Editor’s note: Questions have been paraphrased

Audio begins after start of press conference

…have responded well. They’re all frustrated. They all know that, each one of them, they are capable of making a play when called upon. The reality is that we haven’t had guys make that play, and they all take responsibility for that.

But I think there’s a belief within that locker room that they do have the capability to do it. And so I think the response from them, while being very frustrated and looking very deep inside themselves, and how we do things and what we do, there’s still a confidence that those guys are capable of making that final play, pulling off that final execution that we’re all looking for right now.

On the balance between waiting for things to come around and actively making changes

You’re right that there’s an absolute balance to that. But when you go on the road in this league and you play the way we played on Saturday, our balance was to try to put everything into Montreal’s end of the field and dictate the temp and the rhythm of the game. That led us to not only creating several opportunities playing on our opponents half in a road game, but it led to a lot of chances. That balance is maybe a little bit tougher for us because it meant that we weren’t going to have that many plays defensively where we had to make the play. Unfortunately, we ended up giving ‘em away to easily.

We have to find, in the end, a way to translate our positive play and take away the moments where we’ve made mistakes. That was truly the case on Saturday. We can look at every statistic there is in the game of soccer — at the end of the day, the one thing that matters is that we didn’t get the result.

Given the talent that was brought in in the offseason and the lack of results, on whether he feels his back is against the wall?

Well, I would tell you that I would take responsibility first and foremost for that. I have to be held accountable for that, no matter what. The players that are out there are doing their — they’re putting everything forward, and the way that we have tried to play this year and execute in may different facets of the game, again, has been good. Our belief is that it will change, and we will see some results start to fall our way. We feel unlucky up to this point that we are not in a much better spot. And then I think we’d be having a much different conversation. The reality is that this game can be cruel sometimes. You can absolutely dominate and not get the result you wanted, and we’ve had that so many times this year. Sure, the pressure is there but, we want to focus on the way we do things, and how we’re trying to play, and continue that because we are establishing a bit of a reputation for how we are doing things, and those are the hard parts to the game of soccer a lot of times.

So, there’s got to be a balance to it — I’ll take responsibility for that overall. The players and our staff, everyone should know that we’re doing everything possible to try to rectify that situation.

On what he saw in the changes made to the lineup against Montreal

I think lineup changes, especially with the group of players that we have right now, you’re going to see that happen more regularly. Because we have some depth, we look at our opponent and look at some maybe tactical things we can do against them.

Specifically for the changes we made against Montreal, we brought in Danny Cruz — for the first time he was healthy to start a game — and we put Fabinho on the other side. Our intent was to try to bring a little athleticism on the flanks, be able to put us in a position where we could dictate the game. Unfortunately, we gave up a goal early in that game, and that kind of throws some of those ideas out the window.

But Cruz, I thought, put in a really good 60 minutes. Fabinho I thought played well too, but probably not his natural spot, he’s a little better coming from farther back, having a lot of room to run up the left side. But, that said, I don’t think either one of those guys had a poor performance, I was happy with both of them. In particular, Danny was a bright spot. Fabinho I thought did enough that you could argue that perhaps there should have been a Montreal player that received a second yellow in that game pretty easily. Maybe two or three times.

On how he expects to use Fabinho moving forward

As I talked about previously, we have some depth and balance to us right now. Fabinho’s a guy that can play either as a left back or as a left midfielder — in reality that’s how we used him on Saturday. Sheanon and Ray Gaddis — Ray has been as solid as any one of our players on either side. So, every week it’s going to be a tactical discussion for our staff to try to figure out what the matchups are that we want to make sure we try to utilize.

On Danny Cruz

Danny is a player in this league that he absolutely brings the right energy level every single game. He doesn’t get enough credit for his soccer. There was a play we pulled off early in the Montreal game, it was a sequence where the ball goes into him, he and Vincent play a one-two, it goes back across the middle. We ended up getting a shot off that — Andrew Wenger gets a shot. Fabi from my point of view, gets fouled at the top of the box, the referee allows play on. You know, those kind of moments, Danny doesn’t get enough credit for, and he brings that ability to stretch a defense with his pace. So we have different looks that way and when you’re playing in a 4-3-3, and you can interchange sometimes your wide players, it gives you different looks.

On using Fabinho out of position on the left wing instead of Christian Maidana

I don’t think of Fabinho as a defender purely. I don’t think of him as a guy out of position. I can understand why people would look at it that way but he played last year for this club a lot as an attacking player and did quite well. His entire career until he moved to Australia was spent as an attacking left-sided player. I see him every single day, we know what he’s capable of on the attacking side of the ball. It just so happens to be that he’s a versatile enough player that he can play either one of those positions. Again, finding that right balance — that had nothing to do with the end result on Saturday.

On whether the players on the roster are quality enough to play 4-3-3 at a consistently high level

No question, I feel very confident in the group. We have a lot of different pieces — we’ve already talked about when you throw certain guys in it looks a little different, but we have some principles that we base our play on and, regardless of formation, the positives from a coaching standpoint is that you look at those principles and they’re being executed every single week. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re playing at home or on the road, it doesn’t matter the level of opponent right now.

I think it is an indication when you play a team like Montreal, who going into the year everybody had high expectations for, and they drop their line as far as they do and chose to try to defend our ball movement, our attacking ability, and play for the counter. That was clear they didn’t want to play the game at our tempo, at our rhythm. That’s a sign of respect from our opponents, we just have to be able to, again, to translate that into better results and we’re all frustrated that we’re not getting there. But you look at it and you believe that you do have the pieces there to play this way.

On whether he was  satisfied with the shots that were taken against Montreal

Yeah, it wasn’t the fact that we didn’t take our opportunities, we just didn’t execute. You know, you had Wheeler in the fifth minute on a corner kick from Fabinho, had a fantastic chance. It was the second week in a row where we had a free header that literally bounces inside the six and goes over the crossbar. As a coach I’m just shaking my head because how many times can that happen, you know? You don’t see that very often. There were other looks there in that game, our guys were certainly willing to take their opportunities in that game as evidenced by the amount of chances we had. But the reality is that we didn’t execute as well.

On how close to a finalized sense of the starting XI

This idea that there would only be eleven Union players ever being put out in the first XI to me is not the way that I look at the game. You look at any team around the world, they always have different looks, different balances that they’re going to do depending on their opponent. We have options right now. I think that it depends on our opponent, it depends on the tactics that we want to employ in a game. I would suspect that you’re going to see some more changes so, if anybody out there wants to see the same eleven week in and week out, I don’t think you’re going to see that from us.

On the amount of playing time Cristian Maidana is seeing at this point in the season

I think people have to be patient with a player that comes from a very different culture and is trying to adapt to this league. It’s a big challenge and there’s a long list of players that were extremely successful coming from other leagues around the world that have had trouble here. We just want to put Cristian in a position where he can be successful. There’s some good things that he’s doing, and there’s some parts of his game that need to improve for him to be an impact player for us. He’s a guy that we believe in and certainly we’ll see a lot more of but he has areas of his game that have to improve.

On the challenges presented by Seattle

I think we’re going up against the hottest team in the league right now. It starts with Clint and Martins up front — they’re very dynamic, they’re doing a great job — but their midfield with Alonso leading the way, and if they get Brad Evans back and healthy a hundred percent, Chad Marshall joining the backline for them has been instrumental — they’re a good team. In particular, when you play in Seattle it’s got to be arguably one of the toughest places to play. Loud, a difficult surface to play on, all of those factors make this a big challenge for us.

But, going back to my positive spin on it, you look at the way we’ve played and that kind of game sets up maybe better for us than it did last weekend. I think that they’re going to try to play, I think that there’s going to be more space in the midfield, there’ll be more space in the final third that should make for an interesting contest. Again, it’ll be a little bit of a battle to see who wins those spots on the field, but it should open up more opportunities.

On whether the focus in training this week is on correcting mistakes or preparing for Seattle

You need to do both, you need to prepare for an opponent (audio cuts out for 20 seconds) …being better in both boxes, that’s been the key thing we’re trying to stress, But, for sure, we do have some things we’re going to have to worry about playing in Seattle.

On the challenge presented by the playing surface in Seattle

I haven’t been out there this year but that’s a tough surface, it’s really — (directs question off camera) Did they replace the turf out there do you know? (Returns to original question) My question is whether they replaced that turf. Like Portland replaced the turf this year and it was a good surface, it was artificial but it was good. Traditionally, Seattle’s been a really tough, tough surface. It’s been hard, it’s kind of matted down, so you’re going to get a different bounce, a different roll — it’s a hard surface to play on. For us, because we like to keep the ball on the ground, I think that helps us a little bit but, because we don’t train on it, we’ll try to get on it a couple of times this week. It’ll be interesting and we won’t know until we actually get out on that particular surface and see. We hadn’t been there last year, obviously.

Injury update

Fred’s the guy that’s still coming back, he’s the only guy that’s questionable right now.

Thoughts on Clint Dempsey’s return to goal-scoring form

I’m happy for Clint, I hope it doesn’t happen on Saturday. But, no, it’s good. You look at whether it’s Clint, or Maurice, or whether it’s Michael Bradley, these kind of marquee national team players coming back to our league I think is really important. And for them to be really important players on their own club and continue that I think is a really good sign. So, happy for Clint, it’ll be good to see him, but again, he’s an opponent on Saturday and we’ll do everything we can to try limit his opportunities.

What are you looking for from Maidana to improve on

Cristian first and foremost has to adapt to the level of fitness of the players in this league. There’s a reason why he hasn’t gone 90, and we’re working on his fitness and have been since he arrived. That has been an issue. He’s getting much better, so you’ve got to give him a lot of credit, and our staff has invested a lot of time in not just his fitness, but his nutrition, and his sleep habits.

You know, it’s a different culture. In Argentina, I think you eat dinner somewhere between 11 o’clock to 12:30, 1 at night. His kids when he first moved here are bouncing off the walls at 12:30, 1 o’clock at night. So, all these kind of cultural habits have to be adjusted. Fitness is certainly something that we have indicated to Cristian that must improve. At the same time, his awareness, his work ethic on both sides of the ball, needs to get a little better. He has been a guy that we all recognize some of the qualities that he has but he’s got to put them together. So that whether it’s making sure that we’re not turning over balls in really dangerous spots or he’s the guy that’s going to connect that last one — in all ways that’s improving.