Yallop satisfied with progress in season’s first half
Earthquakes head coach Frank Yallop is pleased with his side’s place in the standings, considering the many injuries that have dogged the team so far this season. Photo: John Todd, centerlinesoccer.com, isiphotos.com.
Despite the absence of Bobby Convey and Ike Opara — more on them later — the mood was upbeat Tuesday as the Earthquakes trained in preparation for Saturday’s key Western Conference match with Seattle. Not only will the match decide the winner of this year’s Heritage Cup, but a win by either side could have significant repercussions on the playoff picture.
Right now, the Quakes are one point clear of the Sounders with three games in hand, and San Jose head coach Frank Yallop call’s Saturday’s tilt an “important match” as his side enters the second half of the season. “We need to pick up and try to win more games at home, and that’s what gets you into the playoffs,” he said. “So, hopefully, starting Saturday we can really get at Seattle, press them and make it difficult and get a home win.”
The Earthquakes are halfway through their regular season schedule of 30 games, and despite his desire to improve the team’s performances at Buck Shaw Stadium, Yallop was satisfied with the team’s progress to date. “I think we’ve got to be really happy with where we sit in the table, with all the adversity we’ve had so far,” he said. “We’ve had two of our top players — well, at least Andre Luiz has proven in this league that he’s good, and he’s out for the season, and Eduardo has not seen the field yet. We’ve had (Joey) Gjertsen out for six weeks, Cornell (Glen)’s been out injured, Arturo (Alvarez) has been out injured. So we’ve managed things well. Scott Sealy’s been out. So I feel that the squad has done a nice job of ticking over, getting points when we’ve maybe looked like we’re not.”
If there was any disappointment over last Thursday’s match at Home Depot Center against the Galaxy, it didn’t show. The Earthquakes held a 2-1 lead over their arch rivals as the game entered its last minute, but a bobble on a twisting shot by goalkeeper Jon Busch gave the Galaxy’s Landon Donovan the opportunity to net the equalizer. Yallop placed little emphasis on missing the opportunity to hand L.A. their first home loss of the season.
“I think that if you look at the game overall, they’re a good side and they play well at home, but we’ve played well away from home or found a way to make sure that we don’t get beat. I was confident going down there. I wasn’t thinking that we were going to get beat 5-0, that’s for sure. We kept them to one goal for 89 minutes, and that’s tough, because they do pile the pressure on down there. We could have come out with a win but a tie we’ll take and move on.”
Similarly, Yallop denied that the late goal would keep Busch out of the San Jose net this weekend. “I think Jon’s done well for four or five games, and he’ll stay in the team,” he said. “The ball moved around a lot — I’m not making excuses for him, he’ll probably want that one back, but no, (it doesn’t change the lineup). I think Jon’s done fine. We’ve not lost with him in the team, either, so that’s an important stat to have as well.”
• • •
Late All-Star addition Bobby Convey wasn’t at training yesterday — he’ll be performing in tonight’s MLS All-Star game, helping take on Manchester United at Reliant Stadium in Houston (5:30 Pacific, ESPN2 and Galavision) — but neither was rookie-of-the-year candidate Ike Opara, who was called to appear at the match for public relations purposes.
Working separately with trainer Bruce Morgan were Joey Gjertsen and Cornell Glen. Gjertsen “tweaked his ankle” and Glen “has a bit of a groin (injury),” according to Yallop, but both are expected to be ready to take the field Saturday night.
Well gee, if Frank’s happy, I guess I should just shut up and be happy too. As long as we make the playoffs. If we don’t, I don’t want to hear any crap about adversity, or injury issues. This is the team they’ve put together. By the sounds of things this is who we’re going to send out for the second half of the season as well.
Agree with TMACK. I’m disappointed that Yallop and Doyle aren’t taking the approach of:
“We were OK in the 1st half, we need to be better in the 2nd half, and here’s how we’re going to do that.”
With the additions of Henry, Castillo, Nkufo…I don’t see the other teams planning to “maintain” in the 2nd half – why the hell should we?!
BUSCH sucks!! Bring back JOE CANNON !!!
I want my daily dose of Joe Cannon, someone needs to find out the truth of why he isn’t starting since no one has nagged him enough to tell us.
Quakes=mediocrity, and our whole coaching & front office are ok w/ that. well then it’s not even worth wasting time w/ what our quakes should do to get better.
welcome, sit, and enjoy.
nice that we get absolutely no news or rumors.
I’m just worried that we’ll sign Khari Stephenson and he’ll turn out to be the 2010 Antonio Ribeiro. In other words, not much to get excited about.
Guys — I’m going to suggest that some of you switch to decaf or find some other way to chill! You’re reading way too much into my little talk with Frank. John Doyle is away at the meetings that coincide with the All-Star Game, so I did not have the opportunity to ask him if they were looking for new signings during the summer transfer window. Please take Frank’s comments at face value — considering the challenges they’ve had with injuries to key players, the loss of Andre Luiz, the fact that Eduardo has played only 31 minutes all year, he’s happy that the team is currently in playoff position.
Put it this way: If someone had told you in March that the big signing, Eduardo, would have played less than a half and that Ryan Johnson would have only scored one goal at this point of the season, you’d be pretty relieved to find out the team was in contention for a playoff berth at this point. I can’t speak much to the quality of play right now — oddly, they weren’t broadcasting a lot of MLS matches in South Africa when the World Cup was on — but the team’s goal has always been making the playoffs, and they’re on track for that.
Joe Cannon?
Jay has a point, let’s not burn the house down as the team has done “well” considering the situation so far this season BUT everyone else also has a very valid point that if management doesn’t invest in the teams future by adding quality players the team will continue to be stuck in second gear.
Maybe a DP is not in the cards until we have a new stadium (this makes sense to me) but there are players around under this level that are worth signing and forget 35+ year olds with broken engines, go get a young Columbian like Montero or someone else on loan from Tottenheim or somebody.
As for FY what do you expect…he has to be positive…it’s his job and he’s not going to smack talk his bosses, would you?
Jay> Guys — I’m going to suggest that some of you switch to decaf or find some other way to chill!
Mark> Jay, we have played horribly against FCKD, the Untied, the Onions, and now we let an almost sure win against the hated galactofilth slip out of our hands. In contrast, we played very well against the SaltLickers in SaltLick! Sure it was a tie, but we went toe to toe with one of the better teams in the league and we looked good. No bunkering, we did not rely entirely on long ball for our offense, we even possessed the ball a bit. We looked good against Spurs, another good team (even in preseason).
It’s not that we are upset with where the team is in the standings, it’s that we feel lucky to be where we are, and we don’t see any help coming for the second half. If our guys play like they did against DCU, Dallas, Filly, and el-lay, we are going to lose a lot of games the rest of the way.
And as for injuries, we haven’t had that many. We planned to have a couple of 30+ years olds lead us to the promised land, but that’s a high risk strategy. As we can see, André Luiz is done for the year, and Eduardo has played only 31 minutes for us. We have the oldest goal keeping tandem in the league. We have an older left back. We’re counting on guys in their 30′s to lead us and that’s risky.
We’re right to be upset. This team is underachieving. With the same guys, but a different strategy, different tactics, and better subs, we’d be well ahead of where we are in the standings. How is it that Arturo still plays with only one foot? Has no Quakes coach told Omar to stop with the diving? Why is Robles on the bench? What’s happened to RJ?
The problems with this team start at the top. We’re about to find out what this team is made of. The second half of the season will be tougher than the first.
Go Quakes!!
Doyle & Frank OUT!!
- Mark
Jonbuschkixass.
Eduardo was supposed to be this amazing player, and he has been a non entity this season, we have gotten to where we are because the players are playing above and beyond where anyone would have expected to be. To say that we are dealing with injuries is silly, every team has injuries, the Flounders have dropped a DP and replaced him. We do nothing. New York has signed one of the biggest names in Football, we do nothing. ChiTown signs a player with talent and amazing upside, we do nothing.
There is only so long that grit and determination can keep us at this spot in the standings, eventually teams with talent and skill will pull away from the rest of the pack and I want the Quakes to be one of those teams, not making the playoffs when we are in the position we are in now is unacceptable. It means that we are sitting on our laurels, saying that we did good enough, but not striving to be better.
One other note on Eduardo…
Yeah he’s been injured and that stuff happens but coming to the team not “match fit” aka FAT as a house is not professional. No wonder the guys has been injured all season as he started out so heavy that he over extended himself to keep up from the begining (in practice) and then the obvious happens…he injures himself.
And that his salary is just 48K it seems to me that he was never as big a name as the club has claimed to begin with. It was stated that he scored 17 goals in 96 apperances in his time with FC Basel but that’s over 4 seasons which works out to 4 goals per season something so what were we expecting?
Edurado is most likely a good enough guy who was just looking for a job so you can’t fault him for that other than he was way out of shape when he arrived which means he didn’t take MLS seriously and he thought he could get bye or he simply didn’t care to begin with.
The club needs to get on with it and beef up the roster plain and simple because if he ever does play we can’t expect much out of him as historically he hasn’t produced.
Das moots, And on who does the whole eduardo debacle fall on?!
tominsj, took the words right out of my mouth.perfect.
if after 3YRS.! we’re just happy to MAKE the playoffs, then i don’t wanna know when it will be expected to win the mls cup.
jay, thx. for all the reports, but i don’t think anyone goes out to buy something w/ their hard earned money to get a halfassed product. and when you look for answers you get all this mumbo jumbo from the mgr./gm, it’s pretty disheartening. we’re not that dumb, when we see around the league what everyother team is doing and we’re standing around w/ nothing but(maybe a mls veteran?!) coming to give us a push, it very frustrating.