2013 Off-Season Discussion Thread

I had not thought about your point regarding clearing players before they are ready...

Just to be clear, Im not saying Morgan did any of these things, and I dont know if he was even let go. Im just coming up with things that might have influenced such a decision, if it came to pass.

I was playing along with that in mind

Fire Bruce Morgan? Ferchrissake that's base sacrilege. The guy has been with the Clash/Quakes since day 1 and when the news popped that the Quakes were being set up again, Bruce had his ticket to San Jose and was flying out of Houston like a bat out of hell (not to suggest that Houston is hell....).

It's still speculation of him being released, right? @bsman, is there anything in the way of official announcement about this? Morgan is still listed on the Quakes' site, so officially it would appear he's still employed by them.

I for one would like to know why Beita was allowed to keep playing with a sports hernia. I didn't think they are that hard to diagnose.

Yes it is.

GO QUAKES!!

- Mark

Who said it wasn't diagnosed? Obviously, they felt it was something he could play with until the off season.

Maybe they wanted to, I don't know, win the Shield and the Cup? The kind of opportunity that does not come around often, they were willing to risk it, and I'm sure Steven himself wanted to ply through it. He obviously was able to play well if it existed the last couple of months.

The turnaround time on that surgery can be a month if its done with the "german" method. If it was for half the season, it should have been diagnosed and treated with plenty of time to get him back for the playoffs.

Do we actually have any data to suggest that the Quakes experienced injuries at a higher rate than other clubs? I seem to remember worse years - like 2005, which seemed much worse - like "could barely field a team a few times" worse. There were some end-of-the-season fixups, but I actually felt that the Quakes were somewhat light on the injuries last year. And does anyone have a link to a reference that Bernardez had postseason surgery? I could not find anything.

hahaha, you got me! Good point

I'd be surprised if the Quakes turned out to have a number of injuries per season that was significantly higher than the league average. The only medium to long term injuries I can recall for the Quakes this season were Gjertsen and Ward (who weren't going to be big contributors anyway), Salinas, Chavez and Garza. For the last three, they weren't season ending and the injury to Salinas was the most serious, so it seems the Quakes got off pretty light. It's a rough league with lots of travel, non-ideal field conditions and a pretty good amount of physical play. Injuries are going to happen.

As an aside, since this is the offseason, I picked up FIFA 13 this weekend and played through the MLS season. For those into video games who need their Quakes fix, I recommend it.

Isn't or wasn't Bruce Morgan only a trainer? If so how could he prevent injuries? Just curious.....

Bernardez was out for a period, that seemed shorter because it coincided with the summer break. Dawkins missed time, and Ballouchy had a season ending injury. Hernandez started the season injured, which is why Morrow was starting at CB. Im pretty sure Opara was injured for a bit as well. Both Gordan and Lenhart missed significant time.

Injuries came in dribs and drabs last year, and we were able to handle them for the most part by using the depth we had. We only really had 1 game where we had to field a really bizzarre lineup, and that was @KC. But while we didnt have any injury crises, it also seemed like we never got the team healthy either.

http://valleyofthesuns.com/2012/04/05/secret-behind-phoenix-suns-elite-training-staff/

I'd forgotten about Lenhart's concussion. And of course, Ballouchy (he was off the radar mostly because he came to the team so late in the season). But yeah, there were clearly more injuries than I was remembering. Boy, it's a long season. I guess that's a testament to the depth the team had that so many injuries can happen and a strong team can still be fielded.

I wonder what the timeline is for all the players who ended the season with injury is for recovery. Ballouchy won't make the start of the season. Hopefully he's the only one.

Great article. This is the sort of thing that we need.

It won't prevent all injuries, but it should help to reduce injuries, and shorten recovery times.

GO QUAKES!!!!

- Mark

Are soccer injuries the same as basketball? Two different sports and I don't see the correlation.

Running, jumping.

Yeah 250-300 pound 7 ft tall men running and jumping on wood as opposed to 150-200 under 6ft tall men jumping and running on grass. Still don't see the relation.

Muscles, bones.

Still don't see how a trainer will prevent such injuries. I mean what could Bruce Morgan have done to prevent Steve Zakuani from having Brian Mullan break his leg? Not much....

Strains, pains.

Yeah ok but I still don't think a trainer will have made that much of a difference in injuries for an entire team of on a season either way unless he was totally useless to begin with.