Real Salt Lake vs. San Jose: Five quick stats

It was a bitter loss to San Jose after coming off that last minute win against Minnesota last week. Everyone was hoping for some kind of result. Unfortunately after a formation change and too many failed “over the top” passes, we fell 2 -1 . There were definitely some good things that happened along with some habitual problems. Here are five quick stats.

• I understand that Mulholland was playing Beckerman’s usual CDM position in a 4-1-3-2, but I don’t think that position plays to any of his strong suits. Mulholland spent less than 15% of the time in the opponents final third.

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• Again, I know he was playing back on purpose but he and Rusnak are pretty much the only players that should be taking shots outside of the box and with him sitting so deep defensively, I felt he was wasted.
• Speaking of shooting outside the box, we shot five outside the box, and 6 inside the penalty area. Compare that to San Jose who had four outside the 18, and thirteen inside the penalty area. Whats also funny is that we only had six shots from the run of play and five from set pieces. Not the most advantageous places and ways to score.
• Although we conceded two goals and lost, I felt that we did much better defensively this game. Our center backs worked well and our back line as a whole did well. Yes we were getting cut to pieces for the first thirty minutes but we defended hard and well which produced five blocked shots. Some of them were really clutch as well.
• Speaking of our back line, whoscored.com ratings gave a three-way tie for highest rated RSL player. Glad, Hernandez, and Acosta all got a 7.0. I have come to expect good performances from Glad, and Hernandez only got the rating because of the last minute goal. Acosta however, also put in a great shift with three recoveries and six tackles.

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• My only complaint is that he seemed to be playing a little too central and San Jose kept long-balling Hoesen too easily.
• The last stat I want to talk about is our final third passing. We has only 58% completion, which I feel is why our shot count was down. We made too many silly or poor passes, especially in the final third. Also, at the end of the game, I cannot for the life of me understand why we kept playing up the right side of the field only to switch over to Plata. We did it two or three times and then they started expecting it. And instead of stopping, we continued to do it. All in all the passing in the attacking half and final third were below par and hindered us from more and better looks on goal.

Hopefully we can look at what went wrong and figure out a formation and attacking strategy that works. Hopefully our defense continues to put in good performances and we can start connecting in the final third. We will have to wait and see.