Kreis on the loss: RSL lacked "focus and commitment" on set pieces

Kreis on our set piece profligacy

"It's just individual plays. It's about whether or not you're going to make a play against your mark. It's about whether you're going to be physically outmuscled by the forward that you're marking, or whether you're going to take that extra half a second to nap. That means he gets behind you, and he's going to have a chance. For me, we can work on it in training all we want, but in the game it just comes down to focus and commitment."

Me on our set piece profligacy

Pardon me for a moment while I slam my foot in the door repeatedly. This is what last night felt like. And for one brief second, we moved our foot from the door and started to step through, then we started slamming it again. Maybe it was a case of phantom hand syndrome, or maybe it was just because we didn't know what we were doing.

Focus and commitment? I don't know how to quantify those things. If it's down to focus and commitment, is that the responsibility of the players or the coaches? Surely it's a combination of the two. If it's a combination of the two, we need to ask serious questions about both sides of the equation. If we do work on set pieces in training consistently, great. (I don't have the time nor the resources to attend on a daily basis.) But practice is what makes us a viable team, and while we practice some things consistently, set pieces just don't seem to be one of them.

Kreis on who to blame for our set piece problems

"I think that it's been a different player on multiple plays all year. The tendency this group is having, to not recognize these danger situations. It's something we've talked about; we've talked about it and talked about it. As we see, it's one of the very few ways that opponents are causing us troubles."

Me on who to blame for our set piece problems

Well, today it was Nat Borchers, wasn't it? Steven Lenhart had the beating of him from the word go. (Insert another trite metaphor here.) Borchers let the big man have an unmarked header in the box for the first goal despite being the player watching him, then he let Lenhart get in front of him for the second goal. So in terms of yesterday, that's down to our veteran center back.

But if we're going to talk about RSL over the course of the season, or indeed, the last three, and if we're going to talk about our set piece problems, we should talk about a lot more than just Borchers.