What "Better Than Expected!" Might Really Mean

Well... there's hope.

My take:

Early, early days and that was nothing like the finished article for either side but, so long as disaster doesn't strike, we might be in the mix for 5th or 6th last (overall).  If things go magical we might even hang around in range of the last playoff spot into late summer.  There's some potential there.

That said, this game has turned out to be a trap for TFC fans.  Like usual, they'll have watched it in isolation from what happened in the rest of the league.  In that context, TFC didn't look too bad.

Consider how it looked if you were a neutral looking in though.  I'll suggest it looked a lot more like two pretty bad teams not really able to do very much.  That looks worse on Vancouver considering expectations in each respective city.

Whether it was their truly awful turf, early season jitters, a one off game, or just a fundamentally misfit attack remains to be seen; in the end, they'll just take the points and move on.  Mattocks had a quiet night, Kobayashi and Miller couldn't figure out each other's movement to save their life, and Manneh had the performance of an energetic and physically gifted but VERY raw young rookie.

Yes, TFC's defense looked okay.  Really though, they gave an at best average performance by MLS standards and when the d-mid shield is Terry and Jeremy Hall that's not representative of the best of what MLS can offer.  We're just so scarred by the generally shambolic or suicidal team defending of the Winter era that it seems like a massive upgrade.

Don't get me wrong: I'll take an average defense from TFC 99 times out of 100!  But Vancouver making hard work of it and failing to craft out chances (at home) against an average MLS defense is more an indictment of them than praise for us.  Unless Rennie gets his attack sorted and that front quartet start clicking I'd suggest that the Shitecaps form from 2012 mid-season on is more than likely to continue.  The talent's there for them to do it though.

The thing is: this league is getting better.  Faster.  Technique and tactics are starting to catch up to the physical strengths that have been evident for a long time.

Seattle v. Montreal was a great soccer game to watch.  I wish I'd PVR'd it to show some of my buddies what a good, non-TFC, MLS game can look like.

And Montreal looked really, really good.  Scary dangerous on some lightning counters and organized (and lucky) enough to make a first half goal stand up in Seattle.  Yes, Seattle hit the post twice and Eddie Johnson SHOULD have buried the second one but Montreal was unlucky not to kill the game off when Arnaud also hit the bar from in close.

TFC fans might not like it but I'll say it: if Montreal can stay healthy and the centre of their defense doesn't miss big stretches they will make the playoffs.  Hell, if last night made you think that TFC can be even remotely competitive for a playoff spot then the same logic would imply that Montreal might be able to compete for the East's 1st seed.

When you also consider that Sporting KC had what, by all accounts I read, was a fairly poor first half in Philly and still turned them over 3-1 when Zusi took over the game you start to see the danger we're facing.  They even got a goal from their new DP.

The highlights make it seem that Columbus had the Higuain and Arrieta show clicking from the first minute in LA and embarrassed Chivas 3-0.  (Yes, Chivas should have buried that THREE ON ZERO they blew but it was only Kennedy standing on his head that had kept them in it to that point.)  SKC at home, MTL away, LAG at home... 0-0-9 is still very, VERY unlikely but we might do well to be any better than 1-1-6 at the start of May.  Anything better should really be viewed as quite a success on Nelsen's part.

Some player observations:

Earnshaw is exactly what we needed.  A senior player who can lead the line while we wait to see how Danny K recovers.  Pace goes but real goalscorers rarely lose that instinctive ability to finish and he didn't look past it.  He'll get some goals and, if he's not on stupid money, I'd love to see him stick around for a while.  Nice work Nelsen.

Ephraim's gonna have to do a lot more to convince me he'd be worth keeping around.  The technique's all there and you can see the quality but the comment that was literally spoken, without suggestion, by two people independently was "Eric Avila 2.0"?  I was nice enough to compare him to Rohan Ricketts - who, it should be noted had, had a higher pedigree - but that build doesn't often suit MLS and I can see why he wasn't getting played much anywhere in England.  I have a nearly impossible time imagining the player I watched last night in a Premier League game.

Bekker shouldn't be starting; not for a while and not every game.  I'll assume like everyone else that throwing him out there in such a vital position in the 4-2-3-1/4-4-1-1 was a forced decision caused by Silva's unavailability.  But Bekker needs to be protected and eased in; even Edu wasn't a regular starter in the early days of his MLS career and we probably leaned too much Silva in the second half of last year.  Young players going from the short season and lower intensity level of the NCAA are almost never ready for the rigors of a 34 game pro season crisscrossing the continent.

I suspect what hope we have of TFC getting this season going depends on Cesar’s health and contribution.  The wide positions might continue to be sub-standard and we’ll have trouble scoring but we need a bona fide MLS quality CM to partner Terry if we’re going to have any sustained success.  Jeremy Hall is depth and, like Terry, doesn’t deserve the crap he takes from our “fans” but he’s not an every game starter in this league.

But there’s hope.