why i love the n’kufo signing

careful everybody. i haven’t posted in so long that i have blue fingers……

*wait for childish laughter to die down*

but seriously, this one is a doozy and i decided to ignore basic grammar and sentence structure, yet again. so to all the teachers out there… i am sorry. ok, on with the drivel…

N’KUFO….. I LOVE THIS SIGNING.

nkufo is a player who:
- will be playing world cup bound team
- has averaged over 20 goals in the last 4 seasons in a very good eredivisie league.
- has averaged a goal every two games over his whole career
- has experience wearing the captains armband

those are facts,  so me saying that i think this is a great signing, doesn’t exactly fall into the “going out on a limb” category. however, facts aside, i want to tell you why i love this signing.

for me, from a goal scoring perspective, the three most “important” players on settles roster are zakuani, fred and fred.  this isn’t to say we don’t have any other threat, but 90% of our goals last year came through those players. jaqua had a very good return, but most of his return came via the two freds and steve.

so, if you agree with that, what most teams need to do to stop seattle is:
- shut down the wing. let’s face it, most teams had good success doing this for large amounts of time last season. keep steve in the corner b/c his crosses aren’t exactly deadly.
- don’t give freddie any time on the ball…. or… kick him really hard as often as possible as the case may be
- double team montero. force him to pass or force him to run around you. and let’s be honest, montero isn’t a massive fan of the whole ”pass” concept and he isn’t blessed with the kind of speed to run around defenders.

do those three things well, and you shut down the sounders 9 times out of 10.

let me take a second to address the jaqua elephant in the room. here is a guy who was second in scoring and tied for second in assists. surely i can’t be ignoring his value? and no, i am not ignoring his value to our team, but i am saying that it isn’t critical for opposing teams to focus on him as a key player to shut down. much of his success came as a result of play with the other three… shut down the other three/ you effectifly shut down jaqua. ** more on that at the end of this post if you want the stats.

am i oversimplifying it all? hell yeah i am… but hell, i am a simple guy, and for me, it is that simple. if dave clark reads any of this however, his head might implode with lack of numbers and overemphasis of 2nd grade logic. but you know what dave? i am rubber and you are glue and you know it.

ANYWHO….. so what does adding a proven goal scorer  like n’kufo do to all of this. well let’s speculate shall we? it is what i like to do.

what does it do for stevie z ?

well, steve needs to learn to cross.  he doesn’t have to be a master, he doesn’t have to find a head every time, he just needs to put the ball past the first defender, in the air, or even ground. just get it in the mixer **points up to the kevin calabro God in the sky** 

good things happen from hard hit balls that are launched into the box. nkufo is going to have his lunch if he gets those regularly, and what he can’t get, well montero likes to pick up the scraps. if  he learns to cross rather than running himself into the corner, which happened far too often last year, his game will open up for him.  those defenders that only had to try to keep him from running around them, are now very weary of the cross and will bite on that motion… and when they bite, he can actually use his speed.  and it only gets prettier from there.

what does it do for FM17? 

 most of montero’s goals last year fell into 2 categories…. 

1. the holy crap, what a shot from 30 yards

or

2. quick thinking/picking up the pieces “fox in the box”, you know, a francis jeffers type… ha ha ha. oh frannie jeffers. why didn’t your mum tape back your ears when you were a child…. maybe then you wouldn’t have forever been labeled the fox in the box, that you never were.

rarely did you get a goal from montero that you would classify as one where he broke away from the defender, or even quickly turned a defender for a snap shot. montero’s lack of blazing speed didn’t help him in the break away department (unless he hit it from 30 yards, which he had a better chance of scoring from), but much of his challenges came from the defense double teaming him. his lack of ability or desire to pass made him an easy target to double team. 

 well now that the defense is going to have to honor a player, who you could classify as a bigger goal threat than montero, he is going to get more space and less attention. what he choses to do with that time and space is the big unknown… but having him shoot more can’t be bad, and if he learns that thing called “a pass”, boy, that sure opens things up even more.

what does it do for FL10?

what is the thing that freddie was the best at last year? no, not bitching to referees. no, not getting migrains. no, not giving montero the stink eye… come on people!!!   the through ball!!!

freddie lead the team in assists, and it isn’t a stretch to say that he could double his tally of 9 to 18 next year.

last year there were so many through balls to nobody. there was no connection. players didn’t know where to run, and freddie passed to where he wanted them to run, but they didn’t.  i put this down to two reasons.. first, the players just didn’t know each other that well. this is normal and will come over time. in fact we saw freddies production increase dramatically over the last 6-7 games of the season. so hopefully that will continue. but the second reason is down to one of the areas where US soccer (and subsequently MLS)  is lacking as a whole… the ability, or intelligence as it were, to run into space and anticipate the pass. i don’t know if that is b/c players just don’t think that way, or for those that do, they are rarely rewarded with the through ball that will put them in on goal. i suspect is a little bit of both, but one thing is for sure, we didn’t see too much of it last year.

what we did see was freddie making that pass that he expected dennis bergkamp or henrik larsson to be on the end of for the easy shot into the net. he made many of them last year which COULD have been great, but ended up slowly rolling over the endline or to the keepers feet.  none of his team mates were expecting them, so they rarely made the run.

in the ten or so goal compilation video’s i have seen about nkufo, i think he is a player of same mindset to make those runs. nkufo is 34 so he is no spring chicken and isn’t going to outpace most of the defenders in the league.  a killer through ball at the top of the box, however, is better than speed… especially if you have someone who can finish, and in nkufo, you have that.

i will say it right now… at MINIMUM, we will see FOUR lungberg to nkufo goals next year, and that is in a half year…

ok, i am done… i need a cigarette and a quick nap.  

**more about jaqua if you are some sick person that still wants to keep reading.

last year he had 9 goals and 7 assists (regular season), so surely he gets a nod for being an integral part of the offense?…. not so i say.

i tried to find and watch every goal and assist that jaqua had a hand in from our 09 regular season, i was able to find 8 of the 9 goals, and 4 of the 7 assists. Not sure why the assists was as hard, but i have a feeling it was down to MLS sometimes counts 2 assists for 1 goal if the first pass was as important a the final pass in the goal.

but here is what i found. of the 8 goals that i watched (not sure about the 9th) every single one was at the end of a Montero (4), Zakuani (2) or Ljungberg (2) assist. 

of the assists that i watched, it was more distributed out to other players, so i do concede that point.  

this information still confirms my belief that if you shut down steve, fred and fred, you shut down our offense.