Jermaine Jones passing the ball, WTF?

Yes.

I got the impression that he wasn't terribly interested in the game at times. One minute he would be throwing himself at attacking players and laying his body on the line, the next he was half arse passing the ball and had trouble making it go 5 feet. Overall I thought he played well defensively, but maybe he was told to not push the ball forward so he got bored.

I had not considered that part. But there is the answer

I don't get all the Jermaine Jones hate on this board. He's a massive upgrade over whoever we played beside Bradley four years ago, whether that was Mo (I love you Mo) or Rico Clark or Torres.

He's not perfect, but he's pretty damn good. He's athletic, has a good passing range, and can strike a ball. He gets a little sloppy at times, but not significantly more than most CMs.

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I was actually very pleased with Jones' performance yesterday. It was nice to see him stay put in the backfield for the most part and not push forward and crowd the midfield with Bradley which he often does.

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He still did this often enough for it to be a huge problem in the WC. Ghana is going to expose our back four if he gives them as much open space as he gave yesterday.

There were multiple times when he wasn't sure if he should close down on the ball or man an attacker so he choose instead to do neither and become a spectator.

I am at the point where I would rather see them put Bradley at CDM and someone like Diskerud at CAM if they're going to stay in a 4-1-2-1-2. Jones is viable if he has a partner at CM to allow him to push forward at times, but as the lone CDM he just isn't disciplined enough and it will cost the US against the quality teams in our group.

Jones is worse than I was expecting and he is definitely worse now than he was on the Gold Cup team. Somehow, in old age, his soccer IQ has gone down and he makes more reckless passes now. Plus, understandably, he has lost some of his speed and endurance. His sub-par club form reinforces this.

A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have even entertained Beckerman over Jones. Now I would although I prefer Jones.

It's not the completion percentage that is the problem. It's the timing of errant passes. No pressure and plenty of time to pick out a pass, but puts it into traffic and turns it over. And he has a habit of doing it when he is out of position.

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They had a bunch of space, because it was just him not because it was him. The diamond is not defensively sound as it relies on the two center backs stepping up to help out in the midfield, which cannot happen with our backline. Jones is probably the best person to put there if we are going to do that.

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It's a combination of both being just him and it being him. He is just not disciplined and gets sucked too far up field for a CDM.

Shingauradian has a good article showing exactly what he does at times and you can't say this is because it's "only him":

LINK

The funny part is he he had the horrible pass to the left at midfield that counts as a completion because Bradley (I think) eventually ran it down.

Jones looked great IMO in his "new" role in the diamond. He plays that really well. Bradley has been uncharacteristically giving the ball away the last 2 games and hasn't looked as sharp as we have come to expect.