Episode 131 - New players, familiar problems

Sporting Kansas City returned to their losing ways on Saturday night in a staid, depressing, and rather familiar feeling performance losing 2-0 to LAFC.  LAFC was the 2nd in a row of very solid defensive opponents that do not care that much about possession and unlike Minnesota last week, did not relax once up 2-0 and gave SKC no opportunities of consequence to attack, and SKC was certainly not up to the task of creating said opportunities on their own.Peter Vermes lamented this fact after the game in his post game comments, stating that LAFC were simply the better team in every phase of the game.  While it was a fairly obvious statement, it rings a bit hollow as the team spent $9M in the offseason supposedly improving the quality of the attacking players on the roster only to see them struggle with the exact same issues as in the past.  There are of course reasonable arguments to be made about rapport building and time playing together, but this all feels so familiar it is hard to believe that this is simply going to get better with time.We will discuss what we would do both with the personnel and tactics to try to get something out of this team, as well as discuss the reality of the situation that Peter Vermes finds himself in, and whether we believe he is capable of pulling the team out of it.Finally we will look at the fun soccer team in KC, the Current as they start the season 2-0, a USMNT that sadly looks just as ineffective offensively as Sporting KC, and preview Sporting’s upcoming road trip to Frisco to meet up with the now Lucho Acosta-led FC Dallas.