Julian Gressel was one of D.C. United's marquee acquisitions of the offseason, but so far, the former Atlanta United standout hasn't quite gotten rolling with his new club.
Arguably the premier wide assist man in all of MLS during his tenure with the Five Stripes, Gressel has just one assist through his first 378 minutes with DCU. After Friday's 0-0 draw against FC Cincinnati, DC coach Ben Olsen said that he feels like Gressel's integration with the group is coming along, but that the goal going forward is to find ways to get him in positions to get those wide assists more consistently to compliment his lethal prowess on set pieces. And that's going to take work from the whole group.
"I thought it was a good game from Julian," Olsen said. "He always is an extremely hard-working player. I think one of the issues today was, and it wasn't necessarily his fault — we didn't get enough service from him out of the run of play. His set-piece ability tonight was really good, he gave us a bunch of chances on set pieces and put it up for the three big fellas and we were unlucky not to get something there. But I thought he probably had his best overall game [for us] to date."
Part of seeing that assist total tick upward might be as simple as just getting more reps on the training ground and on matchdays, something that's been made more difficult by the stop-and-start nature of soccer in 2020. Regardless, it'll be a storyline to keep an eye on for DCU, as they look to kickstart an attack that has scored six times in six games to start 2020.
"I think it'll come with time," Gressel said. "Obviously we've got to take the right steps in the right direction in order to get there. And not just my side, even on the other side. I thought today we were maybe a bit hesitant to play through the middle and kind of circulate the ball through the middle a bit more. But actually did a pretty good job once it got to that mid-block and that low-block of defending us and not letting us go back out to the other side. Obviously that's what you want in a 5-back [formation], that you can swing around to then free up one side and get good service.
"But like I said, I think it'll come with repetition. Obviously we'll look at different movements of how can we do that, how can we ask more questions of the outside backs. I think we want to get into more dangerous spots and do that. ... Going forward, I think I can still get more advanced, I can still get in more dangerous spots, even on the other side to be able to loop in crosses from better positions with some players in the box as well to create more chances like that. But I think overall it was a good start and if that's what the coach wants from me then I'll be happy to do that out there."
