Would rather have the situation of stocking up talent than turning to the bench and seeing only one guy there… Janicki… Stokes… Erpen… Peralta… (shuddering from memories of the past… almost wrote Burch until I remembered he’s still on the team. Burch for striker!)
Long haul Olsen’s army vamos!

This young team, if most things go as reasonably expected, will be a monster in 2-3 seasons. This year, the goal is to get the youngsters to develop as well as possible while being in the playoff fight. If we get the right bounces and stay healthy, maybe we grab 8th. The bigger goal is to set ourselves up for 2012 and beyond.

Shanosky might not see much time, with 3 people likely ahead of him at defensive midfield (Simms, Kitchen, Morsink) and at least 4 ahead of him at center back (James, Jakovic, White, Kitchen). However, he’ll play extensively with the reserves, Rongen will call him in for any u20 camp/tournament that comes up, and he could get loaned out somewhere like Richmond or to Real Maryland. I’m not worried about him at all; he’ll get the minutes and instruction he needs.

I don’t see White as a starter today, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility either. We’re talking about a kid that would have gone in the 1st round of the draft. He’ll see the field, and like Shanosky he’ll have chances with US youth teams and the reserves. I think it’s realistic to hope for White to earn his way into the lineup by the time August or September comes (or, at least, to be kept out of the team only because other people are doing well).

Our biggest issue last season wasn’t the individual defenders we had. I’m not arguing that we had Best 11 quality players back there, but in a different context most of them would have been useful on decent teams. The bigger issues were things like help from the midfield and in goal, overall confidence, injuries, and coaching.

Let’s start with the players who were supposed to be helping our defense. Clyde Simms missed a few games at the beginning of the season and then most of the 2nd half of 2010 with injuries. Having previously been our “iron man,” this threw the team off quite a bit. We had no depth (Morsink does not count as depth), and when you’re weak at defensive midfield, your opponent’s most creative players - attacking midfielders and withdrawn forwards - will flourish. We also had issues with other midfielders not working quite hard enough and not taking up appropriate defensive positions. That situation improved when Onalfo was fired, but the damage was already done.

On the other side of the back four, we had Perkins in the midst of the worst form of his career, followed by a 19 year old, followed by the return of a better, but still not that great, Perkins. Our defenders had little reason to feel confident in the decision-making ability in the guys behind them (much less the ability to make the “big save” every keeper has to make once a game; I only remember Perkins coming up with two or three all season).

That dovetails nicely with the second point: Confidence. Defending is about working as one group, which requires trust. Trust requires the ability to believe in the other guys on the field, and when you have Perkins letting in soft goals and Morsink playing backpasses that become through balls, there’s little trust. Last year’s team only appeared confident under Olsen; when Onalfo was here, it was like we never got over the 4-0 shellacking we got in week 1 at Kansas City. The fact that we lost several games in maddening fashion (create 5 or 6 chances, waste them all, and then concede a goal off an absurd individual mistake or unlucky bounce) made things worse.

Injuries were also brutal for us. We played without a true left back for about 2/3 of the season, the veterans that were supposed to lead the youngsters (Talley and Pena) were often hurt, and so on. Down the stretch, we had several games where our back four was made up of the healthiest four defenders we had on the team. We even had a one-game hardship loan of JP Domingues from Miami FC, and MLS virtually never gives hardship loans for field players.

I think the fact that the players believe in Olsen, who seems more demanding of accountability than Onalfo. I also like the idea of bringing in Pat Onstad as a full assistant whose main duties apparently will be working with our keepers and defending as a team. Looking at the reputation the Quakes 1.0 and Dynamo had with him in goal, I have to imagine that they’ll get better instruction than they got from Onalfo and Kelderman.

As for the individual parts, we’ll get a whole season of Zayner, a future national team player in Kitchen, and Ethan White (who would have gone in the 1st round if we hadn’t taken him as a homegrown player). We won’t have Perkins in the back going through whatever he was going through that brought him down. Simms should be 100% healthy. Dax McCarty is a much more stable, reliable presence in central midfield, which will cut out the turnovers that we were so vulnerable to last season.

The parts haven’t improved by that much, but the group around them has quite a bit. Defending is always less about individuals and more about the collective, and I think our collective has come a long way. There’s still plenty of work to do, but it seems we’re moving in the right direction.