Impact 2017 Season.

[Big_M]

Ciman was rightfully there on the previous play. Ball goes out and Piette knows that there is a player beside him who was making a run and that Ciman wasn't there. Cabrera had to cover the middle so Piette had to take that player. He is partly responsible.

[Gian-Luca]

1 hour ago, Big_M said:

Ciman was rightfully there on the previous play. Ball goes out and Piette knows that there is a player beside him who was making a run and that Ciman wasn't there. Cabrera had to cover the middle so Piette had to take that player. He is partly responsible.

Well, can you remind me what Ciman did to be "rightfully there" on the previous play? Going by the highlights replay "there" appears to be almost near the midfield mark on the left sideline of the pitch a few metres up from Lovitz when the play starts, which is woefully out of position for a central defender. I guess if he made a goal saving tackle on a play to knock the ball out of bounds I would cut him more slack, but I don't have any recollection of such a play occuring before that throw in (and its location way up the field would suggest that this was unlikely). Otherwise, it just seems like he's badly pulled the team out of its defensive shape.

[Big_M]

Play was previously on the right side with multiple players there. There was a turnover and Toronto sent it to the left. Ciman had to step up and stay on Vazquez as he was the closest and mids weren't there. In that case coverage has to be provided by other defenders and mids. On the throw, Lovitz had to be on the player who was short, Cabrera in the middle and Piette had to follow the player who started the run beside him

[Gian-Luca]

1 hour ago, harrycoyster said:

 Immediately after the goal Ciman turns and screams at Piette, who raises his hand towards Evan Bush as in "my bad".

From what I've seen, Ciman seems to do that for about 50% of the goals the Impact allow, even when he's as much to blame as anyone. This goal is no different in that respect. Rather than being evidence that Piette was the goat on the play, I think it's just evidence that Ciman is an asshole. Piette is quite gracious IMO to accept all the blame if that's what he did, but then being both young & the new kid in town in just his 4th game, that's perhaps to be expected if a DP & defensive leader starts to scream at you whether it's justified or not.

Before any Montreal fans get upset at me for what I just called Ciman, I will freely admit I'd say the same thing about Bradley on the Piatti goal as he seems to shake his fist and scream in rage at Osorio, when the real culprit is whoever organized the non-wall part of the defense on the free kick (presumably, Bradley as captain, maybe Moor) decided it was a good idea to have no-one marking Montreal's best attacking player & one of the league's top goal scorers as he stood waiting for a pass just outside the box.

[Gian-Luca]

10 minutes ago, Big_M said:

Play was previously on the right side with multiple players there. There was a turnover and Toronto sent it to the left. Ciman had to step up and stay on Vazquez as he was the closest and mids weren't there. In that case coverage has to be provided by other defenders and mids. On the throw, Lovitz had to be on the player who was short, Cabrera in the middle and Piette had to follow the player who started the run beside him

Which suggests, as is often the case with a goal against, that a whole whack of players can share the blame in that case.

[harrycoyster]

12 minutes ago, Gian-Luca said:

Which suggests, as is often the case with a goal against, that a whole whack of players can share the blame in that case.

I don't think anybody was ever suggesting there isn't blame to go around, but it's pretty clear that it was Piette's job was to mark Delgado from the moment the ball went out of play. He got beat and TFC scored. Ciman gets caught up-field and Cabrera does a painfully bad job of sticking to Altidore, but the fact of the matter is that it was Piette's man who makes a fairly obvious run that Piette failed to track. Piette can't recover to block the cross and it's 2-0. Ciman and Bush have every right to be upset at Piette, especially since Delgado isn't exactly fleet of foot. But whatever, CDMs are going to have mistakes and Piette is still adapting to the level. It's a mistake that I doubt he'll make again. 

[Grizzly]

I would put the blame order on the goal at:

1) Cabrera - the only defender really in position on the play, he needed to cover Altidore or get between him and the ball. He looks at Altidore to see where he is and then loses him 2 seconds after. Incompetent defending, if he does his job properly there is neither a goal nor a scoring chance on this play.

Tied for 2nd Piette and Ciman: Ciman is running back from the previous play and when the ball is thrown is almost as close to Delgado as Piette is and is running (or better said jogging) and not stationary like Piette at the time and he also has more speed than Piette. The highlights don't show the previous play so I can't say if he is justified in being so far up the field but he goes up field way too often and is too frequently caught out of position. Sometimes he recovers well from this but in this play he should be trying a lot harder to get back in position especially since he sees Lovitz is pretty far up field. I don't see him tell Piette to cover Delgado at all but I do see Ciman casually run by Lovitz and give him some sort of handshake instead of getting back in position. Piette for his part was in his regular proper position but should have recognized faster that Ciman and Lovitz were not and covered Delgado better.

4th) Lovitz - someone should be covering the throw but it should not be Lovitz in that situation although the midfielders were just as much to blame since no one else was there. Nevertheless he is too far out of position and I think given the choice of covering the short throw or being in position he should have let TFC have the short throw and gotten back into position

5th) Duvall - He was pretty far up the field but I think there might have been a couple of TFC players that he was covering so possibly that was justified.

TFC is a better team than us when you compare squads with them which is not surprising given the differing player budgets. If we want to get a result against them our players like Piatti really need to perform well and we need a strong tactic and proper personnel decisions from the coach. I don't think that was the case Sunday though as always with the Impact it is hard to know whether to blame the coach or not since some of these same errors seem to occur every year regardless of who is coach and one suspects it is often not the coach making the decisions.

I have criticized Cabrera in the past as being a bit mediocre but since he recently came back from injury he has been pretty strong. However, he has a very weak game on Sunday and I wonder if it would not have been better to play Fisher against Altidore since he is bigger and more physical. I have also criticized Fisher and am still not sold on him but he has improved over the course of the year and I think would match up better with Altidore.

As others have also said, I am not sure what AJH has to do to win the starters spot over an unimpressive Mancosu. He was coming off a game in which he scored a goal and set up 2 others and he still did not get the start. What does he have to do? Score 5 goals every game? We were far more dangerous when AJH came on but by that time TFC had the lead and had tightened down their defence. We had most of the play and scoring opportunities in the first half but were not dangerous enough because every time Piatti had the ball TFC swarmed him because they did not have to worry about anyone else. AJH would have created a lot more than Mancosu did, would have made them give Piatti a bit more room and made us a lot more dangerous while we had possession. 

[Gian-Luca]

9 hours ago, Grizzly said:

I would put the blame order on the goal at:

1) Cabrera - the only defender really in position on the play, he needed to cover Altidore or get between him and the ball. He looks at Altidore to see where he is and then loses him 2 seconds after. Incompetent defending, if he does his job properly there is neither a goal nor a scoring chance on this play.

Tied for 2nd Piette and Ciman: Ciman is running back from the previous play and when the ball is thrown is almost as close to Delgado as Piette is and is running (or better said jogging) and not stationary like Piette at the time and he also has more speed than Piette. The highlights don't show the previous play so I can't say if he is justified in being so far up the field but he goes up field way too often and is too frequently caught out of position. Sometimes he recovers well from this but in this play he should be trying a lot harder to get back in position especially since he sees Lovitz is pretty far up field. I don't see him tell Piette to cover Delgado at all but I do see Ciman casually run by Lovitz and give him some sort of handshake instead of getting back in position. Piette for his part was in his regular proper position but should have recognized faster that Ciman and Lovitz were not and covered Delgado better.

4th) Lovitz - someone should be covering the throw but it should not be Lovitz in that situation although the midfielders were just as much to blame since no one else was there. Nevertheless he is too far out of position and I think given the choice of covering the short throw or being in position he should have let TFC have the short throw and gotten back into position

5th) Duvall - He was pretty far up the field but I think there might have been a couple of TFC players that he was covering so possibly that was justified.

As others have also said, I am not sure what AJH has to do to win the starters spot over an unimpressive Mancosu. He was coming off a game in which he scored a goal and set up 2 others and he still did not get the start. What does he have to do? Score 5 goals every game? We were far more dangerous when AJH came on but by that time TFC had the lead and had tightened down their defence. We had most of the play and scoring opportunities in the first half but were not dangerous enough because every time Piatti had the ball TFC swarmed him because they did not have to worry about anyone else. AJH would have created a lot more than Mancosu did and made us a lot more dangerous while we had possession. 

In this game Mancosu struck me as a player who knows that his understudy is outperforming him quite significantly (not just with the actual numbers but especially when the disparity in playing time is taken into account) and is trying too selflishly to score goals - at least that's what I took from that play in the 1st half when he squandered a brilliant ball from Bernier by taking a low-percentage shot rather than passing to a wide-open Piatti in the middle (when the score was still 0-0). I think AJH probably would have either got to the ball quicker and unleashed a better shot (and at a better angle) or would have thought to pass to Piatti. Although obviously I can't prove that.

As for Lovitz, as much as I never liked him on TFC, I think I might be more inclined to question whether Busch should be higher than him in the blame chart for staying on his line and not cutting off the cross (which came from a long distance bounced along the ground in front of him at the edge of the 6 yard box, and was not hit with blistering pace either). I guess my view is that everyone seemed a little dopey on that play, and even if Piette can be blamed more than I originally thought he was (which is fair enough), it still doesn't sit will with me (or wouldn't if I was an Impact supporter) that the veterans who are also to blame point the finger at one player so publicly as though it was all his fault.

[Gian-Luca]

To be fair to Busch, he does have some nice words for Piette in this article:

https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2017/08/29/new-bernier-quebec-native-samuel-piette-could-be-next-montreal-star

 

[Ruud]

Hey lads

Wondering why CMT took AJH and Piette for a friendly on the same night as an important Impact game?  Seems like a silly thing to do while in a playoff race, no?

 

[RS]

9 minutes ago, Ruud said:

Hey lads

Wondering why CMT took AJH and Piette for a friendly on the same night as an important Impact game?  Seems like a silly thing to do while in a playoff race, no?

 

The sillier thing to do was for the Impact to schedule a match on a FIFA date.

[Grizzly]

I am not sure if it is the fault of the team or the league since half of the league played and half did not but MLS really needs to start respecting the international dates. It was crazy for the Impact to play a game missing 7 players, 4 or 5 of whom would have been starters/key players. Even then the game looked destined to be a tie until Toledo changed things by turning a yellow which would have been ok to a completely unjustified red based on video review which was supposed to make the refs make better decisions not worse ones. Playing in the international breaks hurts the Canadian teams more because we usually lose far more players than American ones whose player pool is spread across a lot more teams.

 

[Blackdude]

57 minutes ago, Grizzly said:

I am not sure if it is the fault of the team or the league since half of the league played and half did not but MLS really needs to start respecting the international dates. It was crazy for the Impact to play a game missing 7 players, 4 or 5 of whom would have been starters/key players. Even then the game looked destined to be a tie until Toledo changed things by turning a yellow which would have been ok to a completely unjustified red based on video review which was supposed to make the refs make better decisions not worse ones. Playing in the international breaks hurts the Canadian teams more because we usually lose far more players than American ones whose player pool is spread across a lot more teams.

 

It's up to teams. TFC never plays during the international window because they know they'll miss top players. Now, that means probably having to play 1 more home weekday and I'm guessing that they'd rather play during an international window than play on a Wednesday.

[jpg75]

7 hours ago, Blackdude said:

It's up to teams. TFC never plays during the international window because they know they'll miss top players. Now, that means probably having to play 1 more home weekday and I'm guessing that they'd rather play during an international window than play on a Wednesday.

This is correct. I believe the teams inform the league at the start of the season whether they want to play during int'l breaks or not. Not sure why the Impact would choose to knowing they have so many internationals.

[RS]

11 hours ago, jpg75 said:

This is correct. I believe the teams inform the league at the start of the season whether they want to play during int'l breaks or not. Not sure why the Impact would choose to knowing they have so many internationals.

$$$

[fmfranck]

Yep. Shows you whats wrong with Impacts FO. Finance > results. As long as we pack the stadium with casuals to fill out the owners pockets, who cares that we place ourselves at a disadvantage in a sporting point of view. 

[jpg75]

7 hours ago, RS said:

$$$

But if you miss the playoffs....less $$$

[RS]

3 hours ago, jpg75 said:

But if you miss the playoffs....less $$$

I didn't say it was a good plan.

[Free kick]

With the results this weekend, the impact no longer control their destiny as far as play offs.    Even being below the play off line, they always had those games in hand on teams like Columbus.   Nevrmind the result in NE, that home game versus Chicago was the crucial one. 

i thought that there was a FIFA rule stating that if you were missing a certain number of players due to international commitments, you could force your league to reschedule the game.  

That game in Atlanta on Sept 24th could be key. 

[Free kick]

On 9/6/2017 at 11:15 AM, fmfranck said:

Yep. Shows you whats wrong with Impacts FO. Finance > results. As long as we pack the stadium with casuals to fill out the owners pockets, who cares that we place ourselves at a disadvantage in a sporting point of view. 

I very highly doubt that the Front office would not be aware of what playoff revenues mean to the bottom line.   You can pack a stadium in November at premium prices and thats revenue that you dont budget for. 

Here is my theory as to why that game was on the schedule:  when the schedule was made ( in the off season) they did not have and likely would not have been aware that they would have players like Dzemaili and Piette on their roster.  And that a player like Jackson-Hamel would have a break out season and earn a callup.  Ciman was always a possibility for a callup.  A player like Dzemaili is now a key cog to the club's fortunes so his absence was monumental.  If you think your roster will not have many players susceptible to callups, its a good idea to agree to play that weekend because your opponent may be depleted. 

[fmfranck]

12 hours ago, Free kick said:

I very highly doubt that the Front office would not be aware of what playoff revenues mean to the bottom line.   You can pack a stadium in November at premium prices and thats revenue that you dont budget for. 

Here is my theory as to why that game was on the schedule:  when the schedule was made ( in the off season) they did not have and likely would not have been aware that they would have players like Dzemaili and Piette on their roster.  And that a player like Jackson-Hamel would have a break out season and earn a callup.  Ciman was always a possibility for a callup.  A player like Dzemaili is now a key cog to the club's fortunes so his absence was monumental.  If you think your roster will not have many players susceptible to callups, its a good idea to agree to play that weekend because your opponent may be depleted. 

When Dzemaili was signed with Bologna in august 2017, it was in the contract that he would only play one year in Bologna, and two in Montréal. Therefore, the Impact FO already knew that they would be missing Ciman and Dzemaili (two very important cogs in the spine of the team). Fact is the Impact FO dont want to play midweek games because they know they'll struggle to pack the stadium. On the other hand, in their minds, they think they can always pack week end games with some gimmicky bs. Just look at their facebook page. Product placement here, stupid pre-game cheezy concert there. All they care about is filling the stadium on a day by day basis. They're not doing the necessary to build a loyal fanbase, they just want the gate receipts to cover their targets. 

Thats one man's opinion mind you. But, over time, the facts are piling up against them.

[shermanator]

So, Gilardino is training with the Impact. Saputo's love for aging Italians is going to bury this club.

https://www.thescore.com/mls/news/1370908

[to70]

9 minutes ago, shermanator said:

So, Gilardino is training with the Impact. Saputo's love for aging Italians is going to bury this club.

https://www.thescore.com/mls/news/1370908

Isn't he the guy TFC were after before signed Defoe?

[Chad_Impact]

27 minutes ago, shermanator said:

So, Gilardino is training with the Impact. Saputo's love for aging Italians is going to bury this club.

https://www.thescore.com/mls/news/1370908

 

What a joke this is becoming... 

[Gian-Luca]

Thought the Impact had a legit PK call not given to them when AJH got taken down in the box in the 1st half