Considering that Saturday night's 1-1 tie with Seattle Sounders FC ended a three-match losing streak, the result was a big positive for FC Dallas. However, that deadlock also came with a price as FCD had lost a trio of starters to injury at halftime.
Striker Jeff Cunningham left with an injured hip in the first half for Brek Shea, center back George John departed with an injured hamstring and was replaced by Daniel Torres, while Steve Purdy lasted until halftime, when an ailing knee forced FCD head coach Schellas Hyndman forced him to replace him with Bruno Guarda.
Hyndman's move was actually the soccer equivalent of the double switch. Guarda moved to defensive midfield while Pablo Ricchetti took Purdy's spot at center back as FCD shifted into a 3-5-2 with right back Marcelo Saragosa also moving forward into the midfield.
Of the three, only John was able to venture out to the field from the training room on Monday morning for an FCD scrimmage with a local PDL team. Cunningham and Purdy both had an MRI on Monday and the results for both were negative. However, both players are listed as out on the official injury report ahead of this weekend's match with the Los Angeles Galaxy.
"He (John) strained it (his hamstring) on Friday before the game," Hyndman said. "We did a test run on him just before the game and he was fine. Then, you saw him go out pretty quick. I would imagine it's going to be a couple of weeks minimum."
On a more positive note, Hyndman was pleased with how well John's replacement performed in Saturday's tie.
"I thought both (Daniel) Torres and Drew (Moor) both did well," he said. "For me, it was the best game they've played this year."
The FCD coach also liked what he saw when Ricchetti moved back for the final half.
"When you've got a Pablo Ricchetti there who is kind of like a calming force for organizing, it becomes a little bit more simplified," Hyndman said. "With the three-back system, you like to have three center backs that can all be strong in the air and so forth. With two screeners like Marcelo (Saragosa) and Bruno (Guarda), who have the mentality of a dog chasing a ball -- they're all over it -- a lot of things got broken down before they got to our defense. It sure looked a lot better."
Hyndman admits that in all his years of coaching, he has never seen a game where he lost three starters due to injury.
"It really tested our selection of players for substitutes," he said. "Do you put Brek (Shea) in or do you put Peri (Marosevic) in? Do you stay in the 4-4-2 or go to the 3-5-2? Do you bring Bruno on now and not use him? We wanted to bring Tom (Sanchez) on and couldn't bring him on.
"We wanted to bring (Anthony Wallace) on and we couldn't bring him on. Andre (Rocha) had a pretty poor 40 minutes in the first half. Normally he would have been taken out at halftime but he scores a goal. You're going to have to use your last sub to go in a three-back system, so Bruno came on. In some ways, it was by chance that some people got more playing time. It worked out really well for us to have a good 45 minutes there."
While he was pleased with the better play he got from his club after they switched to the 3-5-2 in the second half, Hyndman admits a permanent switch to that formation isn't likely.
"What do you gain and what do you lose? I think the thing that we gained was getting Pablo into the center back position," Hyndman said. "We've never tried it like that and it made a huge difference. Can Andre and (Dave) van den Bergh cover those flanks defending and attacking? They both seemed to do OK, but if we had subs, we probably would have taken them off the field because those are the first positions you would remove players from because either they don't have the work ethic, the conditioning or athleticism to go back and forth. So, I think we need to continue to look at that and get better at it."
Steve Hunt is a contributor to MLSnet.com.
