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 Hou…
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.
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.