It has been a few days since Sacramento Republic FC got back to their winning ways against the Tulsa Roughnecks at Bonney Field. 5 days to be exact, but who’s counting?

Before we turn our full attention to this Sunday’s match against Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2, we at ICS wanted to take a second look at last weekend’s win. Without further ado, let’s dive right in.

Three Loans, Three Points

The big story of Saturday’s win, other than the result itself, is the fact that the Republic finally received a trio of loan players from their MLS affiliate, the San Jose Earthquakes: Tommy Thompson, JJ Koval, and Mark Sherrod.

These were not just run of the mill loan players in the twilight of their careers, such as Khari Stevenson, who was offered to, and refused by, the Republic earlier this year. They are young, talented players who had not been receiving as much playing time as needed for their development to continue. In our opinion, players like Thompson, Koval, and Sherrod are the perfect candidates for a MLS to USL loan, as it gives a beneficial injection of talent into the USL side and allows the MLS side an opportunity to develop their young players without potentially sacrificing points in their own league games.

For the Republic, that injection of talent was especially useful on Saturday. Not only did it solve the pressing issue of who would take the suspended Ivan Mirković’s place in the Starting XI in the form of JJ Koval, it also added a whole new dimension of offensive creativity and strenght in Tommy Thompson, as well as an alternative to Justin Braun in Mark Sherrod.

All three of the loanees made significant contributions to the Republic’s victory, with Thompson bagging both an assist and his first professional goal, Sherrod scoring the third and final goal to put a nail in Tulsa’s coffin. Koval’s contribution, as is usual with defensive minded midfielders, was not on the scoreboard. Instead, his main contribution was in fortifying the center of the field in Mirković’s absence, breaking up attacking moves, circulating the ball when in possession, and basically making the lives of Tulsa’s midfield hell for about 90 minutes.

Shape Change

In addition to adding the three loan players to the matchday 18, with 2 of those going in the starting XI, the Republic also changed up their shape for the game against Tulsa to a 4-4-2.

This did not come as too much of a surprise, as Coach Buckle said as much prior to the match. Rather than look at the necessity of that change, which can be mostly traced back to the Mirković sized hole in the starting XI, we will take a look at how the change worked for the Republic in Saturday’s game.

The one particularly interesting spot is Rodrigo Lopez’s move to back to left midfield.

When Sacramento was running their 4-3-3, the midfield was anchored by Mirković with Barrera and Lopez free to operate in front of him. Although Barrera was effective in that setup, keeping Lopez that deep in midfield seemed to limit his effectiveness. With the change to the 4-4-2, Lopez moved to left midfield, the spot where he has played for most of his time with Sacramento. Although he was not as influential as fans may have been used to seeing at that spot, Lopez’s performance certainly improved with that move.

Part of the reason for that improvement could be that Lopez is more comfortable in that spot, but it is more likely that he was simply given more time and space on the ball to work with. Generally speaking, most of a team’s defensive presence is in the middle of the field to stop teams from just going up the gut to the goal. When Lopez moved out wide, he did not have to contest with the Mirković-type central midfielders whose main responsibility is to limit the space and time that creative players like Lopez have on the ball.

Earlier in the season, Danny Barrera said much of the same thing when comparing playing centrally and out wide, saying “in the midfield it’s much more crowded and decisions have to be made much quicker; out wide you get it with time and you see the field.” By moving to the wide area, Lopez was able to collect the ball in an area with more time to make a decision on what to do with it.

These two points are by no means the only main talking points from Saturday’s match, but they are the ones that have been stewing in our heads since the final whistle blew. Let us know below in the comments if there is anything that you took away from Saturday’s game that you’d like to share.

The Republic travel to face Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2 this Sunday, looking to log their first back to back wins since June. Be sure to look for the ICS Match Preview this Saturday a discussion of what to watch for in Sunday’s game.