How can Union build toward next year? Here are three suggestions

A season of progress in Philadelphia came to an abrupt end with Wednesday’s Knockout Round loss at New York City FC, starting the offseason clock for squad improvements.

Club management is in a good position to fix problem areas before opening weekend 2019. The Union are a good team and not far away from being a very good team. They don’t require any sort of overhaul, and few strong maneuvers could launch the team toward contender status. We’ve started up the to-do list.

Keep that No. 10!

The Union have several important contract situations to deal with during the offseason, but none is so vital as their ability to bring back playmaker Borek Dockal who was on loan for the 2018 season.

The team (and its fans) were crying out for a top-notch playmaker for so long, and all Dockal did was lead the league with 18 assists. Now that they’ve seen how fun it is to play with a wily attack quarterback is, they certainly don’t want to let the 30-year-old go so soon.

There is, of course, more to consider. Dockal is due back to Henan Jianye at the end of the year, but they have three games left to avoid relegation from the Chinese top flight. Theoretically, the Red Devils could be more open to a sale if they go down — but then there’s also the matter of the hefty transfer fee they paid to get him a couple years ago. The 30-year-old could be quite pricey.

If a Dockal return isn’t in the cards, new Philly sporting director Ernst Tanner needs to score with a creative Plan B.

A new attack lightning rod

Philadelphia played some nice soccer this year, no doubt. However, it frequently resulted in disappointing offensive outputs. Only five teams scored less than the Union, who were shut out a dozen times this season. Eight clubs had at least two players with more goals than the 10 bagged by Union co-leaders Cory Burke and Fafa Picault.

Whether David Accam is able to return to the land of the productive or not, this squad could really use a shiny new toy for the attack. It could be a striker with 15-20 goals in him, it could be a winger to run at defenders while notching 8-10 goals to go with a similar number of assists.

Let’s state the obvious: A more fearsome attack provides many benefits. More favorable game states, more margin for errors at the back, more wins. It’s no wonder at all that Philly went 11-0-1 this year when netting multiple goals. They just need it to happen more often.

Stick with the process

This last one isn’t actually a corrective fix. It is more a matter of time and tutelage.

Suffice it to say that Wednesday’s loss was one of those tough days at soccer school for Philadelphia’s precocious center back duo of Mark McKenzie and Auston Trusty. It wasn’t the first and probably won’t be the last.

There’s no reason to hang heads, though. The club simply needs to use the lessons to be learned from this playoff loss and continue developing these key youngsters in the heart of defense. Do that (and the same for guys like defensive midfielder Derrick Jones and left back Matthew Real), and the defense should only get stingier.