Lakenheath Old Boys

We are all former students at Lakenheath High School and other public schools in East Anglia. We were in school in the 70s and 80s and drank deeply from the well of British culture of those decades - the pints, the telly, and of course the footie!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Five Lessons for Klinsy's USA

Ken Gude has a really interesting piece about the US national side after five matches of Jurgen Klinsmann's tenure, framed around these five lessons:

1. "Progress not Miracles"

2. "Bradley didn't miss any hidden gems in the player pool."

3. "Klinsmann has stabilized the defense."

4. "No Bornstein but still no real left back."

5. "Possession and tempo the basics of an emerging style."

You can read the full piece here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/nov/09/jurgen-klinsmann-usmnt-usa-france-slovenia

posted by The Blue Devil @ 5:41 PM 

1 Comments:

Blogger gooner71 said...

Point 2 is well taken, however Juergen's mining of all the German American has not yet born rich fruit. I don't think there's that much of Jermaine Jones that you couldn't find in Mo Edu for instance and I'm not immediately convinced by Chandler. In fact, I think it's only in comparison with Bornstein whose form fell off a cliff, that Timmy Chandler begins to look even OK.

You can't really say that the back line is stabilized either. Not when you've got the aging Boca and Cherundolo still first choice despite all the pretenders tried in that position. Were it not for the outright heroism shown every match by Howard, we'd be slipping cricket scores against any decent side.

Possession and tempo sound great. But when you've got a midfield of Jones, Bradley, Dempsey, Shea, and Beckerman, what chance is there really of holding the ball. When the US has played well, it's because there's quick transition from back to front, not steady build-up starting in the mid. When we don't have the ball, and manage to win it back there's a good chance that we'll lose it again. That's what happened in France tonight.

What really set this era of American National team players apart is that none of the strikers are scoring goals. We used to depend on McBride and thankfully, he came through. It looked like Charlie Davies was going to carry that torch before a horrible injury stalled his career, possibly forever. Since then we're left with Dozy, Aguadelo, Buddle, Johnson, Findlay, even Wondolowski, and not one of them can be counted on to score regularly and at all against top national defenses.

We're in trouble until that's sorted out and I fear for Klinsmann's tenure as pressure for visible improvement starts to mount.

11:05 PM  

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