Jon — Seattle Sounders: May and June

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another update of our Seattle Sounders story! When last we left off, we were doing reasonably well in the league, but giving up way, way too many goals for my taste. I’ve made a few small changes (swapped out one defender for his backup, and rotated the Centrebacks) to the squad, and have been focusing my match preparation efforts on defensive positioning. I also slightly tweaked my training schedules to be a bit more defensive in nature (For those wondering, I use Zero Sea’s training schedules). Did the changes payoff? Let’s take a look!

US Cup Qual. 1

I’m not entirely sure why, as an MLS team, that I need to go through three qualifying rounds in order to earn the right to face Division 2 and 3 teams, but regardless I couldn’t do anything about that. I was matched up with New England, another MLS team and one I was expected to easily best.

Excellent, we’ve made progress already! I can handle one goal allowed, and even though our board doesn’t care about the US Cup, I certainly do.

May 2010 Fixtures:

Next up we had a relatively full schedule for May, including crucial matches against Los Angeles and New York. Thierry Henry has been absolutely on fire for New York, and I was admittedly terrified of what he’d do to my defense. Los Angeles was without Donovan (sold to Man U) and David Beckham (injured), so I wasn’t quite as worried about them.

Whaaaaaat!? Four straight clean sheets and a draw against New York!? I’ll absolutely take those results, and this is what I was expecting to see after those initial friendly results. Columbus and San Jose were never going to be much of a challenge (San Jose was sitting bottom of the conference at the time), but LA and NY were great results. Los Angeles, as I’d mentioned, was very depleted and we were comfortable 2-0 winners in that match. New York dominated us for most of the match, but a heroic stand and some absolutely magical saves from Kasey Keller allowed us to steal a somewhat undeserved away draw.

The Colorado Double:

We had a short turnaround following our San Jose win, and would be facing the Colorado Rapids on the 25th (for the US Cup Second Qualifying Round) and the 29th (MLS Regular Season). Colorado are the reigning MLS Champions in real life, and the media was calling us an even draw for both games. They’re a very strong team, and have a potent and powerful striker in Conor Casey. Fortunately Mr. Casey was going to be absent for our first draw due to a mild injury, but we wouldn’t have any such luck in the second round.

Excellent! We actually went down 1-0 in the first game before a stunning second half allowed us to pull out the victory. I was very nervous about the second game (it’s hard to beat a team twice in short order), and we felt Conor Casey’s impact almost right away. Colorado controlled most of the second match, and we managed a lucky goal in the second half to steal away a win.

Early June Fixtures:

We were riding high heading into June. We were on an undefeated streak, morale was through the roof, and our defense had gelled very nicely (we hadn’t conceded a league goal since the end of April). We were opening the month with a tough US Cup Third Qualifying round fixture against D.C. United, followed by league matches against New England and D.C. United again. United were playing well, sitting third in the Eastern Conference, although they didn’t appear to have Charlie Davies on loan in the game, so that helped our cause a bit.

Whew! That US Cup game was a whole lot closer than it looked, and required some late game heroics from Freddy Montero to secure the win. We continued our mastery over New England, and managed a second win over D.C. United a few days later. I traded plaudits with Ben Olsen (United’s manager), and was very pleased with our squad’s performance over this stretch.

Late June Fixtures:

We had a much needed break after our last United game, and didn’t have to play again until a June 22nd date with Rochester (in the 3rd tier of the US Soccer Pyramid), and a potentially dangerous league game against Philadelphia on the 27th. We were expected to easily drop Rochester, so I was planning on giving some of my reserves some playing time.

Well…that didn’t go as planned. I have a pretty small roster, so at least half my starters were on the pitch for that Rochester game and we were just flat out owned. I’d planned on giving Freddy Montero a break, but had to bring him on at the half in hopes of salvaging something from the game. He responded magnificently and scored two quick goals to put us up 2-1 until we allowed an 85th minute equalizer as Rochester forced extra time. I was out of subs and had some exhausted players, and Rochester made us pay with a 115th minute goal to see us out of the US Cup. I’m pretty embarrassed by the result, but I guess it gives us the luxury of focusing on league play.

The match against Philadelphia was pure luck. The Union took an early 1-0 lead, and then gave us an own goal 10 minutes later to draw the match level again. Our defense managed to hold on for the rest of the match, and our offense was simply unable to generate anything meaningful. I was grateful to secure a draw in a game where Philadelphia scored all of the goals.

Table:

We’re doing well in the league, and our results have seen us to the top of the Western Conference:

Transfers:

Yep, we’ve had some transfer activity in the month of June (which is the MLS equivalent to the January transfer window), and I’d like to welcome our newcomers:

I was very excited to snatch up Peter Luccin on a free transfer. He’s a bit old, but my midfield has been the shakiest part of the squad (since the defense stabilized), and I’m hoping his experience will rub off on the likes of John Rooney.

About halfway through May, I realized I didn’t have a backup right back. Adrian is the answer to that problem, and he has pretty decent upside as well.

Best Player:

Are there any doubts to this one? Freddy Montero has far and away been our superstar (Thierry Henry has been even better for NY):

Full Disclosure:

In light of the unfortunate revelations regarding Alex, I’d like to make everything I use public. I use downloaded tactics, primarily ZeroSea’s 4-3-3 and a slight modification of Darren’s excellent 4-5-1. My training schedules, as I mentioned earlier, are also ZeroSea’s, though those are also somewhat modified due to my defensive mentality versus his offensive style. My skin is a hodgepodge of the NN Skin and Cro-Magnon skin, both found on FM-Base.

Finally, I do use FMRTE (a database editor) for two things: 1) To see a player’s CA/PA in a numerical format. I find the «stars» to be a bit vague, and I like to have a better idea of what a player may be capable of. 2) I sometimes use FMRTE for scouting purposes. I unintentionally turned on Player Attribute Masking (I don’t normally use it) for this save, and I’ll use FMRTE for manual scouting in order to save time. I do not, however, modify my player attributes or use any of the other «cheating» tools. If my use of FMRTE is frowned upon, I will gladly uninstall it and never touch the application again. I very much want to be viewed as an open and honest blogger.

Thank you all so much for your continued support, and as always, I’d love to hear your feedback!