In Wednesday's pre-match press conference — preceding Austin FC's 2-0 win over Tijuana on Thursday night to start its 2026 Leagues Cup jersey on a positive path — interim head coach Davy Arnaud discussed the new style of play he's having the team adopt.
"We're trying to put them in the best position to be successful and trying to do that in a really clear way, give them clear roles and responsibilities, where you can hold everyone accountable for what we're trying to do, and this is the way that we think suits our guys and their quality," Arnaud said in confirming that he'll stick to the 5-2-3 formation deploying inverted wingbacks who become wingers when the team transitions from defense to offense.
"For us to go away from that, it wouldn't be the right thing," he continued. "I think that would be going away from what they actually do well, just because it maybe serves us better or the message better, but for me, I think that what you need to do ... to stick to it based on the quality of the guys," adding that it shows bravery and insisting "we're all on the same page."
I followed up asking about how he would gauge the team's progress, hopeful that data would back up whatever eye test and gut-level assessments were going into Arnaud's evaluation.
"It's what we see, specifically with the ball," he said. "It's how many times we're breaking the last line. It's how many numbers we're arriving in the red zone with. It's how many balls we're getting into the box, and we have good arrival in the red zone. It's where we're controlling transition and how we're doing that. It's how many corners we're generating, how many deep free kicks we're generating.
"So we gauge success by different things, and we've been talking the last couple days about what defines success for us against teams that are different like [Tijuana]. What defines success for us is having balls in the box and having arrival in the box and generating all those things that we talked about. So there are ways that we measure that and ways that we look for that, and that's not going to change."
So, let's look at some of that.
