Of course we have "room" for a #10, but that's not really Yallop's style. On the otherhand, Yallop did tryout three #10 during the previous pre-season, and he signed Moreno, who was clearly a #10. We have several options here. We can keep Baca and Cronin at the central mid spots. (And hope that Baca doesn't run out of gas at the end of next season.) We can move Balouchy to the a-mid spot (I dislike the #10, #8 stuff) and keep Cronin at the d-mid spot. This means that we play either Shea or Garza at the other outside mid spot opposite Chavez. (I'm assuming that we do not -re-sign Dawkins here.) We can re-sign Dawkins (not certain, and no doubt expensive), and play him at a-mid. Then play Shea at the other outside mid spot, and move Baca to the bench. Cronin stays at d-mid. We can re-sign Dawkins (or some real winger) and play Croninja and Ring at the CM spots. This gives us more bite in central mid, Sam and Brad work well together, and we can trade Baca. We can trade for Feilhaber, if he's not too expensive. Then we play Benny and Sam in the CM spots. So we have plenty of options. Many of these involve moving Baca to the bench, or even trading him away. (Presumably to a team in a different league, where he can't come back to bite us.) I like Baca, so my feeling is that we go with option one above, and maybe we still choose not to re-sign Dawkins and we get ourselves a real, dedicated outside mid, like Jaime Alas, or someone similar. And ... I want a new, killer central defender to pair with Bernardez. And ... I want a new speedy striker. This can be a younger player who wouldn't necessarily start, but could be a change of pace guy off the bench. And ... I want to give the galaxarhoids food poisoning, like every other week or so, the whole season. And some hallucinogens in Da Bruce's coffee, on a regular basis. And a new League Commissioner who isn't a spineless weasel and is willing to stand up to Anshitz and shittle and insist that all teams play by the same rules. And a supermodel under my xmas tree ... (As long as I'm having full on fantasies here.) GO QUAKES!!! - Mark
i dont think Adu would be much use here because we had a player just like him not too long ago with Ampai, just isnt franks cup o joe i dont think. The one thing that does have me on edge is the Sevilla scouting Bernardez......hopefully its just a regular run of the mill transfer rumor
there are loads of young players from S America that we should try to bring in to camp. I would love for us to sign a young DP this way. Anyone from Ecuador, Columbia, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina (ha) would be nice
Argentina are in the middle of (another!) an economic meltdown. Austerity programs suck my friends. In any case, we can probably get some of their players at firesale prices. But yeah, Central or South America should be places where we can find simpatico players at prices we can afford. Hadn't heard about Sevilla looking at BigVic. Say it isn't so! Or, that we can afford to give him a bump in salary to keep him here. If we lose BigVic, we're screwed. GO QUAKES!!! - Mark
Posted this in the Bernardez thread, but I'm fairly sure that the Quakes have an option on Bernardez in his contract for 2013 (and perhaps even 2014), so he can't transfer overseas unless the Quakes agree to sell him. So if a big team is really interested in him, the Quakes can push for a high transfer fee and would make out well in either scenario. Yes, they would have to replace him, but with a big chunk of change from a transfer fee, they would have a lot of options to do so. I'm really glad there's no expansion team joining in 2013, as the Quakes would certainly lose a quality player if there were an expansion draft. Overall, the team is in great shape heading into 2013, particularly if they can keep Wondo (and Bernardez) and resign Beitashour. It will be interesting to see what happens to Opara if he graduates the Gen Adidas program. He had some good games this year, but he didn't play well in the LA game after Bernardez went down. One of the things I was most disappointed with him this year was that he was rarely dangerous on set pieces offensively - that was one of his big strengths in his rookie year, but either other teams now know how to defend him or he's just not as athletic or able to anticipate the ball as he used to be. I don't remember more than a couple of times when he even got a header off on goal this year off set pieces. For those who have posted in various threads about Bingham saying he wouldn't come back to the Quakes if he wasn't the starter, can you clarify where that came from? Bingham has only been in the league 2 years, so the team should have the option on him for 2013 and Bingham has no real say in the matter. I get that he wants to play, but he's still very young (23) and really needs to bide his time, and he'll get his chances.
I think the Bingham thing is just a rumor, but it might be true. No way of knowing really. I hope that we keep Bernardez. He's such an important part of our success. If we do trade him, we'd better get a big bag o' cash for him. I can see us keeping Ike, and I want us to. But if he's no longer Generation Adidas, then it should be at a significantly reduced salary. (I hope he's been saving and investing his ducats.) I want to get Beta back too, but I don't know if that's going to happen or not. Even so, we have a deep bench, we have a lot of players schooled in our system now, and we should have some academy guys coming up soon. But we're primed to win now. So we should spend whatever coin is necessary to acquire one to three major upgrades. It'll be worth it. GO QUAKES!!!! - Mark
Actually, I know for a fact that Bingham who makes $99k a year is unhappy sitting on the bench but that doesn't mean he is leaving. If anything the Quakes want to keep him as I believe he will be entering his final year of a year GA contract which won't count against the salary cap. That means he is a free player at the backup GK position which I'm sure the FO will not want to lose. I do think they will get rid of Jon Busch, regardless of how good he is before they got rid of David Bingham....
There is nothing to speculate. He is a 23 year old backup GK with a GA contract making $99k sitting on his duff. End of story. We should all be so lucky earning that money at that age for doing nothing other than train and play in a reserve game or two.
forgot about this .. but didn't Kaval publicly apologize & state this sort of thing would not happen again since they would be fixing it. I say .. let's go down that road once more & see if they have some improved scouting techniques that can bear fruit.
Gerber won't quit. His salary is probably minimal in comparison but he is founder and CEO of SUM where he is earning and/or pocketing a killing. Something no one ever talks about though but that is why he won't quit. Where else can he make a living like that?
No, Gerber will need to get the boot, 'cuz he's not going anywhere on his own. But what about the supermodel Santa? Can I still get one? GO QUAKES!!! - Mark
Won't happen. He has had the same job since 1999 so I don't think anyone else is in line for him to give it up. He has kissed AEG's/Uncle Phil's arse forever and I think the Hunts and the Krafts using their NFL ties were the ones who put him in there. The only way I can see him getting the boot is if Paul Allen uses his pull along with maybe Lew & Vergara want someone else in there. Otherwise, I think we will have to put up with the Don for a long , long time.....
"Quakes undergo successful surgeries" (SJEarthquakes.com - Wednesday, 11/21/12) GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Amen to that! Heal up! Fast, and completely!! (Completely is much better than fast, as us old guys know, now that we take much longer to heal up.) GO QUAKES!! F#$% el-lay!!! - Mark
Im just hoping best case scenario comes of all of those, and not only Gordon is good to go but Tracy proves to be a usable asset as well. Worst case scenario Wondo jumps the pond, Gordon and Tracy arent good to go, and we only got Lenny. Ill keep fingers crossed that we have forward depth of the gods like SKC come season opening. A healthy Wondo, Lenny, Gordon, and Tracy makes me salivate....we could do a ton with that. Theres nothing but quality there pushing each other for starting spots. We wouldnt have to worry about the forward position whatsoever then.
"He scored 1 goal in 5 games with the Aalborg BK reserve team in the Danish 2nd Division West. Tracy continued to be sidelined for the rest of 2010 with knee injuries. [21] His injuries continued to sideline him through the 2010 - 2011 season and the first half of the 2011 - 2012 season. After missing such a significant amount of time due to his injuries, Tracy was not going to have his contract renewed over the winter break per Aalborg's announcement on October 3, 2011. [22] He spent the first half of 2012 working on regaining his fitness after his knee injury issues and targeting a move to Major League Soccer."[23] [24] Let's not bet the farm on this guy.
Despite being a Hermann Award Trophy winner, I really never heard of him nor have I ever seen him play.