Do you think that our owners "owe it to you" to spend more money than is rational on our team? We need our own stadium first. And they are working on that. The stadium could be bigger, but our track record shows that 13K to 15K is what we should expect for butts in the seats. They could spend more because they are billionaires. This is so, but with only $7M or so in revenues, it would be unreasonable to do so. And ya know, we need a stadium first. Oh, and Wolff and Fisher are the only owners of our team to ever get a stadium plan moving. It's not up and running yet, but this is way more progress than all previous owners combined. They have said that they are not averse to spending $10M or $20M on a single player. They are used to baseball player salaries after all. Our lack of vision is down to our GM and our coaches. Bummer, but true. go quakes!! Fire Watson!! - Mark
3. Dude vs LA he choked. He had chances. Don't try and spin that. 4.Again missing the point entirely. It doesn't matter that Johnson was shit. At one point Johnson was one of the key players feeding Wondo. The fact that you are bringing up RVP shows me you cannot tell the difference between skillsets of players. RVP is a guy who can create his own shot, for him to score teammates just have to give him the ball in space and he can create the window necessary to score. Players that can create their own shot are not as dependent as those who cannot. That skillset RVP has is the reason why he starts the big games and Hernenadez comes off the bench. Hernandez is the guy you should be looking to compare Wondo with. All you have to do is look at how they score goals. Either from service out wide or rebounds needed to be tapped in. That's how they operate and how they are their most effective. That places a big burden on your wingers because if they are getting shot down you know there is no chance in hell you can change your way of attack with Hernandez and start feeding him the ball a bit outside the box and expect him to make shit happen by way of playing a teammate through or by going at a defender to create a shot for himself. That's why RVP is United's "DP" and not Hernandez. Again Wondo can be one of many DPs in this league and be effective, just not the only one because then you are out of funds to get the player that can CONSISTENTLY feed him the ball. That's why guys like Johnson, Convey, Morrow, Beita, Chavez , etc. have needed to have good years at one point or another to feed him the ball. The problem is that these have been players who cannot do it consistently a year later. A DP signing is the only way you get a player that can. That's the problem.
I can dispute it. The premise is that Wondo is dependent on good service in order to score. I contend that Wondo is primarily a poacher. See the thread below for a discussion of what it means to be a poacher https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/what-is-poaching.190558/ Someone offered this definition, which I think is good: It's real meaning (in football) is to get a goal where one should not be possible, for example via a mistake by a defender or creating one out of nothing. It doesn't matter if Wondo has good players around him or not (and at times, 2009, 2011, I contend even 2010) he has not. And yet he still scores at rates that are nearly unprecedented in MLS. Why? Because he is a poacher - he can get goals out of nothing - he has a great sense for being at the right place at the right time - almost a 6th sense for what may happen and how he can position his body in order to give himself the best chance to score a goal. That's Wondo's forte, his genius; it's not just finishing good service. In fact I content that is finishing is only good, not great, not even DP worthy by itself. That doesn't mean that the Quakes can't use more good players - more "creating" type of players, etc. I contend that Dawkins was one of those, and they really miss him this year. But Wondo does not need to have those kinds of players on the team in order to score lots of goals.
A poacher cannot score without his teammates putting good service in or causing a rebound that creates chaos in the box. You can say a poacher can create goals out of nothing, but that is not the case when you speak of Wondo. Poachers sniff around for scraps in the six and look for good service out wide and sometimes through the middle if they are quick enough. A bit of bravery, a bit of technique, and good movement in the box. That's a poacher. A poacher is as good as the creative players around him. Go back to the Chicharito example and check the creative players that create the opportunites for him. Nani, Valencia, Rooney, etc. Just last week Salinas played pretty well and created two goals for Wondo to apply the finishing touch where he used that bit of technique to score his second. It doesn't mean Salinas is a great player. It just means that a good game was needed from him to create the opportunity for those two goals. The problem is this team on a yearly basis cannot count on the same players from a past year to put in good performances the following year. That's why another DP is a must if you intend on winning consistently.
I don't agree with the idea that "A poacher is as good as the creative players around him". Wondo scores goals regardless. You can't say that Wondo needs solid creative players around him and that the Quakes desperately need solid creative players around him or he can't score, and then look at his goals totals over the last 4 years or so. If he needs creative players to score, and he's scoring at an unprecedented rate in MLS, then it follows that the creative players must already be there! That's just basic deductive logic. Your position requires you to play up the skills of generally lousy creative players, who you have disparaged in the past, like Salinas or RJ. Salinas was generally horrible in the last game, but sooner or later his diligence is going to result in a deflected shot or rebound or poor clearance that results in a Wondo goal. That's the beauty of goal poaching; it doesn't require great service, it just requires a ball traveling around the 18-yard box. I agree in general though that the Quakes need a real quality creative player (or two). But that's not so much about allowing Wondo to score, because he scores anyway, but about finding other ways to score that may or may not involve Wondo.
Geo had an attitude problem. He was not 'Quake material. Why he had the attitude problem is another question, but we've seen at least 2 decent players, positioned or "treated" poorly, and complain until they were sent away (O'Brien, Convey). Dawkins was not a DP. He could have matured into one as we've seen with Wondo, but Spurs, at least by my impression, wanted DP money "now". Dawkins is currently not getting the playing time that a DP candidate should be getting so the 'Quakes were smart not to cough up DP like money for him.
I believe I remember Yallop saying he would have liked to have Geo back, but, not for the money he was asking. I don't recall any attitude issues.
To beat a dead horse, so to speak... a little birdy told me about the attidute problem. Someone I PMed from within the office, so I'll let you judge how low the birdy was flying to catch all the details...
IMO Dawkins was as effective or more effective than the "average DP" in MLS. I don't really care what is happening in his career in EPL. Sometimes these things are just non-linear, i.e. a guy with a rep in EPL comes to MLS and doesn't make much of an impact and a relatively unproven guy like Dawkins proves to be more effective. Geo had more of a rep in EPL - proven EPL player, though on a"lesser" team, but a proven commodity nonetheless. And in my mind anyway, Dawkins was clearly more impactful to the Quakes than Geo was (and younger to boot). Maybe attitude was part of it, but with Geo, I just didn't see it. Dawkins, when he was on, could dominate a game, and you could see him make a mark in the games with his skillset right away.
It's really too bad that we couldn't hold onto Dawkins. Looks like these days he's back to playing with Tottenham youth teams in front of 600 people (scores at 5:38): I also thought this was interesting...just came across it: http://www.tottenhamhotspurs.tv/know-itk/20868-new-itk-thread-175.html Not sure how true it is, but interesting nonetheless...especially the bolded part.. [I would post this in the Dawkins thread, but I don't want to get anyone's hopes up if they see the Dawkins thread bumped ]
That's a pretty suspicious quote, especially the part about him being a "left-footed central midfielder". Sounds like they were looking for a right-footed right winger. Actually I think Dawkins is right-footed, not left-footed, but not strongly one or the other, and he played on the left wing for the Quakes as a cut-in guy who would tend to shoot with his right foot IIRC. So although he could play right wing, he wouldn't be a hug the line and cross with the right kind of right winger, if that's what they were looking for.
Yeah, that part of what they said was inaccurate, but then again Tottenham fans haven't seen much of Simon. We've seen more of him than they have. But yeah, I don't think he's too dependent on one foot or the other. As for central midfielder, I don't know what Tottenham fans see him as...I thought he was a striker for them though. As for Villa, I don't know what they were looking for but the story seems plausible, at least in terms of them getting him on loan without really knowing what kind of player he was. They played him a bit when he first got there then dropped him entirely.
And Paddy McCourt is still unsigned in England, though Sir Alex's boy is still hoping to bring him to Peterborough of League 1.
Yeah, but, who knows, maybe the attitude was just that he wanted more money than the Quakes thought he was worth. I have had many conversations with FO personnel, and they run the gambit from having very accurate info, to totally inaccurate info. Sometimes they are just giving you their opinion, rather than a known fact.
This was my interpretation as well, but when presented with a price tag you have already decided was too high... Even when he played last year, I don't think he was $600k+ good (just using Wondo's published number as an example). If he was getting first time minutes for the Spurs we could say we missed out, but he's not, so we didn't.
Well I think this is where we don't quite agree (which is fine ). In my estimation Dawkins was already playing at a level that I would equate with say a "mid pack DP" in MLS; not the very best of the best but far from the worst. So why not make him a DP? Does it really matter what he is doing in England? A DP is a role of the dice, and he is a known quantity, and still a fairly young player who is likely to get better. Regarding the Wondo $600k I think that you can argue that based on productivity he is highly underpaid DP. So not necessarily a good basis for comparison.
With Dawkins, our coaches said that he would have eaten up the rest of our available salary cap, thus preventing us from signing anyone else. So that's an important point. It's not just if you think he's worth the money or not, it's how his salary fits into our salary cap, or not, as the case may be. go quakes!! Fire Watson!! - Mark
Can't possibly be true, since if they make him a DP he counts as $350k against the cap and they've since signed Walmart, Goodson, Alas, and Stewart w/o dumping any salary of significance, which makes me believe that they've gone well over $350k with those 4 signings. No way that those 4 signings average out to <90k. Before the season started they also had the option of dumping dead weight, like Hernandez at ~$210k and Ballouchy at $150k. It all comes down to the idea that there are many ways to make it work, and in the end it's about choices. Given how the season's gone, not sure now that they'd make the same choice if given another chance.
Let's think about this for a moment. Walmart isn't that expensive. We're only paying $90K for him. Stewart has to be under $100K, and we're only on the hook for half his salary. We're probably only paying $30K to $40K for him for this season. Oh, and he's on the off-roster budget, so he doesn't count at all! Alas is on loan, and a summer transfer special, so again, Not more than $60K or $70K, maybe less. We were only paying $50K or so for Dawkins. Um, Alas appears to be on the off-budget roster too. Not sure how that can be, but I don't make the rules. Let's say $90K for Walmart, and $50K for Alas, which is generous, and that leaves us . . . $210 if we're thinking that $350 was the limit. Goodson only costs half of his presumably $350K+ salary, so $175K. And it's possible that you're right. That our coaches were just making up excuses, or maybe Dawkins would have cost us $350K, leaving only $40K or so to maneuver. I can see the argument that he would have eaten up too much of our remaining cap space. Also, still acknowledging that you might be right, is it possible that we've put some of our guys on long-term IR? Thus temporarily removing them from our cap equations? Tommy Muller won't play this season, but he doesn't count against the cap anyway. Ty Harden is done for the year, that's $68.5K that we could have recovered. Nana, at $61.7K might be on long-term or season ending IR too. Even so, Walmart is the only one of our three signings who counts against the cap, leaving tons of space for Goodson's salary, even if we only had $350K to begin with. But you could be right. It might just be that Doyle and Yallop thought it was too much to play for Dawkins, so they made up some bogus story. go quakes!! - Mark
Piss off! The real issue here is why do we not even go after guys like Dempsey? And is there a chance that we will after our new stadium opens? This is a question that won't be answered in full until '15 or even '16. And then, we need to ponder if we need such players? I think we do, but that's just me. go quakes!! Fire Watson!! - Mark
The Quakes are paying >$200k for players like Hernandez (Hernandez!), and Lenhart. They can afford (against the cap) to pay a player $350k. Remember, these were choices that were available to them at the beginning of the season. But they chose to ["stand pat" - Dawkins], and we see are bearing the "fruits" of those choices.
Yeah sure. We could have cut Ramiro and Jason, well we could have traded Jason. Ballouchy was still on the IR at the beginning of the season, so we couldn't cut him. Who else would you have dumped? And I agree, we could have done any number of things differently with our roster over the years (like keep Ampai and not sign Ballouchy). Were you or I running the team, it would look wildly different than it does today. BUT, you have to consider where they were and what they were thinking . . . that or you have to be on the Off With Their Heads! bandwagon. So now we have to pop over to the coaching candidates thread and mull over who we might get that knows how to think, analyze, and evaluate talent. Maybe we can snag an assistant from the NeoCosmos? go quakes!! Fire Watson!! - Mark