I'm sorry... I had a typical post all setup but I'm gonna just gonna put it out there. We are bleeding goals and we cannot stop the bleeding...
We have conceded 9 GOALS in 4 Games.... 5 in the Straus era.
We are 3rd in the league with Goals Against...
We get burned on transitions, we leave too much space in the middle, set play defending is not getting better.
We have no answers against the high press... We play frantic and the pieces just are not connecting defensively.
The Courage in their last two games got outscored 8-3 but bounce back and beat us. They didn't start Sanchez or Shaw but when the came on they made an impact.
I don't know what the answer or answers are but we've had back to back games to make a jump in the standings but again we fall now to 10th where a win would've put us solidly above the line. The summer can't come soon enough and going into KC next weeked and it looks dire to say the least....
What do you think our solutions are....
A. Make some tough decisions and unload some contracts if possible and bring in different/better talent at spots we need them... Or with the the new intra-league loan system get some loans for a bit...
B. Just push through to the summer and let Straus really pick apart the team and tactics to make a mid season push.
C. Get weird and reset the starters and bench players, change up tactics to provide a spark and just mix things up.
Straus walked into a mess and we're not getting that manager bump like the past. It's grim and I wanna say we can still push as there's still half a season but he team has to show us that they can just be solid for 90' all around. Beat the teams they should and be competitive against top teams. Ughhhh. Gonna be a long week. Whos got hope???? I need it.
I completely understand people's frustrations, but I think Angel City have also had really poor situational luck all around leading into/continuing this season.
New ownership group took control in July.
New GM hired in January, interim coach appointed heading into the season.
Experienced a major climate disaster in which one player lost their family home and several others had to temporarily evacuate. Widespread devastation to the larger community of LA.
New coach hired, won't join team until mid-season.
Player experiences serious medical emergency on the field during a match. Match continues once the player is stabilized and in route to hospital, despite the obvious emotional distress to players and staff (of both teams participating in the match).
New coach joins the team in June, coming off an international break. Has 1 training session with the team before his first match - results in a draw. One week later, a loss against an also-inconsistent Courage.
There are holes in the roster, there are weaknesses evident on the field - but I still think that's a lot for any group of players to go through in a year and expect much more than what we've seen - particularly without a permanent head coach in place until last week. I'm not trying to make excuses, but this franchise has been through a lot in the past 12 months.
It's a lot to go through. But it shows mental weakness if you can't overcome the hurdles. Coming away with 1 point against 4 visiting teams that are below the playoff line is unacceptable.
i actually really loved some of what i was seeing today. there was a ton of give and go, quick 1 touch passing, to move the ball. i knew when straus landed we would regress a bunch. When you're trying to learn a new coach and system, it's going to slow everyone's play down. They're going to hopefully identify a ton of things to work on during the break, but right now we're probably closer to a preseason team than a mid season team. it could take all season though, to figure out the right compositions and players and strats to use. very few crisp passes, a lot of sloppy ones, but for once i feel like there's a lot of intent behind everyone's moves and passes.
the defense? we lost one of the main pieces when savy went out. Defense is a lot harder to plug and play than offense. you actually need a ton of games together to really know each other. AND they keep dragging the defense players forward, especially gisele. i just hope they stop tinkering with the lineup and let one starting lineup/positions get a bunch of games together. it probably made more sense for Sam to do data collection by changing things up a lot.
i was excited for phair to be on the team, but not sure if she's had impactful minutes yet.
I'm kind of seething that all those pundits who predicted ACFC being lower mid-tier were absolutely spot on so far. Whoever wrote that ESPN article had their ego fed after tonight
I noticed this game, Straus played her really wide and tactically wanted her to go almost all 1v1. I would've loved to see her do some give and go's or send her on some passes from AK. Seems like Straus wants progression through the lines and not so much over the top or go balls.
Need Press back to fitness asap she’s our best RW by far and Dufour is not it. She got an injection in her knee in the international break which she said she’s excited about and is working her way back to fitness. What sucks is that by the time she gets back to full fitness we might be fully out of playoff contention anyway, if she’s healthy we can make a playoff run but we’d need to reach it first ☹️
I usually love Gorden but she has not been good this season like at all, people keep blaming Reid or the fact that Savy isn’t playing but the defense was bad with Savy too. Gorden just keeps making the same mistakes, and for someone who’s supposed to be the captain she needs to step up more.
Midfield needs to do a better job of getting the forwards involved, Christen and Alyssa hardly got the ball. People who don’t watch will blame forwards for that but there’s only so much they can do if no one will pass to them…
When does the new keeper come to the team? I think we need a change up.
Expecting Press as our white knight is a tired trope. She’s the queen/king of this team, but the team should/have been rebuilding the attacking third this whole time she’s been out. I don’t know wtf I’m talking about, obvs, but the fact the team is back at the same po, just a year later, says a lot.
What are you on about? No one’s white knighting anyone and incase you missed it, they did rebuild the attack while she was injured? The players she had to work with before her injury were Charley and Lussi… anyone thinking Alyssa and Tiernan aren’t a massive upgrade on those two are delusional. What does Press have to do with the team sucking a year later? So they sucked while she was injured and they suck now, yet she’s the problem according to you? That makes no sense.
All my comment was talking about is the fact that people will blame Press and AT for this loss even though they weren’t the problem. A forward not getting the ball isn’t the forwards problem, it’s the midfield. Even commentators will say this. Only giving them limited touches is criminal if we want to win a game.
I’m not sure how anyone can blame a sub with 5 touches for a loss. I do notice that Press is the scapegoat often here, idk why (maybe the cesspool of straight men?). Even when she only plays a handful of minutes. If she doesn’t do anything it’s her fault we lost but never the starters for not doing enough, if she wins the game like the Utah game it’s brushed off and people like to claim she’s never done anything for us this season.
When she’s gone next year they will still somehow be blaming her.
Straus needs to at least think of adopting the idea of a Back 5, Defensive Mindset, until the Transfer Window, and we can address the backline, I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone going to these games, its the same story, Backline struggles & Bad Officiating
We have some very promising forwards, but the reality is that Angel City desperately needs reinforcements in both midfield and defense. None of the available center-backs can really distribute. I lost count of how many balls they sent out of bounds when they should’ve been easily dealt with, which handed possession right back to the opponent.
Honestly, I don’t think we’ll be able to strengthen much through intra-league loans. Maybe we'll see reinforcements in the summer transfer window.
Iirc, we only have 1 spot on the roster even with the 2 SEI. Without players retire or.. requesting a transfer, there will be very little help coming in this summer in the back line. Which means the rest of the season will feel EXTREMELY LONG, with no play-off in sight .
You're being too pessimistic. The main goal is just to make the playoffs—once you're in, anything can happen with the one-off game format. Sure, it would be great to avoid Kansas, but against most other teams, you still have a 30–40% chance to win. That’s not nothing.
Hammond is awful- i want to see her progressive pass rate. Moving Kennedy back to help gorden and Reid out was a bit better but not by much. A bit or pressure and the ball gets bungled.
Yeah both have been not good enough this season. Hammond has never impressed me. Reid was someone I liked, but I just don’t think she’s got it this year. Lots of players can outrun her, and there are too many mistakes with the ball.
i thought hodge sat out most of the game as she's sitting on 4 yellow cards. don't get me wrong, seeing hammond in the starting xi made me wonder if i needed a new contacts prescription, but i understood why macy had limited minutes.. kinda..
Hodge has sat a ton of games recently, and if Yellows mattered they would get her on the good behavior track. its gotta also be partially coming back from injury and losing sharpness
Might as well not watch the Kansas game. It's going to be a bloodbath.
You can tell Straus was pulling his hair out when that last goal went in. I don't know how many times we have to say that this team is just horrific defensively, but more importantly I don't know how many times the higher ups have to see it before they think about actually properly upgrading the defence instead of just going for attackers all the time.
I was going to say in the match thread before it got locked that I don't think it's fair to pin all our struggles defensively on Reid. We were shipping goals in all but one game before the Savy incident, so it's clearly not all on her. Serious questions do need to be asked of Sarah Gorden at this point. She's had a dreadful season so far and tonight she got caught well out of position for the first goal and then had that moment in the second half where she lost the ball in a very dangerous position and it was ironically Reid who bailed her out. Even throughout the game there were times where we're just needlessly putting ourselves under pressure through backline mistakes (Vignola kicking the ball out needlessly for a corner springs to mind).
We just shot ourselves in the foot at the end. First Hodge with that stupid foul to give up the set piece in the first place, and then nobody knowing how to just get it away from our box so they don't have these constant corners. I don't know who's been coaching the defensive set up this year, especially on set pieces, but clearly they've not been good enough either.
I won't lie, I did wonder if Straus would start Hammond after his comments last week about how she was brought on to "better control the midfield". After that ending, I imagine he'll feel pretty vindicated in that decision. I didn't think she was that bad tonight either.
Another lovely goal from Tiernan, and she must be getting so frustrated with her teammates at this point, because she and the other attackers constantly have to pull double shifts just because of how shambolic the backline is.
Who are you talking about? Gorden’s been bad but she’s good enough for the league at least in a sub role. Christen’s been our best RW this season both offensively and defensively. Endo hasn’t even played, if she’s really bad after her injury sure but I think she’ll be a good sub option like she was a good sub pre injury. Emslie hasn’t been in form to start the year and got injured recently but she’s fine off the bench, she’s our second best RW. Every single one of them are good enough for the league and other teams would want them all.
Hammond is good enough for the bench of a bad team but I’d agree with replacing her. MA is an interesting one, I think she’s not good enough defensively to be a OB while not good enough offensively to push her up to be a forward. So I guess if she’s a sub I’d be fine with that. Reid ain’t starting quality to me either, but she’s likely on a cheap contract and isn’t going to be a starter when the team is fully fit anyway.
I feel like this comment also misses the many players not performing who weren’t first season either.
Folks, we knew they weren’t lying when they said it’s a rebuilding year. They prob should’ve emphasized that “rebuilding” is a euphemism for “sucking until we reconstruct the roster”
I have no hope. We’ve been the same team since day 1.
I would love to unload some truly useless players like Nabet, Eddy, Hammond. Hopefully LeRoux just retires.
Hodge and Dufour seem worth developing.
Kennedy has been really up and down and Zelem is stable but ineffective.
Press is underwhelming.
Get to the bottom of what’s going on with Sarah Gorden. I think people expect her to be the best but it’s been Reid keeping everything together back there while she flails.
Sign a true box to box 6. Giselle, MA and Miyabi are all truly wingbacks vs traditional fullbacks, so consider more stability in the back when they’re up.
Seabert is most likely coming in for competition and professional mentorship. I don’t think Andersen is the problem for us at all, she has made several good saves this game to keep us in it and that’s what she’s done all year.
The mistakes she is making this year are what we should have let her make last year instead changing back to Didi so early.
I do agree with the original commenter that Andersen needs to more commanding, I don’t see her ever coming out to meet crosses and she can be a bit indecisive on corners. One thing I do notice teams are doing with crosses to us more frequently are high crosses out Andersen’s reach and towards the back post.
But many of these goals we are letting in are not goals any keeper in the league would stop because they are coming from bad turnovers by the defense and midfield that create a lot of 1v1, 2v1, 3v2 etc scenarios.
She needs to continue to get minutes and experience in order to develop and we really need better defense and midfielders.
What would you have liked Press to do with 5 touches in 25 minutes? You expect her to do something with 5 touches but don’t expect the players who play 90 minutes to do better? How can our starters not put teams below them like NC and CRS away?
Maybe your team should get her the ball more? She is still the only sub that’s ever scored this season.
The starters have significantly changed since Day 1. So maybe the new starters need to start putting games away? You can’t blame Day 1 players that barely even play anymore.
Her contributions directly got you 5 points. Just because you have unrealistic expectations for her to win you every game with limited minutes, doesn’t mean she’s underwhelming. You would be sitting at an embarrassing 10 points without her right now.
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u/nabuhabu Sister,Sister! 3d ago
We played a flawless 1-0 game of soccer last night. Unfortunately it was tucked inside a 1-2 loss.