I want to see a solid complete game from Bixby. She's had some shaky moments over the past two games; that can get inside a keeper's head. She needs to be rock solid against a team that isn't scoring well to get her confidence (and that of her backline) back.
And speaking of backline...I REALLY want to see a disciplined and well-organized…
I want to see a solid complete game from Bixby. She's had some shaky moments over the past two games; that can get inside a keeper's head. She needs to be rock solid against a team that isn't scoring well to get her confidence (and that of her backline) back.
And speaking of backline...I REALLY want to see a disciplined and well-organized defense this evening. No more of this Pogarchesque random running; stick your marks, tackle, ball-side-goal-side...knock off the ballwatching and marking space. Defending 101; it's not hard! Crap teams do it all the time when you think that "well-organized" is a common epithet for "boring and useless". I'd like to see some 2017 Menges for a change, too, thanks.
I was kidding about ballistic vests, but Koroleva? Loose the hounds!
I like when Bixby is super aggressive off her line, that will help this backline the most imo. Without Becky, she'll need to have a complete game more often for sure.
I think this Houston team obviously has underperformed on the attacking end, but they'll be asked to be good tonight. Going to be a good indicator if Natu can keep Maria in check and if Menges/Nally and Hubly can prevent Salmon from getting too many chances.
I like when Bixby controls her penalty area, whether that means coming out hard to claim or staying on her line and trusting her defenders; as a keeper either is a valid technique (coming out looks fierce, but you get jammed up in traffic and see what happens...).
One thing that I find frustrating is the unquestioning love Sauerbrunn seems to get around here.
She's a solid veteran, but she's also not Obi-Wan Brunnobi, our only hope. Here's her backline PMRs over the first three games this season:
She's good...but her being out there doesn't seem to be the Magic Elixir for Backline Awesomeness she seems to get tons of credit for. Her unit has been underwhelming a lot this season (and remember that Orlando and Kansas City were hot garbage, so it wasn't the opponents...).
So whether or not Sauerbrunn is there, Bixby needs to be on top of her game, both in the air and against shots. Another shaky game might lock her in to a very troubled place...
There has been a revolving door at RB this year with Reyna, Nally, and Natu all making starts and appearances.
My point was there is a huge drop off between Becky and the next starter/replacement at CB.
Becky isn't going to fix everything, but the xG with and without her has started to creep up slightly and the backline has been a bit more unorganized. Her presence benefits the team way more than without.
Bixby is the key to all of this, as I think Portland has 2 starters with Shelby Hogan as well. If she doesn't come off her line a lot today, that means Hubly and Menges/Nally will have to win headers against Salmon consistently...
That CB depth chart drop off makes me so sad: at one point, a few years back and at the height of her career, Menges was the best CB in the league and her lack of caps remains the worst snub in USWNT history for me. She has had a horrible time trying to recover from injury and there's still some rust on her game.
I continue to believe she'll get substantially better. Likely never to where she was in 2017, but she's only 30 and has played barely any soccer for two years. It's not like she's a 35 year old trying to salvage the last year of her career.
Her issues certainly look primarily like rust to me- Bad tackling technique (like against Wingate on Saturday), the occasional errant pass, etc etc.
In the past I’d have disagreed; Menges was as good or better, and I’d have taken Menges/Hubly as soon or sooner than Brunn/Hubly.
This season, unfortunately, you’re right. Menges has been a tire fire, and so the dropoff from Brunn - whether or not you rate her as highly as she is often rated here - really is precipitous.
That relies largely on two matches, the xG-against of which combined is barely 2. So the primary defensive issue isn’t the backline giving up better looks, something we can blame on a lack of Sauerbrunn, but a combination of freakish bad luck and Bixby’s troubles. It’s correlation, not causation.
One of the things I find frustrating about your PMR system is that not all -'s are created equal. As you wrote in the Riveting ORL recap, the negatives for most of the backline, and particularly Becky, were misplaced long passes against a pinned-back Orlando. But those -1 actions are weighted exactly the same as an accidental pass to Houston in our half or an own goal against NCC, even though the end result of the action has a completely different impact on the game state. There's also a lot of off-the-ball work and positioning done by defenders that doesn't get rewarded by the PMR system. I find the PMRs to be interesting in the context of a single game and write-up where detail is added, but hard to compare between opponents and sometimes even between players.
I agree that the backline hasn't been very cohesive, but Becky has been consistently good. Removing that and replacing with Nally (fine) and Menges (visibly rusty) has made the entire unit significantly worse. No player makes everything magically better, but can you blame fans for wanting Becky back? And as much as organizing the defense is part of the role of a veteran CB, you can't place all of the fault for her teammates' poor performances on Becky.
2017 Menges is five years and several injuries ago. Maybe it's time that we all adjust our expectations of 2023 Menges?
Agreed on all counts- Giveaways are almost always hugely contextual, especially for backlines and *especially* for backlines having to play in front of an incredibly open midfield like the Thorns currently have.
Becky's value (especially at this point in her career) is that she very rarely makes the types of mistakes we saw from Menges last week, or see from Nally whenever she plays, which stabilizes the whole squad and mitigates her own relative physical limitations. She almost always makes the "right" play, which sometimes happens to be hoofing the ball up field or out of bounds.
The “never puts a foot wrong” is where I disagree and what frustrates me about Brunn.
For a player of her c.v. I’m always unpleasantly surprises how often she’s caught out of position, coughs up a pass right to an opponent, or gets skinned.
Is she a “Reyes’ first match” trainwreck? No. But that’s kind of the point; given her experience I’d expected her to be the rock of consistency she’s typically described here, and to have imparted that degree of stability to her defense.
So when that didn’t happen I was sure it was some sort of artifact. Surely she WAS doing all those things, it just looked different.
Now? I’m not sure.
I WANT it to be true. We need that calm organization in back.
But so far this season? I honestly haven’t seen it.
"Never puts a foot wrong" is commentator talk, not us critical people here at STF. It's easy to magnify a player's or a team's reputation with the passage of time and forget the flaws, be it Becky, Sincy, or previous iterations of the Thorns. Sauerbrunn's performance at Portland has generally been in line with her previous seasons, adjusting for aging.
In 2019, Thorns defense went into a bad skid. In 2021, with Menges/Brunn as our primary pairing, we had the fewest GA and most SO of any season. I'd even argue that Hubly and Kling have been more consistent in the last 2 seasons than previous and Bixby took over as the #1 in mid-2021. We've won silverware of some sort in both of the last two seasons. We've been in the top defenses of the league in the last two seasons. That's pretty consistent. But then we have very high standards at STF.
I don’t think I agree with that- She’s not perfect, but she’s rarely, to my eyes, out of position because of an individual mistake. She (and Hubly, and Menges) are frequently isolated 1v1 because of the lack of midfield and FB support, but that’s part of the structural defensive problem- CBs shouldn’t be left 1v1...which the Thorns CBs have been all too often as of late.
She’s also in her late 30s and isn’t Naomi Girma, Sarah Gorden or whichever hyper-athletic CB you want to name, so she doesn’t have the pace to cover up her mistakes or those of others, so I think it looks worse when she has a speedy attacker running at her. “Never puts a foot wrong” is an exaggeration (she makes the occasional errant pass and isn’t always perfect in the tackle), but I do think they severely miss her organization and calmness on the ball.
I want to see a solid complete game from Bixby. She's had some shaky moments over the past two games; that can get inside a keeper's head. She needs to be rock solid against a team that isn't scoring well to get her confidence (and that of her backline) back.
And speaking of backline...I REALLY want to see a disciplined and well-organized defense this evening. No more of this Pogarchesque random running; stick your marks, tackle, ball-side-goal-side...knock off the ballwatching and marking space. Defending 101; it's not hard! Crap teams do it all the time when you think that "well-organized" is a common epithet for "boring and useless". I'd like to see some 2017 Menges for a change, too, thanks.
I was kidding about ballistic vests, but Koroleva? Loose the hounds!
I like when Bixby is super aggressive off her line, that will help this backline the most imo. Without Becky, she'll need to have a complete game more often for sure.
I think this Houston team obviously has underperformed on the attacking end, but they'll be asked to be good tonight. Going to be a good indicator if Natu can keep Maria in check and if Menges/Nally and Hubly can prevent Salmon from getting too many chances.
I like when Bixby controls her penalty area, whether that means coming out hard to claim or staying on her line and trusting her defenders; as a keeper either is a valid technique (coming out looks fierce, but you get jammed up in traffic and see what happens...).
One thing that I find frustrating is the unquestioning love Sauerbrunn seems to get around here.
She's a solid veteran, but she's also not Obi-Wan Brunnobi, our only hope. Here's her backline PMRs over the first three games this season:
ORL: Kling +7/-6, Hubly +5/-4, Brunn +3/-6, Kuikka +13/-4, Bixby +1/-2
KCC: Kling +9/-8, Hubly +11/-10, Brunn +10/-3, Kuikka +11/-14, Bixby +1/-4
HOU: Kling +9/-14, Hubly +6/-9, Brunn +9/-3, Kuikka +7/-3, Bixby +4/-4
She's good...but her being out there doesn't seem to be the Magic Elixir for Backline Awesomeness she seems to get tons of credit for. Her unit has been underwhelming a lot this season (and remember that Orlando and Kansas City were hot garbage, so it wasn't the opponents...).
So whether or not Sauerbrunn is there, Bixby needs to be on top of her game, both in the air and against shots. Another shaky game might lock her in to a very troubled place...
There has been a revolving door at RB this year with Reyna, Nally, and Natu all making starts and appearances.
My point was there is a huge drop off between Becky and the next starter/replacement at CB.
Becky isn't going to fix everything, but the xG with and without her has started to creep up slightly and the backline has been a bit more unorganized. Her presence benefits the team way more than without.
Bixby is the key to all of this, as I think Portland has 2 starters with Shelby Hogan as well. If she doesn't come off her line a lot today, that means Hubly and Menges/Nally will have to win headers against Salmon consistently...
That CB depth chart drop off makes me so sad: at one point, a few years back and at the height of her career, Menges was the best CB in the league and her lack of caps remains the worst snub in USWNT history for me. She has had a horrible time trying to recover from injury and there's still some rust on her game.
Facts.
I think she can still get back to a high level, will take more reps and games for sure though.
I continue to believe she'll get substantially better. Likely never to where she was in 2017, but she's only 30 and has played barely any soccer for two years. It's not like she's a 35 year old trying to salvage the last year of her career.
Her issues certainly look primarily like rust to me- Bad tackling technique (like against Wingate on Saturday), the occasional errant pass, etc etc.
I think a lot depton her staying healthy. So far that’s been a problem. I want to believe she can; she’s always been a personal favorite.
In the past I’d have disagreed; Menges was as good or better, and I’d have taken Menges/Hubly as soon or sooner than Brunn/Hubly.
This season, unfortunately, you’re right. Menges has been a tire fire, and so the dropoff from Brunn - whether or not you rate her as highly as she is often rated here - really is precipitous.
Becky leads and organizes and the all-important goals against have gone from 2 to 8 with her missing. And that's not nothing.
That relies largely on two matches, the xG-against of which combined is barely 2. So the primary defensive issue isn’t the backline giving up better looks, something we can blame on a lack of Sauerbrunn, but a combination of freakish bad luck and Bixby’s troubles. It’s correlation, not causation.
One of the things I find frustrating about your PMR system is that not all -'s are created equal. As you wrote in the Riveting ORL recap, the negatives for most of the backline, and particularly Becky, were misplaced long passes against a pinned-back Orlando. But those -1 actions are weighted exactly the same as an accidental pass to Houston in our half or an own goal against NCC, even though the end result of the action has a completely different impact on the game state. There's also a lot of off-the-ball work and positioning done by defenders that doesn't get rewarded by the PMR system. I find the PMRs to be interesting in the context of a single game and write-up where detail is added, but hard to compare between opponents and sometimes even between players.
I agree that the backline hasn't been very cohesive, but Becky has been consistently good. Removing that and replacing with Nally (fine) and Menges (visibly rusty) has made the entire unit significantly worse. No player makes everything magically better, but can you blame fans for wanting Becky back? And as much as organizing the defense is part of the role of a veteran CB, you can't place all of the fault for her teammates' poor performances on Becky.
2017 Menges is five years and several injuries ago. Maybe it's time that we all adjust our expectations of 2023 Menges?
Agreed on all counts- Giveaways are almost always hugely contextual, especially for backlines and *especially* for backlines having to play in front of an incredibly open midfield like the Thorns currently have.
Becky's value (especially at this point in her career) is that she very rarely makes the types of mistakes we saw from Menges last week, or see from Nally whenever she plays, which stabilizes the whole squad and mitigates her own relative physical limitations. She almost always makes the "right" play, which sometimes happens to be hoofing the ball up field or out of bounds.
The “never puts a foot wrong” is where I disagree and what frustrates me about Brunn.
For a player of her c.v. I’m always unpleasantly surprises how often she’s caught out of position, coughs up a pass right to an opponent, or gets skinned.
Is she a “Reyes’ first match” trainwreck? No. But that’s kind of the point; given her experience I’d expected her to be the rock of consistency she’s typically described here, and to have imparted that degree of stability to her defense.
So when that didn’t happen I was sure it was some sort of artifact. Surely she WAS doing all those things, it just looked different.
Now? I’m not sure.
I WANT it to be true. We need that calm organization in back.
But so far this season? I honestly haven’t seen it.
"Never puts a foot wrong" is commentator talk, not us critical people here at STF. It's easy to magnify a player's or a team's reputation with the passage of time and forget the flaws, be it Becky, Sincy, or previous iterations of the Thorns. Sauerbrunn's performance at Portland has generally been in line with her previous seasons, adjusting for aging.
In 2019, Thorns defense went into a bad skid. In 2021, with Menges/Brunn as our primary pairing, we had the fewest GA and most SO of any season. I'd even argue that Hubly and Kling have been more consistent in the last 2 seasons than previous and Bixby took over as the #1 in mid-2021. We've won silverware of some sort in both of the last two seasons. We've been in the top defenses of the league in the last two seasons. That's pretty consistent. But then we have very high standards at STF.
I don’t think I agree with that- She’s not perfect, but she’s rarely, to my eyes, out of position because of an individual mistake. She (and Hubly, and Menges) are frequently isolated 1v1 because of the lack of midfield and FB support, but that’s part of the structural defensive problem- CBs shouldn’t be left 1v1...which the Thorns CBs have been all too often as of late.
She’s also in her late 30s and isn’t Naomi Girma, Sarah Gorden or whichever hyper-athletic CB you want to name, so she doesn’t have the pace to cover up her mistakes or those of others, so I think it looks worse when she has a speedy attacker running at her. “Never puts a foot wrong” is an exaggeration (she makes the occasional errant pass and isn’t always perfect in the tackle), but I do think they severely miss her organization and calmness on the ball.