Week 3 of the MLS has come and gone, a weekend highlighted by Seattle's continued run and a 5-0 thrashing of Real Salt Lake by D.C. United, which featured two red cards. In this week's column, I take a look at why NYC FC's Valentin Castellanos hasn't found much success so far, Montreal's climb back to playoff relevancy, Aaron Herrera's uncomfortable position with RSL, and a surprisingly scrappy FC Cincinnati team. Welcome to another week of "Little Things."

1. Kekuta Manneh, No. 10

FC Cincinnati could still regress, but two of their first three results have been positive, and Sunday’s 3-0 home-opening win over Portland will encourage further confidence. They look organized and scrappy.

At the center of these achievements is Kekuta Manneh, who is quietly settling into a nice role behind the striker in Alan Koch’s straightforward 4-2-3-1. Seeing Manneh, the prototypical field-stretching winger, playing in the center was surprising — FCC are not a pure counter-attacking team, and the midfield doesn’t, in theory, fit Manneh’s strengths. But Koch has stumbled upon a clever find. Manneh has looked promising in two starts behind Fanendo Adi.

FCC base their possession deeper in midfield, playing fast and direct once the deeper mids (Leonardo Bertone and Victor Ulloa) transport the ball up the field. That means Manneh isn’t a high-volume chance-creator or on-ball wizard, as other teams expect out of their nominal No. 10s. Instead, Manneh symbolizes the urgency with which Cincy attack. He wastes no time on the ball and avoids complicating things in the final third, as FCC generate simple 2v1 and 3v2 overloads with the full backs supporting. 

Manneh has the instincts and nuance on the ball to make the plays needed of a player in his position:

He sometimes looks a bit clumsy, but he finds ways to maneuver through tight spaces while maintaining an understanding of where he needs to go with his next pass. Putting a player who doesn’t demand the ball a ton in the center allows Cincinnati to further simplify their attack. Wingers Allan Cruz and Roland Lamah dive inside and sprint at defenders, freeing space for the full backs. The striker—now Darren Mattocks, with Fanendo Adi leaving injured against Portland—holds up play and crashes the box.

It looks like the platonic ideal of the 4-2-3-1 formation. Koch put his team in what he deemed was its best possible look and it has worked well enough to pick up a pair of good results. In some ways, Koch has taken a similar approach to Seattle’s Brian Schmetzer—step back from chess match tactics and simply put the players where they need to be, with enough organization to thrive on their own merits.

Manneh is still developing as a central player, just as Cincinnati are still working out how they can keep this up. Manneh struggles to regularly make difference-making plays in important areas, and at times makes the wrong decision on the ball.

via GIPHY

Picking up on certain things—like how he should have looked to his left and waited for a late-coming runner on that counterattack, instead of trying an ill-timed ball to Cruz—will come with time. 

Cincinnati shouldn’t pencil themselves in the playoffs based on an adrenaline-fueled win over the Timbers, who were without Diego Chara. (The phenomenon of Portland immediately capitulating every time their stud d-mid is out is one of the wildest ongoing MLS trends.) But it looks more and more like there is at least something interesting going on in south Ohio. Koch seems to know how to get the best out of this group.

2. Aaron Herrera, in need of a left foot

Herrera, preseason winner of Real Salt Lake’s left back job, ended up apologizing on Twitter after a rough performance in RSL’s blowout loss to D.C. United:

Putting my hand up and taking last night on the chin. Can’t ever guarantee a perfect night but the heart wasn’t there from me last night and I let the boys down. Ready to work this week and bounce back in LA

— Aaron Herrera (@aaronherrera_22) March 17, 2019

Blame for RSL’s 5-0 defeat to D.C. shouldn’t fall completely on Herrera—RSL finished with nine men, combusting after a tight penalty kick decision went against them and Jefferson Savarino karate kicked his way into a red card. But the young Homegrown committed a pair of errors that directly resulted in DCU goals, and struggled to deal with United’s onslaught throughout the game. 

His biggest problem is that he’s playing left back without having a left foot. He is uncomfortable receiving the ball and moving it with his weak foot, slowing his decision-making process and blurring his passing vision. The task of simply trapping and passing the ball overtakes his thoughts about where he needs to put it. His rocky pass map reflects this uncertainty.

Aaron Herrera's pass map from the D.C. game does not look great pic.twitter.com/T2w8WYFHN7

— Harrison Hamm (@harrisonhamm21) March 18, 2019

When he ventured into the final third (a fairly rare occurrence), he wasn’t an on-ball difference-maker. He struggled to gain separation and help RSL circulate the ball in positive areas. If he had a left foot, which he could, you know, use to push the ball forward, perhaps this game would have gone a bit better for him and RSL.

3. Montreal, returning to fringe playoff contention

The Impact, MLS’s quietest team in perpetuity, have won two of three games to start the season. Those two wins, it should be conceded, came against Vancouver and Orlando, teams that have no clue what they want to be. But Montreal look solid across the board. Ignacio Piatti is scoring, Orji Okwonkwo is a creative winger in the exact mold the Impact seem to prefer and the midfield balances itself out. 

Defensively, they’re weak and error-prone. Orlando way underperformed their Expected Goal totals, per Ben Baer, in the Impact’s 3-1 win, so Montreal were lucky to escape mostly unscathed. They don’t have a legitimate difference-making MLS center back the way other teams do — NYCFC have Alexander Callens, Columbus have Jonathan Mensah and Philadelphia have Auston Trusty. Zakaria Diallo and Victor Cabrera aren’t quite there.

That doesn’t mean the Impact won’t beat bad teams and challenge good teams, the formula for MLS success. Montreal could be looking at a playoff berth if they keep this up. Given Piatti’s fleeting MLS career, challenging this season is important. 

4. Not really happening for Valentin Castellanos

Dome Torrent wants Valentin Castellanos to happen. It doesn’t look like he’s going to be vindicated.

Castellanos started again for NYCFC in their back-and-forth 2-2 draw against LAFC, NYC’s third straight draw to start the season. In 600 MLS minutes, Castellanos has one goal and one assist, poor production for an attacking player on a team with good attackers. He’s put up 3.89 key passes per game in this season’s teensy sample size, ranking 10th among players who’ve played at least 70 minutes, but that figure might be a bit misleading—he has just 0.14 xA per game, indicating that the shots created from his key passes were of low quality.

He tends to lack ideas with the ball at his feet, struggling to mesh skill with perceptiveness and anticipation. Sometimes, he dribbles the ball straight into defenses, with little success.

via GIPHY

Castellanos has to learn that when he charges into the heart of defenses with the ball (which can be very positive!), he has valuable opportunities to draw defenders toward him and then free a teammate with a well-timed pass. In the above scenario, Alex Ring made an overlapping run, sensing that when Castellanos dribbled towards the center, Jordan Harvey would be drawn away from that run. Castellanos, with blinders on, missed the chance.

Jonathan Lewis waits in the wings.

Harrison Hamm is a sportswriter who covers American soccer and MLS for FloFC. He also covers sports for FanSided and The Comeback, and has freelanced for the Washington Post.