Atlanta United looked on the verge of dropping a result at Toronto FC, but Latte Lath’s goal from the penalty spot in the 11th minute of second-half stoppage time — his first goal since late Match — helped the Five Stripes claim a smash-and-grab point behind a 1-1 draw at BMO Field.
In second-half stoppage time, Luke Brennan was shown to have been kicked in the knee inside the box by TFC’s Charlie Sharp. After a VAR check, referee Jon Freemon pointed to the spot.
Seeking his first goal since March 29, Latte Lath stepped up to take the penalty, and despite Sean Johnson making the initial save, the ball deflected off the hands of the TFC keeper and into the back of the net to stake Atlanta to an unlikely draw.
Atlanta initially appeared to go ahead 1-0 through the Ivory Coast international in the 21st as he beat Johnson after getting on the end of a perfect through ball from Bartosz Slisz, but it was eventually disallowed as he was rightfully ruled to have been offside.
Toronto eventually took the lead in the 48th minute on a set-piece routine. Matty Longstaff’s corner kick was met with a booming header by Deyvi Flores, who took advantage of poor Atlanta marking to make it 1-0.
But with a fourth loss in five outings looking them in the face, Atlanta eventually rescued a point on Latte Lath’s successful kick from the spot.
The big story coming into the night was Jayden Hibbert, who received his first MLS start in place of Brad Guzan. The 20-year-old Jamaican international, Atlanta’s first-round selection in the 2024 MLS SuperDraft, finished with four saves.
After going 0-3-2 in their five-match road swing, Atlanta finally returns to Mercedes-Benz Stadium in search of their third straight home win. They’ll take on the Chicago Fire on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.
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Wrong thread
Slisz with the more creative passing than Almirón should hopefully encourage the FO to move him along.
Strange that folks seem so fixated on BL. If you stated the contribution say in terms of $ per km of output…embarrassing. Pretty identical in most metrics. Considering he makes 8x+, I’d hope for at least a 2x performance.
https://www.fotmob.com/players/442277/miguel-almiron
https://www.fotmob.com/players/760725/brooks-lennon
As someone who’s calling for Brooks to get cut, and not ready to do the same for Miggy:
Miggy has a history of performing at a high level, a little bit at the best league in the world in Newcastle, and plenty at our level. Brooks only has a little bit of history of performing well at our level.
Eye test can tell you that offensively Miggy is has the creativity and talent, and workrate to make things happen, they’re just not coming off, where as Brooks is incredibly predictable and not successful at it either. I’d like to see a successful progressive pass metric, and I’d imagine Brooks would be incredibly low.
You mention stats and provide two links, but when I look at the graphs on the bottom comparing them to others in their respective positions, I see for Almiron a bunch of green per 90s across all aspects of the game, a a little more bunch of yellows, and two reds for things that have never been part of Almiron’s game. For Lennon I see greens for crosses and assists, which are good; greens for goals (for one goal) and a few other metrics that don’t matter for a FB; and a lot of low yellows or reds for stats that do matter for a FB, in particular defensive stats.
I have more reason to believe Almiron’s poor performance is exceptionally bad form and is a product of the whole situation. Lennon has never been good defensively, and to be honest, I’ve never thought his crosses were particularly accurate, he just sends a crap ton of them in. The things that Lennon has done well in the past is making runs in behind to open space, effective cutback passes, and covering ground quickly and effectively to at least make a difference in both the attack and defense. He hasn’t done any of that recently, to the point of practically feeling like playing a man down in a team that is already struggling.
The amount that Miggy makes more than Brooks is a non issue because Miggy is a DP. In terms of the cap, he basically costs the same as Brooks plus a DP slot. All the extra millions that Miggy gets is basically Blank’s money and doesn’t affect the team.
Not saying that Miggy has played well by any stretch, but in a dumpster fire of wooden spoon contenders, he’s not priority number one. To be fair, Brooks isn’t either, but he’s not much further down (Priority number one to me is Abram and CDM)
Counterpoint RE Almiron’s salary. Yes it doesnt matter in terms of the salary cap due to the DP structure.
But its not above criticism from a productivity per dollar spent perspective.
Im shocked that there hasnt been an article breaking down ATL UTD wages compared to the rest of the league. I believe we are third?
Almiron is not even remotely close to performing at the level of the highest paid player (by far) on an expensive team.
What’s less clear to me is if that’s due to age, the players around him, the coach, a completely broken FO culture, or some combination of factors.
That’s all fair, and I can agree.
I think productivity per dollar comparisons are a bit flawed, since pretty much everything you can look at will find less and less gains per each dollar added. And then you add in MLS roster rules the wildcard of Homegrowns being practically free for us, and it can throw those comparisons out the window. By that metric, Fortune and Edwards are way better options than pretty much everyone else on the team. And while I am extremely happy with their performance, I don’t think we’d do well with only Fortune and Edwards type players.
Or another comparison, for example: Busquets gets paid 80 times as much as Fortune. I don’t think he’s 80 times better than Fortune (I’m not sure you can even say 10, 5, or 3 times), but I think he’d probably be worth the money to have on our team to have that press resistant distributor at CDM.
I think my point isn’t that Almiron isn’t underperforming his cost (he is, and by a lot), but that when you’re comparing multiple players to each other, you can’t look at pure salary, only when you’re looking at players in isolation. When you’re looking at multiple players, a more useful metric is their performance compared to their cost to the team.
Oh, eye test tells me Miggy looks terrible and lost. Past performance is not an indicator of future results. That’s the unfortunate thing about eye tests and subjectivity…can talk circles around anything. Besides, nobody wants to hear my opinions. Data is better.
Another and perhaps more useful way to look at this if one prefers the qualitative route is through an economic lens…where margins and opportunity cost rule the roost. So cutting Brooks Lennon…an avg player with experience, high work rate and likely locker room experience. Also obviously more comfortable in the system. You know have $700k to spend. What can you buy for that $ specifically? On the other hand, Almiron, same stats, imo the eye test looks worse given the position on the field and impact, but ok…say it’s a toss up. You cut him. What can you buy with $6 million?
To add some context, Philadelphia, first in the conference, total payroll $11,5 million (ie. You could buy over half of Philly’s roster for Miggy) or Columbus, near the top of the table at close to $14million…so you could buy a little under half of the roster.
The bottom line is MA was a marketing focused signing based on distant past performance. I would have thought Atl fans would be tired of the goofy signings but I guess not.
a) The data that you linked had Brooks performing worse than Miggy in their respective positions. Yes Brooks has a very high goals stat compared to other Fullbacks (because he’s scored a *single* goal) and a high chances created stat (which is good), but he’s a Fullback, not a winger. His defensive actions stats are atrocious for a position where defensive actions are a primary requirement. I’d like to see how his stats compare to other wingers or at least other attack-minded fullbacks only, because those stats are misleading. Is he actually doing average or good offensively, or do his offensive stats just look good because he’s being compared to a lot defenders instead of wingers? I mean that genuinely.
b) Yes Miggy is doing poorly, I’ve never denied that. But for the stats that matter for a FB of Brook’s type, considering a team that’s doing poorly – defensive actions, pass accuracy, long balls, cross accuracy, dribbles – his ratings are fine to very bad, but lean more towards below average. For stats of W/AM of Miggy’s type, given a team that’s doing poorly – xG, SOT, long balls, dribbles, xA, winning possession in final third – he’s doing anywhere from good to below average, and in general lean to ok.
c) Brooks “an avg player with experience, high work rate, likely locker room experience”. if we’re going to use those qualitative attributes, Miggy is “an above average to highly skilled player with experience at the highest level, also high work rate, and evidence of locker room experience (given he’s on field captain)” Is Brooks obviously more comfortable? Because I haven’t seen him do anything remotely productive, that I know he is capable of doing from previous years.
d) The roster rules make it significantly more complicated than that. You can’t buy half the roster of a different team because you have a limited number of slots that can only be used in certain ways, with certain allocations of Garberbucks. In terms of Garberbucks, Miggy is pretty much the same cost as Brooks, with the only difference being that DP slot. Meaning, regardless of who you sold, you could pretty much only buy the same things in terms of multiple players. The only difference in selling them is if it was to buy only one player, where you can use Miggy’s DP slot to buy as much as Messi, if Arthur wants to spend the money. But the point there is that it’s not $6m of team money to spend wherever, it’s a DP slot that can be worth as much as Messi or as little as Klich. The money aspect of that slot above max TAM is Arthur’s money, not the team’s.
I want to make it clear I’m not saying Miggy is living up to a minimum DP level at the moment, none of our DPs are. I’m just saying, there is reason to believe most of our DPs could perform better. Even if we’re not going with past performance trying to mark future results, we could argue that this would also be the case with any new DPs we try to bring in (did we have any reason to think Latte Lath would perform so poorly this season?). I think it’s a bit early to be rolling the dice again on these. Meanwhile, Brooks (and Abram) have been here multiple years and never done well (Brooks had a few good moments offensively, but never good enough to be the winger), but we’re spending max TAM on both of these players.
No question – Miggy is having a terrible year, due in no small part to the manner in which he is being used (would be better as the 10, but then don’t know what you do with Alexy), but also because he is no longer physically able to do the things he did for us in 2018 (just doesn’t have the speed he used to have). Brooks has had multiple bad years in a row – he works hard, but his crosses are generally terrible (way over everyone’s head) and his defense is suspect. Based solely on this year’s performances, both are severely overpaid.
Even though it was a penalty, I have hope that goal will knock off the pressure of not having scored since March, so he can get back to finishing goals in the run of play now.
Latte started the season so good… the regression in production has been surprising.
And yet he still has double the goals of our second highest scorer. Yikes.
Yep, three-way tie for 2nd. One of those players is Owen Goal.