u/philippewest

I'll give you an excerpt of the section about Jayden Nelson (though contrast this with what Davy Arnaud said at the post-match press conference, which is a little higher up in the article:

Nelson — one of only a few players making himself available to media after the match — shared plenty about his season so far, including the frustration of struggling with injuries prior to his selection to Canada's World Cup squad.

"I was dealing with issues with my body I never experienced before," he explained. "Now that I feel healthy, I'm ready to go. It's obviously hard to get into the squad right now with guys playing well, but I want to play really bad. So I'll say the ambition I got from the World Cup, knowing that I want more, knowing I can play with the best players in the world, I want to come back to Austin to really show that to the fans."

Of the episode in Houston, in which Arnaud reversed his decision to put Nelson into the match because he determined Nelson didn't have the "right mindset," Nelson attributes that to a misunderstanding that's since been resolved.

"It was a pretty bad loss, and I'm coming off a World Cup, wanting to play, wanting to change the game," he recalled. "And I felt like coming on the 80th minute, I'm not able to do anything, and it was kind of a miscommunication as well on the bench, and that's all it was. It wasn't anything serious. I've seen a lot of things on Twitter and whatnot, but it's nothing to that."

His late entry into the match on Sunday was the subject of additional social media activity, though, with Soccerwise podcast host David Gass commenting, "If Austin isn’t gonna play Jayden Nelson, there’s like half a dozen MLS sides that could use him."

Nelson looked lively in his eight minutes (plus 10 minutes of stoppage time) on the field, but wasn't able to help his teammates on their quest for an equalizer that would have pumped the brakes on their declining league form. I asked him what the difference has been between the good Leagues Cup performances and the struggles against Western Conference foes, and his answer was telling.

"It's just different teams," he said. "Dallas had a lot of time to analyze us and know what we do. And to be honest, we do the same thing every single game. Like, that's Austin ... so it's gonna be difficult going to games, because teams know what we're gonna do. But I think we have a good group around us to adapt to that. And that's all it is. It's just a different type of league that we're playing. And it's a whole different atmosphere. You'll see ... it's gonna come."

From my writeup this morning, pulling from Davy Arnaud's post-match comments.

"We want to have a clear organization, a clear structure, so that we understand when there is movement and you're assuming a different role, you take the role of that position," he said. "Toward the end of the first half, I'll be honest with you, I was disappointed with how the end of the first half went, because we're up 3-0, and now you see guys start kind of moving all over the place."

Noting that his halftime message hinged on that observation, he added, "That was a challenge for us, to stick to the plan and not because we're winning, just start moving wherever we want. And it's not how we're going to be successful. It's not how we're going to do it. And so that was the challenge at halftime ... when we're we're winning and we're on the good side of things, do we have the personality to stick to it? Do we have the belief to stick to it? Because that's what's going to lead to chances for us. I don't think we're a team that can start doing a ton of random things and hope that that we create chances. I just don't think that's how we're going to be successful. And I saw in the first half, man, we stuck to it, and it led to some really good things."

He expounded further on the theme a bit later in the press conference.

"It's very easy when things are going well ... to just start going off script and moving everywhere, and everyone wants to touch the ball, and it's fun. But do we have the personality to stick to it and kill the game and get another goal? Because there were more goals in it for us, and the longer that we can do that and understand that when we do it in a really good clear way, that's our best chance of creating chances and getting more goals.

"So that was the challenge for the second half, and I thought we saw some okay moments in the second half," he added. "But if we're being honest, the feeling in the locker room, the feeling after the game was good because we won the game, but we know we have more in the tank than we showed in the second half, and I think everyone felt that. I said that; after [the match] I was like, 'Guys, it's awesome, the result's great.' Nut I'm feeling it, and I know that they're feeling it — that we have more than we showed in the second half. So, it's good to learn when you're winning, obviously, but that was the challenge and what we said after the game."

Full article's in front of the paywall, but I'll start you with some Myrto regardless:

On Wednesday, in an early morning media availability ahead of the match, leading goal scorer Myrto Uzuni indicated it gives the team a chance to show a better version of itself.

"We can't wait to play," Uzuni insisted. "First of all, we have to respect ourselves, our city, our jersey, what we are wearing ... this year is not good enough."

Noting that Verde fans deserve better, he added, "I believe truly in this locker room, in every player, the quality we have. But sometimes, the quality is not enough if we don't have the desire to win every ball and to fight for each other. So we have to wake up ... because we have to turn things around. Because I think this city doesn't deserve this. This team doesn't deserve to be in this place ... so we're going to try and we're going to give everything."

There's a lot to parse here, but here's a piece to consider:

Hines-Ike said that even though the system might be challenging players — noting that it's requiring "guys playing in positions that they weren't comfortable playing" — they owe it to Arnaud to execute it to the best of their abilities.

"This team owes a lot, in my opinion, to Davy — this guy who's been here from the beginning," Hines-Ike said. "He's given everybody a fair chance. He's been accountable with every single player that's been here, and he's come in and now he's implemented this new system — and he said from the get-go, it's not going to be perfect. It's going to take time. There are going to be a lot of issues that we have and that we're going to work through, and we're going to see who's about it and who's not about it. For me, it's about getting behind him as much as possible, and giving him everything that we have, and I think that's all that this group can do right now."

Given that the team is currently in existential limbo, with head-coach-in-waiting Jim Curtin set to take over in December, the question is (and I asked it) whether Curtin has blessed the work Arnaud is having the team do — indicating the system that Curtin himself might implement when he takes the helm — or whether Arnaud is implementing this on his own, requiring players to learn a whole new system ahead of the '27 sprint season, when the team gets its third head coach in a seven-month span.

"I have no idea," Hines-Ike hedged. "I mean, not at all. The thing is, when I played against Jim Curtin, this wasn't the system that was there. So, what I can say is, I'm not sure what he's going to do. And I think, again, for us at this point, as a club and as players, we have to focus on what's here now, and all respect to what's to come and everything, but this club and these players owe an enormous amount to Davy. An enormous amount.

"And I think the biggest thing is for players to continue to be bought in and keep working for him to a maximum. We owe him. We owe him all that, and I think that's where the motivation has to be for us now, going into Leagues Cup and to keep progressing in these last MLS games. That's the biggest thing we have to take from that. And what's to come is what's to come."

Some intel ahead of Austin FC's match with the Raps tonight ...

In which I call for, among other things, going with Curtin's preferred 4-4-2 diamond to give Arnaud one more central/attacking midfielder to deploy.

Key passage (but it's not paywalled, so plenty there):

"We have a clear way that we want to do it and we want to play," Arnaud told the assembled media (both of them), ahead of Saturday's match at Colorado, which leads into a 15-day pause in league action to allow for Verde's three Leagues Cup matches. "We're continuing to get better every single game, and we look at the process of what we're doing. We assess the results obviously, first based on the result, but from an attacking standpoint, with the ball, we were happy with what we did against Houston.

"We arrived in some really good positions," he explained. "We had 21 crosses in the game, which was the fourth most in the league this week. We arrived with three or four arrivers consistently in the box. We broke their last line. We're so close to getting two goals in that game. I know we don't score, but we're in so many positions. If we play that same game again, and we arrive in the positions we did," highlighting chances that Jon Gallagher, Brandon Vázquez, and Przemysław Płacheta had, "we're arriving in positions to score goals, so the process of what we're doing doesn't change. We believe in what we're doing and how we're attacking. And again, we have to keep getting better and now executing the final action."

He did grant that his team needs to be "more controlled" and "give a little less space behind our back line" than it did against Houston, while also diagnosing where the offense ran into issues.

"We really challenge these guys to consistently get a minimum of three players in the box, when we get in wide areas to cross balls, to serve balls, to provide service to the guys who are in there," he said. "It's hard in Houston. You know they sit low with a lot of numbers below the ball. It's not easy to generate goals against teams that defend like that. Having said that, again, we were happy looking at it with the chances we did generate, being on the road against a good team. We don't get the goal, but we have to look at it from the perspective of 'Did we arrive in good areas? Did we arrive with good numbers? And did we get good chances?' Which I thought overall, for a road game, I thought overall we did."