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From: RichieAnimal@cs.com > If you see a player has slipped in ability or does not match up > well against a player in a particular game. You substitute before > disaster strikes not after it strikes. Observation: Arena didn't substitute Agoos after the Portugal game. Conclusion? 1. Arena is an idiot, and you are smarter than he is. Or, 2. Arena knows what he is doing, and he doesn't see anybody on our bench who could replace everything Agoos does. Give him a little credit for knowing what his players can do. We just don't have the depth to bench everybody who gets outplayed. Maybe Italy has spare quality defenders who can come off the bench and shut down the other guy's star attacker. We're a decade or more away from that level. Regis slipped in performance, and Arena benched him for Hejduk. Our entire lineup "slipped" when Armas went down, and Arena brought in Beasley and Donovan, for which he now looks like a genius. So Arena knows how to make tough calls and roll the dice. If he leaves Agoos in there, that tells you something about the rest of our bench. (And we just lost Cherundolo, too.) Agoos arguably hasn't "slipped" in ability -- he was that "bad" to begin with, everybody knew it, and it's still hard to take him out. So we compensate for that by designing our team defense to emphasize support and numbers, and minimize 1-v-1 foot races. That's the team concept we used throughout two years of qualifying, where nearly every team is faster than us except maybe Canada :) So that's what we brought to the Cup, and that's probably what Arena is going to stick with, sink or swim. The Nets' starters can't stop Shaq. Should Scott bench them all? Heck, he knew before the series began that not one of his starters could stop Shaq. So why didn't he bench them before "disaster struck"? Arena and Scott: Dumb and Dumber? Or, just maybe, they're already using the best players they have available. -- Eric Wang |