Apologies for the delay on this. Full disclosure: it was a super-nice weekend so I just decided to do other things, with a loooong gap between games. Remember, you can play a part in these posts by anonymously voting in the postgame community player ratings each week. Those numbers are on a traditional 1-10 scale, my ratings are not.
Tactics and formation
Nashville was in a pure 4-4-2 pretty much throughout (with occasional shifts into a three-man backline in a defensive posture). The wings were Taylor Washington on the left and Robin Shroot on the right. Shroot drifted centrally a bit – particularly in the final third – and when he was replaced with Matt LaGrassa, the sub did the same. There was a like-for-like change up top with Michael Cox replacing the tired (and yellow-carded) Ropapa Mensah.
I gave a couple knocks to Bradley Bourgeois for longballs over the top early, but that really appeared to be part of the gameplan. If not, this is a very strange passing chart:
The other defenders with one exception did a lot of that early (and more of it late, as well, though that definitely became a smaller part of the plan). David Edgar was the only one who didn’t really do that – somewhat funny, given that the player he replaced in the staRting lineup (Liam Doyle) is best-known for it. He was credited with a few long passes but they aren’t of the same “get it to the endline” variety. Still, with Kimura, Davis, and Reed all doing it as well, it was clearly a gameplan deal.
There was consternation among fans and other media that Gary Smith didn’t go for late offense: Late in the game not subbing to put on a goal-getter (he left his third sub on the bench)… I’m OK with it. While you’d like to win, you also don’t want to lose at that point, and when your sub options either aren’t going to provide the type of offense you need (Hume) or could be a defensive liability (Winn), push with what you have instead of risking a drop of the last point. I touched on that last bit in The Graphical as well, and while I might have done some things differently – Winn for Shroot, go with more of a 4-3-3 with Washington and Winn flanking the striker and Moloto dropping back to midfield, for example – there were definite risks if you tried to generate offense with a substitution and without changing the formation up a bit.
A couple comments from the community that aren’t about any specific player (and were left anonymously – if you want to have your name, Twitter handle, whatever attached to your comments, feel free to drop that in the box as well in future editions):
“Passing and rhythm were both nowhere in sight”
“Sloppy!”
If something happened in the final couple minutes of the game, it’s not included here: I, along with everyone else whose viewing was dictated by ESPN-Plus, did not get to see second-half stoppage time.
Midfielders
Not only does the MOTM selection play here, so too did the… guy at the other end of things… so it leads the way.
Taylor Washington 19.43 (94 minutes) – Community rating: 6.14 – I’m actually a little surprised his community rating was so low, especially because of the way his performance compared to the player on the other wing. Perhaps readers are more astute observers than I though, because through 30 minutes, Washington was absolutely invisible. He had exactly four touches, only one of them in what could be considered a dangerous area.
After that, he had a very solid performance (overcoming 30 minutes of basically on 0-fer to end up with the highest grade). If he’d been able to get involved earlier, it might have helped Shroot find the game – it’s no coincidence that he had a near-assist on what was perhaps Nashville’s best scoring chance. I’ll get to Shroot in a moment, of course, but Washington’s pace down the left flank was a difference-maker once he was able to settle in.
Michael Reed 14.10 (94 minutes) – Community rating: 6.29 – Reed is playing much better lately than he did in the first couple games of the year, and by this point, every game is basically the same for him: he’s a very solid player in midfield defensively, he’s willing to pick out longer passes to spark an attack while being smart and conservative a lot, and is the right-footed free kick taker. The one consistent negative I’m seeing in his game is a first touch that occasionally lets the ball get away from him either to prevent him from being immediately dangerous going forward, or to allow an opponent to come dispossess him.
Bolu Akinyode 10.27 (94 minutes) – Community rating: 5.86 – Akinyode, like Reed, is putting in basically the same performance in each game nowadays (consistency is a good thing). He’s very conservative with his passes for the most part, with a lot of very short ones either going back to the defenders/Pickens or laterally to Reed or whichever winger is closer to him. He had a very nice game defensively with some pickpocket actions on opponents, and he’s getting more comfortable using his physical might to win headers or box out players (with a few fouls resulting, including one in fairly dangerous position but that’s the price you pay to have that physical style).
Robin Shroot 1.61 (71 minutes) – Community rating: 3.86 – Let me preface this by saying Robin Shroot did not have a good performance (you don’t end up with a score that low in 71 minutes if you do), but on a rewatch, I actually thought there were things to like. How often has Nashville SC been in position for what is basically a tap-in goal this year? How many times have they had the opportunity for a volleyed chance from eight yards? Not too many by my count. The flipside of that is that Shroot literally whiffed on both of those opportunities, which is not super-great. He was active through much of his appearance (particularly on defense, where his effort is great), but simply being out there and putting in effort isn’t enough if it doesn’t turn into results. He had the ball ripped off his foot a couple times and of course had a should-be-red-carded tackle defensively. As poor as the total product ended up being, there were more glimmers of positive play than I was expecting.
Matt LaGrassa 3.69 (23 minutes) – Community rating: 6.00 – That LaGrassa was able to put up a reasonable score in under a third the number of minutes Shroot played in the same position is sayin’ somethin’, of course. It mostly said “didn’t make as many mistakes” but he also had a couple nice supporting runs and two really good crosses that were ultimately left wanting. With a full game worth of action, he could have had a nice day. It’ll be interesting to see what Gary Smith does with him now that he’s apparently been usurped by Akinyode at CDM, but has shown that he can succeed on the wing.
Forwards
Lebo Moloto 18.46 (94 minutes) – Community rating: 6.14 – I’m looking at my own overall score for Moloto with a bit of a skeptical eye here. A guy playing striker (he was actually withdrawn behind Mensah quite a bit as a false nine – film room on this in the next couple days) for a team that is ultimately scoreless shouldn’t be racking up huge numbers in player ratings. However, he was very involved, and a lot of times his service ultimately was wasted, whether by offside infractions, poor strikes, turnovers when he’d sent a teammate through, etc. He had some really nice dribbles through traffic and was doing pretty much all he could to get things going in the final third, but he should bear some of the blame for a lack of production, too. He also committed what I consider to be a red card infraction and got away with it.
Ropapa Mensah 4.63 (67 minutes) – Community rating: 5.83 – This was Mensah’s worst performance of the regular season to date, and was a little predictable from what we saw in preseason – and thus why I was trying to pump the brakes at least a little on the hype train. He has good physical ability to be a hold-up striker, but his first touch often gets a little too loose, he doesn’t seem to have ideas in the box frequently enough (that he gets there is obviously good, but a wasted possession in the box is ultimately the same as no possession in the box if it consistently doesn’t turn into goals), and his inexperience shows in the form of some silly fouls – he came off because a second yellow was likely on the way given the way he was playing once he got tired – and the offsides that I alluded to above in Moloto’s section. The potential is there, but NSC really needs consistency to work its way into his game in a hurry.
Michael Cox 1.78 (27 minutes) – Community rating: 5.86 – Nashville SC’s tactics have to change a bit when Cox comes on: he doesn’t have Mensah’s speed to try to get over the top of the defense (not that Mensah is the fastest striker out there, but he appears faster than Cox), and he’s a little bit more productive in hold-up play. He also suffered from a lack of ideas in the final third, taking a shot from about 25 yards out instead of surveying other options on one occasion. He doesn’t seem to fight as hard to get up for aerial balls though, which is something the Boys in Gold really need him to do.
Defenders
David Edgar 15.80 (94 minutes) – Community rating: 6.71 – I was surprised to see Edgar lead the scores on defense, because I felt he wasn’t super-involved in the game (except inasmuch as “solid positional defense,” an extremely important part of being a centerback, is being involved). Part of it is that he wasn’t lobbing longballs over the top like his linemates and getting the resultant dings when it wasn’t staying inbounds on the slick pitch. He is the most comfortable CB on the ball for Nashville – that Premier League experience truly does show through – and had a couple nice tackles. He did have one Doyle-like stab at the ball which resulted in being solidly beaten on the dribble, though.
Justin Davis 13.94 (94 minutes) – Community rating: 6.43 – Here’s the guy I was expecting to lead the backline in rating, and he really wasn’t all that far off (especially considering I hit him twice for lobbing ineffective balls over the top, for which he’s probably only partially culpable). He has getting forward nicely lately. He also didn’t have any of the “oh shit” moments (though nor did he have the incredible slide tackles to make up for them, either). His two services from the corner were very nice as well, though both were left wanting.
Bradley Bourgeois 9.82 (94 minutes) – Community rating: 6.57 – I thought Bourgeois (or “Borges” according to the announcers) had a very, very nice performance, and if not for being the guy who bore the brunt of the hopeful lobs upfield – see the above passing chart – he would have scored out very well. His hustle was really on display in this one, whether compensating for a mediocre pass from a teammate, or getting back defensively to intercept attempts to break the backline out of Penn. The opponent was more able than previous one to make his lack of height an issue on set pieces in the box, but he’s still in positions to be a factor, at least.
Kosuke Kimura 9.50 (94 minutes) – Community rating: 6.29 – Kimura kind of gives me a similar vibe to the player who was his companion up the right wing: energetic defensively, but a bit sketchy at times when his team has the ball. I had a lot of “events” for him, and involvement in the game is important, but the distribution of said events tends to be over a third in the negative category, whether with softer inaccurate passes (a bugaboo all year so far) and bizarrely bad throws (at least a wet ball explains it this time around) the primary culprits. He was more sound defensively than he had been early in the year, and that’s probably what kept him in this lineup.
Goalkeeper
Matt Pickens 11.56 (94 minutes) – Community rating: 7.86 – I thought about making Pickens Man of the Match despite a relatively modest rating (and the community had the same idea, clearly), because he did everything that was asked of him from a ball-stopping perspective, and was very good in distribution (plus, the knock on Washington of taking nearly 30 minutes to show up could be considered potentially disqualifying). However, neither of his two saves was too difficult, and though that’s not his fault, his involvement in the game was pretty low – which says good things about the defense, obviously.
Club and Country 