put the game in the hands of the referee.

Defensively, the Union have been known to be a bit of thuggish team. However, this isn't really evidenced in the number of fouls they have committed or in number of yellow cards. I think they are a bit more disciplined than they were at times last year. They still play pretty physically, and to some extent, some of their players like Danny Califf, will use this physical play to try and get under the opponents skin. It's something for the players to be aware of and just focus on the game. In their games against LA, and Vancouver, they drew some retaliatory red cards from the opposition.

What will the Sounders line up be? If I have to make a guess, I am pretty sure it will be the same as last week. Sigi has been coy on whether or not Montero will even travel for the game, if even play. Honestly, I think this is just gamesmanship and attempt to keep his cards close to his chest. I see Montero coming on for 20-30 minutes at the end, especially if its tied, or we are down. There is a slight possibility that he could jump back into the starting line up, but I don't really see that happening. If it does happen, who gets dropped? I would like to see Rosales play as an attacking midfielder alongside Osvaldo Alonso with either Erik Friberg, or Alvaro Fernandez playing on the right side. Unfortunately, Sigi made a comment this week about if they were to put Brad Evans up on the market this week, every team would be asking for him. Thus, I don't really see Sigi dropping Evans, so it will be interesting to see how this unfolds over the next 3 games or so.

Prediction

I hope we get the win, but in all honesty I see us coming away with a 1-1 draw. They are a decently defensive team, and we haven't quite proven that we are capable of scoring 2 or 3 goals each game yet. We have the last 2 games, but I want to see more continued success before I start believing.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or hit me up on twitter @SounderForever

Go Sounders!

The "what happens when Montero can play again?" debate

I think a huge question floating around right now is what happens when Montero is 100% fit again? The O’Brian White-Mauro Rosales combo has worked well for the last two games. What if Montero can start on Saturday? Now there’s the million dollar question.

Sigi has been a bit coy on what his plans are. I think the two most widely accepted ideas are to play Montero and White upfront with Rosales sliding over to right mid, or dropping into the center. Next big question: If Rosales plays in the center, what does Sigi do with Brad Evans? As much as Evans has been a big contributor to this team, especially in year one, I don’t think he is much better than a MLS journeyman level player. He is good, but nothing special. You could make a case to move him out to right mid, but that is Erik Friberg’s natural position, and I think he has shown well in his time there, so he should keep his spot.
These are just my thoughts, I really have no idea what the lineup will look like on Saturday. Since Montero has been out, I have a sneaking suspicion he won’t start and we will see the exact same line up as we had in Chicago Fire game. He will probably come on as a sub for Rosales around the 60th-70th minute. Ultimately, I think there are some big unknowns here, once Montero can start again. We all saw the failed Freddie Ljungberg experiment when we kept moving him from center, to the right, to forward, and jostling other players like Jaqua and Evans as well. I really want to avoid a similar scenario.

Personally, I think Rosales is the missing puzzle piece. He has played quite well the last few games. He brings some creativity that we haven't really had outside of Montero. Once Montero is back on the field, how these two players link up could be a force to reckon with. Hopefully everything works out and we start scoring goals left and right and picking up the 3 points each game.How Sigi manages this situation can really affect our success. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds over the 2 or 3 games.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts below, or on my twitter @Sounderforever

Stay tuned for a preview of the upcoming Union game which will be posted on Thursday.