Atlanta United’s Martino previews D.C. United

MARCH 5, 2017 Atlanta, Gerardo 'Tata' Martino argues a play with the side line referee during the second half of the game.

Credit: Miguel Martinez

Credit: Miguel Martinez

MARCH 5, 2017 Atlanta, Gerardo 'Tata' Martino argues a play with the side line referee during the second half of the game.

Here is a transcript of most of Atlanta United manager Gerardo Martino’s weekly availability  previewing Sunday’s game against D.C. United at Mercedes-Benz Stadium:

Q: Why did D.C. United take nine points from you last year?

A: (Laughs). First, we hope not to repeat that.

They’ve added some reinforcements, first off. We are coming off our worst loss since we’ve been here, so this will be a complicated game.

Q: What lessons did you learn from last week's loss at Houston?

A: Something that we've been dealing with since the preseason is errors. When we are making errors other teams are making us pay for them. We are working on that and also the 50-50 battles, both defensively and in the attacking half.

Q: A player like Yamil (Asad) coming back, is that an advantage or disadvantage for you in terms of setting up the team?

A: The disadvantage is facing him.

Q: During preseason in training you worked on a three-man back line some. Any chance of seeing that on Sunday?

A: (Laughs). We trained to be able to use it and implement it at some point. We'll have to decide when the best time to do that is.

Now we are able to play three or five.

Q: After watching film again of the Houston game, how do you think it worked with Julian (Gressel) in the middle and (Miguel) Almiron on the left?

A: In reference to Julian, with Julian, with (Darlington) Nagbe and McCann in the midfield, we weren't able to recover the ball as well as we could have.

Speaking of Miguel, with the result it may be fair to say that it wasn’t the best decision to put him there, but at the same time he missed a couple of chances that he could have scored. If he converted a couple of those chances we could be saying something different.

Q: Before Nagbe came to Atlanta he wasn't known as much for his defense … how is he doing now dropping back and recovering the ball?

A: Darlington is very good attacking. With us, he's not really playing as a holding midfielder. He's playing in between the center of the midfield. In Portland they had two center midfielders that were able to play as holding, (Diego) Charra and (David) Guzman.

He’s played that position before but it’s not a position that’s new to him.

Q: Having said that, does that mean you will have two holding midfielders behind Nagbe, like he had in Portland?

A: No. In Portland, Charra and Guzman were the two holding midfielders. (Diego) Valeri played in front of them and Nagbe was usually on the left and (Sebastian) Blanco on the other side.

Q: You have a hole on the left right now.

A: If you remember last week, when we were talking about that, I said Darlington is one of the options who could play at left wing.

Q: Yes, but he didn’t play on the left.

A: Mmmm.