This episode of Nos Audietis is sponsored by Fulpool Wines, a Seattle-based wine retailer in proud sponsor of Nos Audietis since 2011. Fulpool was founded in 2009, is based in Seattle and is owned and operated by longtime Sounders supporters. They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, the special focus on their home, the Pacific Northwest.
Hi, I'm Will Bruin and I was just recognized as a Seattle Sounders legend. Now I get to do voice reads for the Sounder at Heart Podcast Network. This is a tiny f***ing dog. Welcome back to another episode of Nos Audietis on the Sounder at Heart Podcast Network. I am Jeremiah Oshan. Joining me today to help give us a tactical preview of this Houston Dynamo team that Sounders are getting ready to open up a three game series with on Monday
is Andrew Pearson. You may know him as inter-pearson from Twitter, but he's also the guy who writes all of our tactical previews over at Sounder at Heart. Welcome to the show, Andrew. Yeah, thanks for having me. Always happy to chat about the Sounders, especially Playoff Sounders. Exactly. Playoff Sounders. It is, so the Sounders come into this game, you know, I don't know. Let's just get your high level. You've spent a lot of time looking at the
various opponents the Sounders have played. If it was up to you, who would you have rather faced between the Houston Dynamo and Minnesota United who, yeah, who the Sounders have dominated really historically at home, both of them. It's harder to say because Minnesota has added pieces with their new striker who's been playing well. Their form is really good, especially their attacking form. My initial instinct was to say Minnesota, but you know, the Sounders
have been almost as good against Houston at home as well. So it's pretty much a toss-up, you know, I think they suit up well against both of those teams. Really, it's just about avoiding the L.A.F.C.'s and the Portland's that sit back more. And Houston's not going to do that right there. I think only twice this year, they've held less than 50% possession. So they're always going to want the ball and that's going to mean, you know, the Sounders
are going to have opportunities to counter. Yeah, you know, it's funny. You said this in the approach to the show. So I'll give you credit for this. But it's sort of like looking in a tie and like almost like a a tie machine for the Sounders. It's almost like they're looking at themselves from last year where the it's a very ball dominant team. They aren't maybe quite as interested in the counter press that the Sounders were when they were at their
best last year. But it is a team that wants to hold on to the ball a lot, but they aren't they'd sort of do it at the cost of being dynamic offensively. They are one of the lower scoring teams in the Western comp. I mean, yeah, I mean, they're one of the league's lower scoring teams. They actually make the Sounders look like a reasonably adept offense.
Right. Yeah, it's it's very methodical, which, you know, from watching the Sounders last year, sometimes it gets kind of frustrating when they try to be so slow and methodical. And I think that's the same thing really with Houston is they they have to rely on a moment of brilliance from someone or a good cross or a set piece and, you know, that doesn't always work out, especially when you're trying to break down a team like Seattle, who's just
so good. This season and last year in the back, it's just hard to break down teams like that. Yeah, they, you know, for even though they are not necessarily the most dynamic team, they aren't getting out and running up and down the field. They do have the ability to link up a lot of good passing and they and that passing can be its own dynamic in the way that we think of verticality, but dynamic in the way that they're able to move the ball
around and sort of beat teams with the ball. What do you make of that and, you know, how dane how how dangerous do you think this team is for a defense like the Sounders? Yeah, I think Houston's strength is their spine. They've got two great centerbacks, you know, they can both pass pretty well. The, you know, Hector Herrera is well known to just about anyone about how skillful he is on the ball. I mean, Bosse is a pretty good central
attacking option. You know, our tour has just a ton of passes, a ton of key passes for them. So really it's it's about how they can work the ball up the field through Coco Karskiya and then, you know, the question for them for a long time was been about how who's going to score right who's going to be that finisher and, you know, maybe they're kind of answering that question now and if they can get some kind of offensive contribution
from their wings and their wing backs, then then it'll be all right. But I think mainly it's a question of, you know, that midfield battle, how how ours Christian rolled on going to do against that midfield without obid Vargas, you know, is is JP going to step in and and you're ready to go against that midfield. So so for your talent though. Yeah, definitely lots of talent. But you know, you mentioned that the sounders are going to be
missing obid Vargas in this game. He obviously got that red card against the timbers. He has to sit out this game and and it comes at an interesting time for the sounders because on one hand, it's easy enough to just say, Oh, Jail Paolo will will come in or you could even say, Oh, Josh, Tensio should come in. But neither one of them have been playing much recently. Josh, Tensio is actually coming off of a out of concussion protocol right
now. It looks like he got back into training on Thursday. My hope is that he'll be fully in by Saturday. But he hasn't had a full training session yet. Jail Paolo has been sort of coming back relatively slowly from his latest injury. He has played. He didn't play against the timbers, but he had played in the two games before that. And then of course, there's also the option of bringing in Danny Leyva who hasn't played a ton for the first
team recently. But he has been at least getting minutes with the defiance. If it's up to you and you're sort of having to choose between, you know, balancing fitness and familiarity and all these other things, what do you what do you think is the sounders best option in terms of partnering with Christian Holdon? I might be a little bit biased towards Christian because he's been so fun to watch the past few
weeks. He's been so great spreading the ball around from deep. So I mean, the idea of him with Tensio in front of him, kind of just filling that Vargas role, that seems great to me. But I don't know that you can really go wrong. Obviously, I would not be surprised at all if Schmetzr just leans on Jorapallo and the two of them, you know, him and Christian
figure it out. I don't think you can go wrong with that. But the main thing for me is just been Christian's been so good spreading the ball out to the wings, getting it to Rothrock, getting it to Pedro. And I think that's probably really going to be key in this game is attacking those outside backs for Houston. You know, it was funny. I was as I was filling out my best 11 ballot this last week. I was doing a lot more research into how everyone is doing around the league. And I was surprised.
I was actually surprised to see that Christian Holdon has had a better, you know, tackling and intersting. He's been much more active defensively than I think I realized. Like he, I think you can watch him play for the last couple months and say, okay, this is a player who looks more like I was pretty skeptical of him as a as a number six. In part because for all the talk of, well, that's his natural position. He hadn't really ever played as the
more defensive minded of the two double pivots. And at any point, really prior to this year, and certainly not for an extended period. And he's really stepped up into that position. I think he looks really comfortable there. And, you know, he hasn't had a lot of goals and assists. But he has been actually pretty good in most other facets of the game. What have you made of that
transition this year for him? Yeah, it's been so smooth. I didn't really see it coming necessarily either just because it's been so long since, you know, Brian Schmetzerv has wanted to put him back there. You know, it makes sense. It's all the things he was trying to do on the wing, but from a deeper position where he can be more effective. And, you know, I think having Obad Vargas in front of him who's happy to carry the ball. He's good with his feet.
Kind of now we've seen over the last couple of games has been good at getting into the box. It's a good pairing. And I don't know if there's much other than that, then, you know, Christians always had this skill set. And it was more about positionally, you know, is he just going to be able to adapt? And he's such a smart player. It's worked out really well. So on the other part of the opposing midfield, you talked about
actor Ache Ache as you as people may know him as, a meobossi or tur. That's a pretty good trio of central midfielders. It is arguably as good as really, it might not be as dynamic as as the best midfields in the league, but it's very ball secure. It's very defensively sound. They connect a lot of passes. Archer was actually my best 11 in my best 11. He was absolutely dynamic defensively. But the thing that and I guess they also have Cocoa Karraskiya, another player who
gets in there and who just won ConkaCaf Player of the year. I hardly enough. I didn't even mention that. Right. Yeah, it's not even that he's had, you know, for E look at his stats for Houston, they definitely don't pop off the page this year. But if you watch him, you can see how much talent he has, how clever he is on the ball. But yeah, they've got it's that kind of central area of talent.
And then they add Ponce into that striker position who's been, you know, he doesn't do a lot off of the ball, but he does the thing that they needed the most, which he scores at a, at an okay rate. He's not lighting it up on the stats page necessarily, but he looks like a true striker. Which is what they've needed. Thank you for listening to the Sounder Heart Podcast Network, which now includes no sunny at this, lobbing scorchers and the cooler guild. We've been independent
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funniest and most engaged commenters share their thoughts and ideas. To find out more, just visit senderheart.com and click the subscribe button in the top right corner. Thanks for listening. Yeah, so, you know, between him, Ponce and Ektor, they have, these are two players who the Sounders, I don't think have faced at all this year. For sure, they didn't, they didn't play in the, in the game, the Sounders 1-1-0. How big of a, you know, so the Sounders went one in one or one
against the Dynamo this year. I was listening to a podcast today where they said the only scored one goal, the teams combined for one goal in the two games. That's not true. They had five goals in the two games. The first game was actually pretty wide open, but the second game was very tight. That said,
how much of a difference does having those two play? Like, how, how, how much should we even take away from those two previous meetings, considering are, you know, two of the best players that Houston has weren't really even in those games? Yeah, I think, well, you can look at it and say, the last meetings, probably the closest, and it was still a pretty tight game. Yeah. I think
having Herrera really just makes everything that they try to do easier. Houston doesn't, it doesn't seem like they really deviate from their plan, no matter who's going to be in there in terms of personnel. So if they can get something off a set piece with Herrera taking one, if they can do some really clever combination, it's probably going to be Ponce finishing off and Herrera
somewhere in the mix. So it's definitely a boost. I don't know. I'm not super sold on Houston being able to come in to Seattle and get a win or get a draw, but I'd be pretty shocked if this is a high scoring game. It's a playoff. Those tend to be pretty nervy and close. Yeah, it'll help, but it's probably just going to come down to one moment of a set piece or something like that as these games so often do. Yeah, especially for the Sanders. Yeah, yeah.
And to the degree that they do have some real dynamism on this team, it seems like it's mostly Griffin Dorsey coming off the right wing as a as a fullback, but he gets into the attack a lot. How aware do you feel like the Sanders really need to be of that sort of attack? Would they have? I mean, I guess that you could say that they've struggled with it a little bit. Moscarra gave him trouble at times, but Dorsey wasn't very effective the last in either of the games
that the Sanders played against them. I don't know. How big of a concern is that for them? It's I mean, it's a two way threat, right? I mean, if they send Dorsey forward, we've seen in the recent games against the Sanders Rothrock taking it right back at him. I think I'm more look at Dorsey as a potential opportunity for Seattle to attack. He's he's been okay. I mean, he puts in decent crosses. He's certainly a big physical guy. He's quick enough. He's tall.
But you know, you look at that last game, Paul Rothrock kind of skins him a couple times and probably could have should have had an assist to Jordan. I think you know, our you look at their last game against the galaxy. Of course, our wingers aren't exactly pencil and Gabrielle Peck, but those guys were having a field day, you know, kind of playing direct down those sidelines
against their fullback. So I really think if we're going to kind of pick one player, hopefully if Paul Rothrock is good to go, I like that match up a lot against Dorsey and Pedro De La Vega keeps getting better game after game after game these last few weeks. And you probably should have had an assist last match. He's due for having a goal as well. Obviously. Yeah, I guess that's a good place to maybe close this out on. What have been your impressions of Pedro De La Vega? I think
the general sense among fans is that he's been hugely disappointing. And it's funny because he every time he comes out, I get a bunch of comments from people saying like, oh, finally, he's out or something like that. He looked you, but he looked like he was really struggling today. And the last three games, each one of them said, I don't know. I thought this was his best game. And that was really like he still doesn't have that moment where you go, ah, this is the player that
the sounders were hoping to get. But I think against Portland, he showed a lot more of those moments. I mean, the run that he had right before Vargas's red card, I mean, that was absolutely electric. And it was a great save that kept him from scoring there. Yeah, it's been a slow burn for him. I think when he got back from injury, he was looking like he was trying to do it all at once and
kind of make up for last time, be the hero in front of the fans. And as he's worked into the team, I think he's found if he plays his role, which is, you know, beat guys on the dribble, look more to pass instead of trying to dribble it into the net, gets used to his teammates and probably just settles in mentally where he doesn't feel like he has to do everything. He's gotten better and better. And you know, you can see in the last game, he's looking for Jordan Morris now.
He's other players on the sounders are anticipating the passes he's making a bit better. So I think the big thing for him is just kind of stick within yourself. Don't try to shoot from 35 yards. Don't try to dribble five guys. Like stick to what he's good at. Kind of up till you get to the box and put in balls for Morris for, you know, Rothrock, whoever. And I think then he's going to get his goal. And fans will get excited about it
once he finally starts contributing on the stat sheet. Then people recognize. If you were to sort of gauge your bullishness on his potential, where are you? Like, are you, is this a player who has potential to really be an elite player? Are you still a little skeptical that he's ever going to really live up to the designated player tag that he carries? I think I'm cautiously optimistic, cautiously skeptical, which I guess that's kind of my default
place to be anyway. But still, like, I'm maybe a little bit about the same as what I was at the start of the season. You know, he's he's showing those things now. Those attributes from Lannus that the sounders saw, which how good he is on the ball, how unpredictable he can be for opposing defenses. But it's always been and as far as I know with him, can he figure out that final third? Can he make that that last pass? Can he be gold-angerous? Is probably the biggest one.
And that's going to be the step he has to take if he's going to be a DP contributor. Is can he start scoring goals? Like we've seen with other Argentine players coming in Demolas. But the first step right is can he get assists? Can he combine well with his teammates? I think that's something we could definitely see in this in these playoffs where he's real boost off that right wing. And then the sounders have enough in the attacking phase if he can just contribute that much.
Maybe next year, if next year he can start scoring goals and figure out that that last, you know, two steps, the last two seconds, then you know, this guy's the limit for the guy. Well, I lied. I did have one more thing I wanted to ask you about. You know, you've done some good pieces for us. You've also had some good commentary elsewhere on the state of the sounders spend right now. The latest MLS salary data just came out. I wrote about how the sounders are
down to 15 in terms of roster guaranteed compensation in the leagues. That's like right in the middle. If you add in transfer spending over the last year, they drop all the way down to 21st. And you know, we have discussed this at length, both on the discord and elsewhere. And you seem to, I think, appropriately have a, I think you sort of turn me around on this idea a little bit because one of the things that you sort of banged the drum about is that it's not
necessarily just raw. Like it's oftentimes, we oftentimes talk about how spending does not guarantee results, especially in that place. But we are starting to see a little bit more correlation, at least at the top and bottom of the league in terms of the high spending teams. You know, you have to be spending at a certain level to be one of the top, top teams. And if you're, you drop far enough, you're almost relegated to being one of the bottom teams.
You know, the bottom, you know, almost none of the bottom spending teams are in the playoffs this year. Most of the top spending teams are most at least the high up in the standing teams are mostly higher spending teams. And I guess the question I have for you is what do you want to see the sounders do this off season? And what do you think it's going to take to sort of, because I
think we both sort of believe that it's not just about the results on the field. There's something to be said about injecting some excitement into the team, injecting some excitement into the fan base. And that it's no longer good enough to be okay in the regular season or for a lot of the regular season and then turn it on at the end, because you've just wasted so much potential, you know, entertainment dollars essentially. Yeah, I mean, when you're talking about boosting attendance,
the games that we're talking about usually are those regular season games. You have to give fans a reason to want to come to a match in April or May. And you know, a lot of that I think depends on can they bring in someone who's really exciting. And you know, it's been a long time since the sounders have had a pure attacking player up for MVP, you know, Jopallo. 20 different roles. Yeah, 2020 I suppose was when Lidero and Morris were both
sort of vaguely in consideration and they were both best level players. Yeah, and of course 2020, not much attendance at all, unfortunately. But a very good point, a good point. Yeah. So yeah, it's been a while since fans have been in the stadium to watch a really dynamic attacking sounders team. So that's kind of the main thing I hope they get is I'm sure they're going to be looking for an attacking player. I'm biased towards them going after someone to play on the wing.
But you know, I think it's I mean, talk about overall spending. I look at it less as can we compete with Miami's or make sure we're not way down with with whoever, you know, St. Louis or whatnot. But are we spending enough to keep the sounders competitively where they've been historically, right? Kind of that niche that they've found spending not at the very top. Certainly nowhere near the bottom. But enough bird or so of the right. Yeah, that's been a good
sweet spot for them. And the thing that I think they've been missing for a while now is being more aggressive with their moves just to bring in some excitement, right? Certainly since Nico and Raul the last time a big DP is really hit, right? Pedro is unfortunate. He's been injured. He was kind of a different case anyway as a young player coming in. But can you get a guy like a Bhuwanga someone like that who's must see viewing basically every game. I mean, the guy
has kind of been saying how healthy and fit he is. But if you look to a game like that in your LAFC fan, there's a good chance you're going to see something pretty incredible with the attacking players ahead. So I hope they go out this offseason and they get someone like that. Yeah, well, Andrew, I really appreciate you coming on. I'm going to try to do this a little bit more and sort of highlighting some of the really talented writers that we have over at Sounder Hard,
especially when I feel like they have something in particular to add to the conversation. So, Andrew, I hope everyone that listens to this also reads your excellent scouting reports. I guess you'll have one coming up for the for the dynamo game. Yeah, you're too kind. But I'm very glad people enjoy reading them. I like making them. If you know, I like making gifts. I like explaining things visually. That's kind of the most fun part of writing them for me. Not the writing part.
Usually it's the gift making part. But yeah, I mean, people love images. Yeah, they explain so well. So especially in soccer. They do. They really do. Well, thank you so much for doing this and true. We'll sign off with that. I am Jeremiah Shan. This is Noose Adietis and you'll I'll catch you next time. We love you. Let's win another one.