Coach sees problems with positioning

Poor decision-making and movement off the ball led to two key giveaways in Crew SC’s defensive third Saturday night at Atlanta United.

The combination was the Crew’s undoing in a 3-1 loss, turning what could have been a win or tie in an otherwise competitive game into its seventh loss on the road.

Facing a high press that Atlanta managed to sustain for much of the game, center back Josh Williams gave away a ball in the 16th minute near the top of the box, leading to a Hector Villalba goal. Midfielder Mohammed Abu took a touch near the edge of the box in the 88th minute but ran into Kevin Kratz, who quickly assisted on a Josef Martinez goal, Atlanta’s third of the game.

Crew SC (7-9-1) has given teams a short field with which to work on several occasions, and its system of building out of the back requires precise decision-making against a high press to avoid such errors. But when they do happen, coach Gregg Berhalter said, the onball player is not the only one to blame.

“It appears that Josh Williams made a bad error and Mohammed Abu made a bad error, but in reality, it’s a number of guys,” Berhalter said. “It’s the movement around them, it’s the positioning of other guys and we rarely look at it as one single person involved in that. I think there were ways to solve that, and we didn’t solve it effectively.”

Berhalter admitted Saturday to asking a lot 7:30 p.m. Saturday Ch. 53, Spectrum Sports WWCD-FM (102.5), WVKO-FM (103.1, in Spanish) tactically of his team this season and that new formations and concepts to try to make the Crew less predictable might have become confusing. They’re growing pains that Berhalter said he expected.

“(Adding tactical changes), are you going to get the results? Is confidence going to dip? Is it going to be as fluid as it was? You name it, there’s issues, and to be fair, it was completely expected,” Berhalter said. “The guys have done great adapting to it, but I think when you’re playing under stress you want to be able to rely on (instinct).”

Crew cuts

An Instagram video posted by Gaston Sauro this month showed the center back, who is on the season-ending injury list, lying in a hospital bed. The hospital visit, which happened “a while ago,” Berhalter said, was due to a knee infection. Berhalter said the infection is unrelated to a knee operation Sauro underwent near the start of the season. … Forward Kekuta Manneh was scheduled to undergo a “scan” Monday of the right foot he injured in training on June 13. Manneh has worn a walking boot on his right foot since. He was listed as questionable for the Atlanta game because of with a foot sprain.