re: Tactically, this team is all over the place

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I have to agree with SCH on this one. I was a Jurgy hater for awhile too but to get out of that group was outstanding and he's shut me up for 4 years barring some horrific collapse in 2018 qualification.

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I've accepted that I will forever have a love-hate relationship with Jurgy. His decision to leave Donovan off of the roster will forever piss me off, especially considering we had NO playmaker. Imagine if we had played Bradley next to Jones and then had Donovan pulling the strings from the 10 position. Remember how he dominated the shite out of the Gold Cup from that position?

That said, we got out of a group that no one (outside of our own players and die hard fans) thought we would get out of, and we did it without our best forward and best player in our nation's history. We only had 70 minutes of decent soccer the entire tournament (in the Portugal game), and that was frustrating, but like Homey says the results speak for themselves.

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You try shite out by letting a young defensive midfielder play with Michael Bradley from the get-go, not by putting Bedoya, who is primarily a hustle guy, in the middle of the field and asking him to be a number 6. That's just stupid.

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I'm not sure what formation we could have played where people would have been in more natural positions, though, and still have 2 strikers. I think we all agree that Jozy looks better up top with a partner, and while I think the diamond is the best thing for us I'm still not entirely sure.

One thing that pisses me off though is the misuse of Bradley. Let the player at the top of the diamond pressure up high, and let Bradley clean up the trash. He's best from deep, as evidenced by our second goal. Also, he's the only one who can break up an attack and relieve pressure while holding the ball and not have me tight-butthole the whole time.

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That and he's capping the frick out of everyone even guys who are at best fringe players at their clubs abroad esp ones with duel citizenship

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EN GARDE

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I'm not sure what formation we could have played where people would have been in more natural positions, though, and still have 2 strikers. I think we all agree that Jozy looks better up top with a partner, and while I think the diamond is the best thing for us I'm still not entirely sure.

One thing that pisses me off though is the misuse of Bradley. Let the player at the top of the diamond pressure up high, and let Bradley clean up the trash. He's best from deep, as evidenced by our second goal. Also, he's the only one who can break up an attack and relieve pressure while holding the ball and not have me tight-butthole the whole time.

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I think that it was just a straight 4-4-2 where positioning is situational. Klinsmann hasn't given a lot of direction in situations like that in the past, and Bradley didn't start moving way up the field until after Denmark had a really easy time playing out of the back during the first 10-20 minutes of the game. Twellman starting harping on Aron's/Jozy's defensive work later in the first half. I think that he was right that one of them needed to do more and not just hang out trying to occupy a defender off of the ball. That would have taken a lot of the workload off of Bradley.

Klinsmann certainly could have stepped in, but I think that that's something that they absolutely should be able to work out among themselves (versus some other situations where he hasn't stepped in), and it looked a lot more natural with Morales and Rubin, who hassled the shite out of people, though it looked fricking terrible elsewhere.

Doesn't make the Bedoya/Bradley partnership make sense, though.

I'd rather shite the bed in friendlies and get results in official competition. at this point all I care about is July.

Experimenting and capping players. I am gold with that.

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Rimando is a really good keeper.

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That may be, but if was a GREAT keeper, he'd be able to stop a known international goal scorer who's running around unmarked in front of goal for 70 minutes.

What a schlub.

The same thing happening before and after halftime indicates both.

How much do y'all think a fully fit/inform Ozvaldo Alonso would benefit this midfield?

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That may be, but if was a GREAT keeper, he'd be able to stop a known international goal scorer who's running around unmarked in front of goal for 70 minutes.

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Can anyone truly stop Lord Bendtner, though?

I'm really trying to be more optimistic in my everyday life so I'm going to hold off on being too pissed off. It does suck to have the lead in matches against class opponents only to watch them steal it in the closing minutes. Jurgen's never been the greatest tactical mind, but this recent trend of collapsing at the end is dreadful. That said, I believe that this is all just a chance to try different things early in the cycle.

I mean, last cycle it was full meltdown for a while only for the squad to turn into a wrecking crew. This is the same old team we see after every World Cup. Everything reaches a fever pitch, and afterwards, everyone just basically phones it in until a meaningful match.

On the plus side, at least we're netting goals. I'd rather lose on a Lord Bendtner super play than get crushed by Ireland any day.

This off topic but SCH I have been meaning to ask you:

If you worked for ManU, and (hypothetically speaking) right after a goal in a big game, the manager found you and gave you a nice stiff slap to the face, how would you react?