We Neva learn our lesson, keep banging the wall!

[Stonigut]

2002, 2006, 2010,2014

Can't really remember 2006 must have been pretty bad, but remember being upset by 2002.

2010 we lose out on goal difference pre hex tough! And hear we are again about to lose out on the hex, one loss and we are out!! But we knew the odds, we knew the risks, everybody bawling fI dis stupid creative midfielder business and here we are again, typically guat cannot move the ball in our half, due to size and speed of defense, what do we do, we bring in the opposite of speed and size and man that having been playing a lot recently, man that are not battle proven over a season even in the rspl. We bring them in for the critical game which we all said was a must win, we bring in hue in midfield who is a known defensive liability in the mids, we are playing guat, in guat in a match they know they must win and they have the best chance to win at home versus in us, well they got the job done and we with our arrogance did the opposite.

Anyway let me not be a total downer, even though I am a realist at the end of the day.

Truth is a&b nearly beat us, we were lucky to draw that match, I can't see us beating them three and even if we do, I can't see the USA versus guat match being anything but a draw the risk level is too high for both sides to sustain a loss at this point, with the outside chance of Ja beating a&b. however crazier things have happened in life, maybe somebody can get Dempsey upset.

It truly grieves me in no uncertain manner what this means and again it is our own arrogance that is doing us in. When I saw the squad I was very unhappy, I already wrote the article about the creative midfielder myth with every hope that there is no way hue or Kelly would be chosen just because some people think they are the best ting since jerk seasoning, they are both good players but they are not national players, they have never proven themselves in the heat of the battle, and with Austin and mariappa injured my heart was in my mouth and so we bring in shavar in central defense, shavar has not been getting consistent playing time for a while, we put Taylor in mids and hue in mids, in a game like this on the road we must dominate our half.

Our half is our fort and real defense starts with forwards shutting down space so mids can pressure and squeeze movement into centre of the field, with two players that should not have been in mids that spells trouble immediately. One that is out of position Taylor and the other hue which is a defensive liability, there is no way guat should have scored two goals on a Jamaican defense and that right there is our undoing, we gave them life with the squad picked and the players that were in the game.

When you go to your most critical battle, Everyman must know and understand his role to the T, why play hue who has not played in a game of this level in a while insuch a critical role. It is insanity! It is unfair to him, even though I know he wanted the chance and who would turn down the chance if it was given, it should not have been given.


Let it be known from henceforth that no Jamaican team will make any World Cup final unless all four of our mids are battle hardened, aggressive, fast, known ball hogs and interceptors by nature, look at all your great mids that produce goals and assists in significant quantities, it is skill, it is speed but most of all it is just hard, dutty, sweaty take no prisoners work. As Ali McNab used to say 99% perspiration and one % inspiration that is the formula or something close to that. There is no magic bullet! I wish that was the end of the discussion but truth is we will still be arguing for this same mythical Lenny Hyde type till the end of time.

I am beyond myself, my Brazil plans are dead, I have no interest if Jamaica is not there, only a miracle can help now as we have clearly taken this out of our hands and put it in gods hands, you know what dem say, god helps those that help themselves, look like we out of luck there!

[Reggaedoc]

In a way you are right Stony. Arrogance on the part of the damn coach. His team selection was poor. If fit, Fuller, and King should never have been left out. They would have given the Guats nightmares. they love to run at you, and have he skills to take the game to them and create chances. I saw the entire game. We had 60% of the possesssions in the 1st half and never took a single threatening shot. That was insane.

[Twan]

In a way you are right Stony. Arrogance on the part of the damn coach. His team selection was poor. If fit, Fuller, and King should never have been left out. They would have given the Guats nightmares. they love to run at you, and have he skills to take the game to them and create chances. I saw the entire game. We had 60% of the possesssions in the 1st half and never took a single threatening shot. That was insane.

dont know which game you watched to make such a comment about shots on goal....

[Stonigut]

We have been seeing that trend throughout, look at the us game outside of free kicks we never really threatened the goal.

When you really think about it, any team needs continuity, we totally lack continuity of team selection, team style of playing, who gets selected, how can people get selected when they do not produce, how do you get selected when you can't even play a full season in the rspl, how does the MVP of the rspl never even gets looked at and guys that are way down the line get selected. We are bouncing around with selection like we have no clue what we are doing, level the damn playing field so man and man can understand what them need fI do fI play.

How does hue get game over senior who has been in the squad and hue just arrive and jump straight in, if you don't believe in senior drop him and get somebody else, where is khari Stephenson, why is Watson getting game over khari when khari scoring goals and assists for the best team in mls and Watson can't score or assist nothing all season, I think watson is a great talent but he is not producing and that is the bottom line.

Well the thing ketch up with us, great talent but no system, no process no plan, mi done!

[Stonigut]

To be truthful, I never support fuller as he has not produced in a while and I supported Tappa on the king thing, but that is just the t of the iceberg, the real deal is the entire selection process and lack of continuity in play. It was starting to settle down with nosworthy, mariappa, Taylor, Austin, Morrison, Johnson, shelton, but with maps and Rudy out we made the wrong moves.

[Mosiah]

How does hue get game over senior who has been in the squad and hue just arrive and jump straight in...

Erm...because he is twice as good as Senior?

Wi have enuff fast and foolish on the team. Hue gave us slow and smart! And it would have produced goals if he wasn't feeding more fast and foolish on the front line.

[Tilla]

Fuller does not have a record of producing for Jamaica period. You therefore cannot call him on his past performance and he is certainly not tearing up the Championship in which he is now playing.

[Assasin]

you are been very biased here. How can you talk about Hue? The fact is, if anything Hue should have been called long ago. Hue had nothing to do with any of the goals. The first goal is Jason Morrison fault. with or without Hue Morrison would have been on the field. Hue is the only one to take a good corner and he made a few penetrative passes, something we have been missing. The second goal is a goal fault firstly and bad defensive marking. Hue wasn't even on the field at the time.

In my opinion if we have Hue, Demar, Dane and Mattocks on the field we will open up defenses. At the begining of the second half with Dane, Hue and Demar going forward, that is when most of our chances were created.

[Twan]

To be truthful, I never support fuller as he has not produced in a while and I supported Tappa on the king thing, but that is just the t of the iceberg, the real deal is the entire selection process and lack of continuity in play. It was starting to settle down with nosworthy, mariappa, Taylor, Austin, Morrison, Johnson, shelton, but with maps and Rudy out we made the wrong moves.

hey, lets keep the cow bawling and hand wringing, till Tuesday night after the game, as of NOW, we have to work with what we have.

wi nuh ded yet, there is still a ray of hope, lets focus on that until the fat lady ah Stadium sing.....Tuesday. leave the post mortem till then...

USA !! USA !! wi seh

[Stonigut]

Listen it is not about Hue but it is about hue type players like kelly and daley and the type of play they bring to the unit.

Think of our half as a fort, we are defending our goal that is in the center of the walls, the Walls are defined by our half, thus the forwards are outside the wall in the field skirmishing and applying pressure and eating space forcing opponents to hurry passes coming out of their half, our midfield are the guys on the ramparts, nobody can get pass the walls or if they do it is a futile single foray and it is quickly quashed, in order to play that game we need fast and furious midfielders,with tackling ability, speed and great center of gravity, this will add pressure quickly to any additional pass and kill or squash any possibility of a string of passes between players trying to get through the walls.


If you think of midfield then as the real defense then you would never, I mean never put a player like hue on the field, he is a defensive liability and just does not pressure the ball, that combined with Taylor playing mid like a fish out of water and Morrison the only one playing the hardcore role creates tons of space, thus the intruders are in your half, through your walls and making plays in your half that led to the first goal, look back at the gold cup game against guat, you will see that they could not move the ball at all in our half, our mids were playing them tight, giving no space and always applying early pressure, when you fail to man the ramparts on one section of the wall then your system fails as you have others trying to overcompensate for that weakness.


We think too much of these players as individuals they are a system, they are a mesh that must work cohesively one backing the other in combination to create an overwhelming advantage in space and time, shutting down the corridor of attack.

Again think of the idea of a pie chart and think what is it that a mid spends most time doing and what you find is that probably most of that time is spent closing space against an opponent or opening space to create availability for the pass in both cases you need speed and you need a fast and agile mind that guys that we use to call chicken thief have. They are natural born interceptors, stealers their brains are faster and one step ahead on plays,that combined with a tough tackling hard running player is the only thing we need in our midfield, if mariappa and Austin were in that game we would have a different result entirely, actually if Austin was in that game the result would have been different he brings an active, aggressive sentinel style that keeps intruders out and lifts the alertness of the entire mids. Thus nothing against hue, he just cannot make my Jamaican midfield as he does not meet that requirement. Teams cannot afford a player that is mostly one sided you just have too much to Make up on the defense side of the ball. Think of watson morrison and austin, then think taylor, morrison and hue combination, you see the massive difference, watson as the attacking mid is an active marauding tackling interceptor type player versus hue, you give that up completely leaving morrison and taylor trying to make up the gap and taylor hjust trying to adjust, too much pressure on morrison and phillips coming back in after not playing is just too much pressure on the unit.

Anyway lets see if we have any shot, we missed doing the most critical thing on Friday so now it is just a wishing thing, as them used to say back in the days if wishes were horses beggars would ride,beggars never rode that is the problem, wishes is pure fantasy, so it is just left to chance that maybe somebody fall of them horse and hit them head for us to ride to the hex, lets see what motherluck say bout that.

[Stonigut]

I hear you but the horse bolt the gate already anyway everything cross hoping for a miracle.

[Gamma]

2 losses

[Sir X]

Totally disingenious Stoni !

To single out Hue as a fault and then butter it up with team selection to justify that loss ,( or our problems), whats your grouse with Hue , the best player on the field, the player who did what he was selected to do , create chances that our players could not put away, corners that went to nought?

Where was Hue when we drew and lost on the road ? Where was Hue before we became so desperate ?The question lies in our forward line on whose head we might be going out.

Look we all know Shelton limitations he is not a World Class striker , be it as it may he is our leading goal scorer against Bahamas etc, cant get squat out of the top 4 or 5 in concacaf(Mex,USA,C.Rica, Pan,Hon,), if he does score it is all luck i.e buck up put penalties and free kicks in that class.

Fuller is worse , so that is where we are, Fuller & Shelton to lead the line ? both ratio combined against the top 5 in concacaf is a joke , against minnows it is still a joke.We created chances , but our cutting edge was lacking.

Did Hue have anything to to with the 2 goals conceeded against guat? Be honest and stop holding belly fi di man like Tappa.

You do have a point in what we need in our midfielders but to single out Hue to make that point is ridiculous.

We need two bonafide killer strikers in the mole of(fill in the blank).....mek mi stop ,a decent striker would put them in the back of the net.

Johnson has had two bad games back to back.Shelton & Fuller cannot make my team, so in my opinion we have 1 decent striker who will have a bad game or two, where is the depth to keep them motivated (threaten them /compete with them that the bench is near ), thats our main problem.

[Mosiah]

Over-analysis here?

Hue is a defensive liability. Everyone can see that. But he is not there to play defence. Of course it would be great to have an attacking mid who also covers from 18 to 18, but we don't have that. In the meantime, we need someone who can make a good forward pass that could result in a goal. Who does that better than Hue? In addition to that, who takes freekicks better than Hue?

Yuh really comparing Watson to Hue?!?!

Watson...is an active marauding tackling interceptor type player versus hue...

So right about that! But does he have the ability to consistently make good passes that can result in goals?!?

One local player told me that Hue did not play so well because he could have taken two shots with his right foot and didn't. How many times do we pressure right-footed players to take left footed shots?!? Fact of the matter is Hue uses his right foot more than how right-footed players use their left.

If Hue loses the ball, we imprint it in our minds and bring it up as some kind of argument why him nuh good. Nevermind that other players lose the ball twice as much as he does!

Indeed, it could be argued that Hue played more defence in this match than some of our defenders!!!

Point is we always want him to do more than everyone else. Hue should have been on this team a long time ago. Maybe we would have already qualified for the next round.

[Mosiah]

Can someone tell me why is it that Maestro is summoned to the team every time we find ourselves in a bit of bother? What does that tell you?!?

I have seen Hue play much better games for HV this season than he played the other night. He knows those players, he doesn't have to think when he gets the ball. Hue played very haltingly against Guatemala, maybe because he is still feeling his way around these players. We erred greatly when we left him off the team from day one!

Until we find that attacking mid who can make passes like Hue while putting in good defensive work, let's use him! We haven't learnt from this mistake and now we find ourselves in a familiar position of desperation.