Possession time actually counts in soccer. Pick any league and check out whether they consider the possession game or not. All I see yesterday was clear the ball when they come in our zone and give it back to them.
I agree with the second part of that, but as the guy above noted we're not the type of team that's going to keep the ball on the ground and pass it into the back of the net. I'd expect we're going to get out possessed in the vast, vast majority of road games and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
What we needed last night was
1) More support for the defenders via flank play - the right side of Bloom/Orr was a total joke, and Rey was pretty terrible yesterday too. Nakajima-Farran was decent hopefully when he gets match fit he'll get a better look, and they definitely missed Jackson
2) They got absolutely dummied in the middle of the park. Osorio was clearly missed...even when we got possession, there were a lot of quick turnovers and counters that resulted in the last two goals as well as a couple of cards against Henry/Caldwell.
3) Defoe isn't the striker who holds up possession, so Gilberto needs to do it. He...didn't do it at all
This team isn't built for possession, especially if the focal point of the offense is Defoe whose greatest strength is to run onto the ball and take on the far inferior MLS defenders one-on-one. As such, the optimal strategy is to put men behind the ball, try to force turnovers and then link up with Bradley/Osorio --> (Gilberto) --> Defoe on the counter. Once we start keeping a ton of possession and slowly working the ball up the pitch we pretty much lose the best aspect of our offense.
And honestly, I didn't even think they were
that bad defensively at least compared to prior years. The first goal was a penalty where the striker's back was turned to goal, the second one took two extremely fortunate deflections to get in, and the third was the only real defensive lapse. It was more concerning that there were multiple other times where the ball was just bouncing around the box and it looked like no one knew where to go.