A good team crushes San Jose on Sunday. Most of us are just too damaged from the past 7 years to consider that we actually have a good team now...
Yep and that beating was in the 2nd game of the season when guys were still getting their legs under them. If not for their goalkeeper, they lose that game by 6. Seriously, San Jose is toast unless we intentionally choose not to try. I recall Paintsil getting irritated for being subbed out mid-drubbing so Vanney is totally the type to allow for such needless mercy.
Ok this^^^ made me laugh out loud. I could just see this expression on so many faces in these threads lol.
I thought this article from Alex Ruiz was a good deep dive on the Pec-Paintsil overload on the right side Beyond the Spotlight: Is the Pec-Paintsil overload working?🇧🇷 Analyzing Pec’s dependence on his left foot👥 How the two take up similar spaces and its affects🏆 Does this elevate the play of Paintsil and Pec?#LAGalaxy https://t.co/tBbzZVhYp8— Alex Ruiz (@AlxRuiz15) April 18, 2024
Glad I'm not the only one to notice Pec's left-footedness. Alex is usually on top of things. It's not that Pec prefers his left foot -- he seems VERY reliant on it. Watch the way he receives balls even; if he can't use his right on the right wing it's drastically gonna hurt even what kind of passes he can take on the wing. But he also can't get to the endline in cross or put in an early cross, he just cuts into the middle into the most congested part of the field. Getting the most from him will be tricky to figure out.
Efrain Alvarez 2.0!!! Alex Ruiz, I believe is 20 years old and he has some solid insights, kid has an amazing future ahead of him.
Between Puig on his right foot and Pec on his left... I say park Pec over on the left for awhile and tell him to cross the ball in to Jovelic and Paintsil and Berry. It will be good for his development, and he can terrorize a few right backs with his speed if nothing else.
It's an interesting read but we all saw that Pec and Paint on the same side just did not generate anything worth doing that again. Leave Joseph on the right by himself. That is where he does his best work. Paintsil on the right is right! I agree with Pec on the left just by virtue of Paint's right wing crazy ability. Pec has to find his game on the left. Wether that be crossing to Dejan and/or Paintsil,Puig or running at defenses and taking the shot. Whatever, just as long as we don't try to fix things that are not broken. I mean, it sounds like a good idea to put both Paint and Pec on the right to see if magic would ensue but crap ensued. They damn near cancel each other out. I as waiting for them to run into each other. Hopefully Vanney got that idea out of his system.
I don't know. But I have little doubt that Pec is more comfortable on the right and that he won't be the same on the left. But I still think it's worth it to try - and a league run out is different from a tournament, and we can afford to be more patient. It's funny, because Kuntz is so careful about our roster, that our two big signings play the exact same position. I guess we signed Pec earlier, but then our pursuit of Paintsil fell into place as well. They are both great players and I hope we can figure it out!
Vanney was on Corner of the Galaxy last night. Some interesting tidbits from him. When asked what he thought could be special about this team this year that separates it from the rest of the league, he talked about speed of play and how this team could be the fastest team in the league at ball movement. Also talked for a bit about defending set pieces and what they are doing to address it. Hinted a little that some of the schemes and designs they've been working on are in part because the team is a little on the small side and only has one really good aerial defender (Yoshida).
Vanney basically has Pec playing the same inverted winger role that he played on his last team. The problem is that Paintsil is better then Pec on the right flank. Vanney places Pec on the left and during the game Paintsil ends up roaming right. This naturally causes an overload on the right wing during an attack because Paintsil and Pec are now so close to each other. The team would be better with Pec on the left flank and Paintsil on the right out the gate. This way when Riqui decides to move from the left mid spot in order to drop back as he is so prone to do, Pec can cover for him. Whenever Riqui roams away from the left position, he basically leaves that side covered by Aude alone by himself, as again Paintsil has roamed right to get next to Pec. This causes either Brugman or Delgado (Mostly Brugman) to move out of position in order to support Aude. This then of course leaves our older CB's in a bad way when they only have one guy that can pull off DM duty in front of them as opposed to 2. This is why we look better when we see Fagundez come into the game as Diego will always go out left and actually stay there. So now when Riqui slides centrally and then drops back, Diego is still on the left side to now cover the space that was forcing a DM out of position in the name of backup support. And just like that, the opposition has to focus on both wings instead of just one, which gets them to actually spread out thus leaving them vulnerable to the space they have now allowed open for our wingers to run into and receive the lethal Riqui Puig through ball pass. Paintsil and Deigo then get the ball into position to either score themselves or they feed DeJan so that he can score. So yeah, Vanney needs to stop with the left footed Pec playing as an Inverted Winger when you got a beast like Paintsil that is more than capable of dealing with the Rightwing on this squad.
One thing I think we all agree on is that Paintsil needs to be on the far right, with space in front of him. That being said, I’m not as convinced as others that Pec can't be on the same side -- but if he is he has to (unlike vs. VAN) play the inside guy, feeding & combining with Paintsil playing wider on the wing. In a couple earlier games this season there were stretches where this worked great because Pec & Paintsil have an instinct for combination play. Of course the lineup of: ------Puig-----Pec-----Joe in practice makes us unbalanced, with all our firepower drifted to the right. So I would only do this for brief stretches, like we did at the beginning of the season. IIRC this look also got Aude making some nice attacking runs up the open left side, ending in dangerous crosses to a charging 3P triumvirate. More rambling thoughts: Pec on the left makes complete sense, in theory. Using him there allows us to attack down both sides, it gives Paintsil more room to eork in, etc. But in practice, so far, Pec has been pretty ineffective out there. Being very left-footed is one reason. Another is that he has no one to combine with. In theory he should be working with Puig but Puig seems to be wearing left field-of-vision blinders. Delgado is on right and so far Gaston hasn’t often ventured up to combine in the left side final third. Finally, Pec doesn't play much defense, so I’m not sure he is protecting Aude all that much. Yes, he occasionally uses his speed to make an heroic recovery run but playing defense is much more than that. For example, when facing two attackers overloading our left side I would rather have Gastin & Aude defending than Pec and Aude. Now I’m not saying this rules out Pec at left wing, at all. Just saying that the reality of Pec protecting Aude defensively is less ideal than it may appear on paper. tl;dr: I don't think we should throw our hands up in despair everytime we see Pec on right with Paintsil. I’m reserving that for when I see Pec to the right of Paintsil.
What is special about the team this year is somebody with a good eye for talent and what could work here with us is now calling those shots. The bad defending is more of a situational awareness and speed of action thing as much as defending against tall guys or whatever. Leaving people wide open in the far post to tap things in or defense leaving coverage of key players like that 6 foot Brian White from the caps to 5'8'' Fagundez when Yoshida was right next to him. Those type of things. Our defense is more reactive than anticipating and interceptive. We've been scored more with low passes and balls on the ground than anything else. Maybe some of that is relative unfamiliarity and lack of experience playing with each other but the coaches should be the ones smoothing that out as much as possible. Again, this coming from a coaching staff that has two central defenders and a former goaly is amusing.
I for one believe that Pec has not been allowed to play on the left at a consistent clip long enough for us to write him off as ineffective on that wing for LA. He has been placed there primarily in the second half of games and then has played in it for less than 30 minutes the whole time he has been here save one game against Sporting Kansas City. He hasn't gone 90 on that side once. In those few times he was out on the left he has had to play alongside guys like Berry, Zavaleta, Nelson and Perez on defense whenever Riqui moved out of position; and we were solid on defense save for the Riqui turnover that lead to Messi's goal in game one. We were also still able to see D3P (DeJan, Puig, Pec & Paintsil) come together on offense when he was stationed there without a problem as well. The SKC game is the best example of what this team would look like with him on the left wing fulltime. DeJan was denied a hattrick in that game and Pec was in dangerous spots all night long. He even got the assist on goal 3 despite the crappy refs. Pec being able to combine smoothly with guys on the right was never LA's problem. The issue for this team is that when Paintsil moves from the right over to the left to get near Pec, we are now wide open for a counter on the right side. This team gets scored on in 3 ways,...1)Riqui Puig being in the defensive third causing a turnover that leads to a goal. 2)Poor set piece coverage due to team's causing mismatches on coverage and; 3)Counters down the right that lead to goals. If you are the other team you just bunker and wait for one of those 3 opportunities to rear its head. It's what Seattle tried to do. It's what LAFC did all game outside of fouling us like crazy. Fortunately for us we are one of (if not the best) attacking team in the league thus far and can make up for getting scored on by teams that use the above tactics no problem. Yes, Pec and Paintsil is indeed a danger on the right. But what I have seen with Pec on left was actually a good thing and I frankly want to see more of it because Fagundez proves having a winger over on the left for more than 25 minutes is worth having.
Vancouver game was the first I've seen where ball was starting to move faster. Players were beginning to speaka the language but the fluency wasn't quite there yet. Need to see some more 1 touch sequences. Some players dither on the ball looking for a particular person rather than a particular play. The patience the team showed against the best defense in the league was tops. Putting patience and speed together takes skill. Have to start shaving off the patty cake touches and wide berth passes. To think I had to watch Dogdoo Costa for 2 years. Retch.
To think Costa actually started to play like a DP once Klein left, something about Klein just made the whole organization reek (really shows how amazing Zlatan is that he can drag the team forward even with Klein's stink).
.All love to Dejan of course, but Zlatan as the 9 with these wingers and Riqui feeding him? The records, the trophies....