March 9, 2024: The San Jose Earthquakes meet at midfield following their home loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps. Photo credit: Sara Leyva from Sara Nicole Mindful Photography on behalf of Quakes Epicenter.
For many of us, the dominant feeling coming out of the San Jose Earthquakes losing their first four games in a row has been confusion. Sure, we’re disappointed, but we’re used that by now. What’s confusing is that the team wasn’t supposed to be this bad. And the problems seem to be…everywhere, which makes it more difficult to diagnose and prescribe a clear solution.
So that inspired me to try to assign some responsibility for the various factors leading to the bad results, and evaluate how possible it would be for them to change, in the short term or the long term. Below, the main factors I can personally see, with a percentage share of the “responsibility” of the losing start:
Factor 1: Players not playing to their potential
To be clear, I’m talking here about the effort levels players give on the pitch, or in their preparation. This is completely separate to whether they’re talented enough, which is not an issue with the players themselves.
To some extent, there have been moments of lack of effort including from high profile players like Carlos Gruezo who are tasked with tracking back on counters. There have been a shocking number of set piece goals conceded, which although is probably in part due to luck, is generally seen as reflecting effort levels. They were out-run for distance against SKC, although that isn’t surprising given the game state (as defending teams tend to cover more ground). But poor effort is not something I’ve seen across the board, nor does it seem like a primary factor in the goal differential.
In terms of mentality, it doesn’t appear to be irreparably broken, and the team came out with admirable boldness and energy against SKC despite being on the road and having lost three straight. However, it did appear that confidence was shaken against Galaxy, Vancouver, and SKC once goals were conceded/the team went down, and the concession against FCD was late.
Verdict: Sure, there are some problems here, but it seems like a real stretch to suggest this a particularly large part of the problem
Responsibility for the four loss start: 10%
Capacity to change: Medium-high. A few wins and the vibes will straighten right up.
Factor 2: Pure Dumb Luck
That may have been a fairly-intentional pot-stirring from me via the company twitter account. But it points to a real factor: by Expected Goals (xG, which as always come from our friends at American Soccer Analysis), the Quakes are unluckier than every team in the league except for Orlando City. In fact, using the formula converting xG into expected points, the Quakes profile as having performed better than Minnesota United, who are currently in first place in the West.
Does that seem insane? Paradoxical? Maybe. And of course, the strong caveat needs to be added that as wonderful as expected goals are as a metric, they are not flawless predictors, and the sample size of four games is quite small. Moreover, they tend to reflect more positively on teams that spend a lot of time in losing positions chasing goals, which San Jose has done plenty of this year.
That being said, you could easily imagine a few bounces going a different way and the Quakes coming away with at least two points thus far. They’ve just lost those coin flips.
And one oddity I’d note: Daniel, who was the best GK in the league last year on a per-minute basis, is currently the worst GK in the league on a per-minute basis, according to post-shot xG prevention. So either he’s gotten dramatically worse overnight, or he’s just gotten very unlucky in the small sample size of the season to date. I’d bank on the latter.
Verdict: Very real, but not enough on its own to account for all the problems.
Responsibility for the four loss start: 20%
Capacity to change: High. Reversion to the mean implies it’s likely, even.
Factor 3: Luchi Gonzalez hasn’t properly coached up his guys
I liked the Luchi hire quite a lot when it was made. And the early results with him were a massive improvement on the end of the Almeyda era: for his first 11 games in charge, he managed to generate a positive xGD (which has only happened one other time since 2015 in San Jose), and he dramatically improved the defense which had disintegrated under the Argentine. But the next 2/3 of the 2023 season had underlying stats that were pretty much exactly in line with Almeyda and Mika Stahre, and required a superhuman performance level from Daniel to stay in the playoff picture. That’s worrying.
Weirdly, as discussed above, the underlying metrics in 2024 have actually been solid so far, much more in line with how he started 2023 than how he ended it.
Moving from the stats to the eye test, I definitely see a few things that worry me from a coaching perspective. Underneath everything seems to be a bit of “analysis paralysis” (that Luchi himself has acknowledged) where players seem to have been given such complicated instructions that it’s slowing down their processing of the game. Further, there are a few players who have been put in roles that are an awkward fit for them (such as Skahan as a pseudo-striker, or Pellegrino as a left midfielder in a 4-4-2), although this is interrelated with other factors discussed below. The biggest problem of all is that after a full offseason to implement a system, and a full season’s exposure to the roster, the “system” that emerged was so ineffectual that it had to be ditched after 3 games. The set piece issues are also worrying.
So I definitely think coaching choices have made a meaningful contribution to the losing. But that’s not quite the same thing as thinking Luchi is a bad coach: the fact that he got his guys into a different kind of setup, and to come out with a good mentality, at SKC after a 3 game losing streak indicates he has both the skill and the juice with the team to fix some of these problems, and I retain some faith in Luchi based on his larger body of work.
Also, I think upon reflection, the Galaxy might just be very good, and Paintsill definitely looks like he’s a $9 million footballer. So maybe we just write that one off.
Verdict: A medium-important reason the team hasn’t played well so far, without a doubt.
Responsibility for the four loss start: 20%
Capacity to change: Medium. He’s already started implementing some changes, but I doubt he’s capable of dramatically changing the team’s fortunes (not that many managers on earth would be).
Factor 4: The Front Office hasn’t built the roster well enough
It’s almost impossible to evaluate the Front Office without talking about the context of ownership, but I’ll save that part for Factor 5, below. In a vacuum, though, there are two categories of issues: the signings they have made, and the signings they haven’t made. The latter is more attributable to ownership problems, so I’ll focus on the former.
Carlos Gruezo was signed for a club-record fee, and currently has the second-highest salary on the team. Unfortunately, Gruezo has not lived up to that investment, either last season or especially this one. While some times a transaction that looks great in the moment sours for any number of reasons, I hold the FO responsible for this one since there were some warning signs that he might not be great value from the moment it happened. I gave them the benefit of the doubt since it appeared he was specifically chosen by Luchi to unlock his system, but I think that benefit has long since abated.
Other than that, however? Pretty much full marks. The starting back four and goalkeeper are 4 out of 5 guys that Leitch signed (the remaining one being Paul Marie, who has been a great developmental story), and I like all 5 of them, both as talents and as value. They’ve been quite good at opportunistically picking up guys from other MLS clubs, including Alfredo Morales, Francisco Calvo, Jamiro Monteiro, and Jonathan Mensah, all for approximately nothing (which should factor into your evaluation of how much value they provided on the pitch). Miguel Trauco was also picked up for free. Preston Judd looks like a nice pickup. All in all, a relatively good picture, although we’ll have to see if Pellegrino can translate any of his productivity in Norway into MLS, since I haven’t seen that work yet.
The issues are in the things that have not been done. One infamous example was the failure to sell Benji Kikanovic ahead of the 2023 season over a very small gap in valuation. Had they done that sale, they could have invested the proceeds (GAM) right back into the team, and gotten maximal value for a player who we now know got injured and had his development stall in the 12 months afterwards. There are also the empty spaces on the roster: a DP spot that’s sat wide open for 4 months now and three (3!) completely un-utilized U-22 initiative spots. I obviously think ownership has a very large part to play in that, but even with a tight budget, elite executives would probably have put the team in a slightly less compromised position on the field by having more backup plans.
My only final quibble is that to some extent, the FO has prioritized value over fit, with Pellegrino potentially being an example. Over-prioritizing value means you force your coach to put square pegs in round holes, which can compromise any “value” you thought you found in the first place.
Verdict: You can nit-pick at a few things, and the Gruezo signing appears to have been a bad value, but I don’t see poor roster management as a primary factor.
Responsibility for the four loss start: 5%
Capacity to change: Low. Not a lot of front offices hit at a rate much higher than this.
Factor 5: John Fisher hasn’t adequately invested in the team
So that I won’t repeat myself too much from my Aftershock appearance the other day, I might as well just include the video:
Essentially, my argument is that while John Fisher is perhaps more willing to spend than is widely assumed, he has such a high bar for being willing to spend that it makes it nearly impossible for a Front Office to reach the threshold that would get him to sign off on it. Think of it this way: Fisher may be willing to sign a large check, but he wants every large check to be an absolute diamond of a deal, and there are very few out there, so the large checks don’t get signed.
I have it on good authority that he would have supported paying Carlos Vela a few million a year to sign him in 2024, and he made an even larger offer to Vela years ago before he joined MLS in the first place. He also famously made Matias Almeyda and his staff the highest-paid coaches in the league. There have been encouraging investments in the back office, including analytics. There’s not a complete allergy to spending, here. And as my colleague Jamon Moore eloquently argued on the Aftershock right after I made my above points, there are other MLS teams that are spending constrained, and essentially all fans complain that their owner doesn’t spend enough.
I appreciate that, but I think Fisher is fundamentally beyond what we’re seeing in other places. The Quakes, who haven’t been in the top half in spending in more than ten years are now a bottom-three team in terms of salary spend. Yes, there are other clubs with modest spending on salaries, but the Quakes are now very near the bottom of the barrel, and very few other clubs are as consistently low as they are. In terms of non-salary spend (specifically, transfer fees), there’s a widening gap with even the middle-class teams in the league. FC Dallas has spent more on transfer fees this offseason than San Jose has in its entire 50-year history. Thirteen (13!) different clubs have had transfers in this season larger than San Jose’s record transfer. That’s just this season, just thus far.
Oh and remember, this is the offseason they cashed the $4 million check from Cade Cowell, so there’s money to spend. And if you don’t believe me that the Quakes are at a unique disadvantage relative to their peers in terms of investment, it’s helpful context to remember that John Fisher also owns a professional sports franchise up 880 that is also the most chronically under-invested team in its sport, so I think we should assume the same mentality applies until proven otherwise.
The consequences are obvious: a DP slot and three U-22 slots have been gathering dust for 4 months now, despite full knowledge going into the offseason that they would be open. Either Chris Leitch is incompetent (which I don’t buy), or the constraints are so tight that they’re not able to get any deals over the line. Keep in mind that DPs and U-22s are the one part of the roster where the spending comes from the owners pocket rather than the “set” budget that MLS pays. The team looks like it is playing at a talent deficit to even fairly middle-of-the-road teams like Vancouver, FCD, and SKC, all of whom spend more. It means even a fairly good Front Office is not able to turn straw into gold.
This team has not had a winning season since 2013. Fisher is the one constant. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
Verdict: The lurking elephant in the room. But just because it’s a big deal doesn’t absolve all other parties of accountability.
Responsibility for the four loss start: 45%
Capacity to change: Near zero. Fisher is who he is, and a change of ownership seems deeply unlikely. We can only hope that the constant losing, and the pressure from the league, will change his course just enough to allow for more success.
Hi I can’t read the article even though I’m a Patreon ($5 /month tier). It’s asking me to be a $2/month or more Patreon but I’m already a level above that and I’m logged in.
Hi John, were you able to get it working? If not ping us on the slack we will help you get it fixed.
This summarizes it”
“Quakes, who haven’t been in the top half in spending in more than ten years are now a bottom-three team in terms of salary spend. Yes, there are other clubs with modest spending on salaries, but the Quakes are now very near the bottom of the barrel, and very few other clubs are as consistently low as they are.
In terms of non-salary spend (specifically, transfer fees), there’s a widening gap with even the middle-class teams in the league. FC Dallas has spent more on transfer fees this offseason than San Jose has in its entire 50-year history.
Thirteen (13!) different clubs have had transfers in this season larger than San Jose’s record transfer. That’s just this season, just thus far.”
Fisher 90%