Earthquakes Stood Pat - Good or Bad?

It was more than "a little stumble" I think. Didn't they go 13 games w/o winning a game or something like that? Losing Lenhart was some bad luck, but as for the injuries, you have to assume that you're going to have some injuries in any typical year. There were some good acquisitions and some really bad ones, like the desperate move at the end of the season that resulted in the horrific Zura signing.

In 2012 they made some great acquisitions (Bernardez and Chavez), and to a lesser extent Salinas, and maybe just as importantly, unloaded some players who were not really helping to get them to the next level (RJ, Convey, Sealy, etc.). Also, they publicly said that the were going to re-dedicate their efforts to build a competitive roster, as they saw that they had failed in 2011, with Zura sort of being the exclamation point on that. So I think representing 2011 as a "little stumble" is stretching it. I don't care what their GD was, they were 14th in the league with 38 points after finishing 8th in the league with 46 points in 2010.

 

The league is crammed tight around the middle. Yes the Quakes had an awful midseason in 2011, but part of the reason I was very optimistic about 2012 before the season is we had clear areas to improve, we had made some good acquisitions, and werent far off the pace the previous year. And we hardly stood pat in 2011 so its hard to say that that was the problem. We made some bad moves and we regressed a little that year. But it wasnt a huge regression, and the base was still there for the 2012 version to storm through the league.

And we were way, way, way above league average last year.

 

Of course we would be better off with him then without him, but the team's winning was hardly fragile last year.

Losing Dawkins wont stop us from being one of the best teams in the league this year.

 

I won't say 2012 was a fluke.

But it was a very kind and forgiving season.

Kind enough to not hit us with major injuries to key players, and some players having their all-time career best seasons, the likes of which they may not ever produce again.

Forgiving in that all the late-game heroics, which can only be explained as a supernatural phenomenon, helped propel this team to greater heights than perhaps they were truly capable of. It covered up some of our real flaws.

But that kindness and forgiveness ran out in the playoffs. Injury to Bernardez, and that stoppage-time magic failed to materialize.

It was one game. I know. But I said it last summer too. If you are a team with championship aspirations.. If you are a team that believes it is championship-caliber.. then don't sit on your hands while the other contenders are looking to upgrade or reload. If Alan f*ckin Gordon goes back to being just Alan Gordon again, then this team is not a Supporters Shield contender. This team is not better than the Galaxy.

Last summer I said I want the Quakes to get a true forward or attacking midfielder who can create his scoring opportunities. Wondo is not that kinda striker. Lenhart and Gordon certainly are not. Sometimes endless lobs into the box won't work.

Always be looking to upgrade... even if you're the defending back-to-back champion. We don't need to look far to see that it works. The Giants and 49ers shook things up mid-season, and we've seen the results. Time for the Quakes to shake things up. And the Fire need to get hot. And the Sounders need to make some noise. And the Revolution need to make big changes. And the Red Bulls need to grow a pair. And the Galaxy need to go f*ck themselves. And the Rapids need to make haste and whatever, f*ck this shit, Im done. Good night and good luck.

 

I'm sad that Dawkins isn't coming back, but I'm not surprised. I do hope JD makes one free transfer before the season starts, but the odds of that FT making an impact anytime soon are slim to none :/

 

Who were the off-season acquisitions in 2011? I can only think of Lenhart and Dawkins as the names of any note.

In 2012 it was Bernardez, Chavez, Salinas, Sercan, and Alexandre (turned out to be insignificant but folks were projecting him as starting d-mid), maybe more...

I don't think it's even close in terms of "stand pat-edness". They thought they were "bad" (as in good) in 2010 and just needed some "tweaks" for 2011. I don't know how 38 points, a 14th place finish, and a 13 games winless streak can be considered a minor regression.

In 2012, they made a public, conscious effort to significantly improve the roster because 2011 was so poor.

 

That's putting it mildly. During the woeful winless run, while trying to "bury" the losing streak with a hokum PR pregame ceremony, the Quakes signed Edmundo Zura at the same time the Galaxy signed Robbie Keane.

 

OK, let's try to be rational here. We know that JD and Frank are trying to score another player or two from Honduras, pals of Muma and Marvin. We know that some of our new guys looked good against the DynamoeHumms. We also know that JD and Frank always say that they don't have anyone else coming just before they make a big signing. We're going to have seven or eight new players this year, out of thirty total. Seven out of thirty players is 23% turn over. Let's say it's only six new guys, that's still
20% newbies.

Last season we carried Gjoey and Ward all season when they couldn't play. (I'm sure that we had to for contractual reasons.) There's two spots that will have active, available players. Mehdi will be available this season (probably April, maybe May?), and he's pretty good. We've got Marcus Tracy in the stable too. And Garza and Hustedt may well see some minutes, and they both looked good against the DynamoeHumms.

It's not that we aren't making improvements, it's that you aren't noticing them. Let's not overlook that most DP's in this league have been busts.

GO QUAKES!!!

- Mark

 

In '10, we went 13-10-7 (w-L-t), and missed making MLS Cup by one game. In '10, we got screwed out of a few points at least by piss poor officiating. (The game where Busch got kicked in the ear by Cam and Cam didn't get a red card. The following week against KC(?) where Convey got kicked square in the nuts after the ball was gone, and that wasn't a red. And a couple of other incidents, like the first playoff game against the RedCows where they cheated their asses off.) So in '10, we were actually slightly better than our record showed.

Then in '11 we went 8-12-14. (w-L-t). That's just flat awful. five fewer wins sucks. That was a huge step backwards, and we needed to rebuild our roster, and we did. Chavez, Shea, and BigVic were all new starters for us in '12. Morrow finally got the call to be a regular starter. And while we made some good roster moves in '11 (Lionheart, Gordon, Simon), we played like crap. Always going for the long-ball, and not making the best use of the guys we had.

In '12, we played a different style of futbol. We had a lot more possession, we played with speed up the wings. (Which we were incapable of in '11.) We made much better use of our subs. (And don't say we couldn't sub in '11 because we lacked depth, we played guys who were spent the full 90 and that's just flat stupid.) And in '12, we were awesomely fit!! Unlike '11, but more like '10.Our coaching was hugely improved in '12, don't say it wasn't.

So we're working on fitness again this season, which is going to be critical. We do have some new guys. And if we stick with the style and tactics that we used last year (our much improved coaching), we will be good again. Supporter's Shield? Not likely, but we'll still be one of the elite teams in MLS. I can go with that.

GO QUAKES!!!

- Mark

 

Wins and losses are what matters at the end of the season, but they are not the best evaluation metric of a season. Goal differential is a better predictor of future performance.

And if you remember 2011 was marked by many blown points because of poor play late in games. We were competitive, very few blowouts. Compare that to the 2009 season where we truly were awful. If you had randomly scattered 7 goals throughout the 2011 regular season you likely would have netted the team a lot of points. That 8-12-14 record could easily had been a 12-10-12 record with 7 more goals, which is very similar to what we did in 2010.


Compare that to Chivas or Toronto and you could sink a dozen goals into their record last year and not had much effect at all. 7 goals wouldnt have been enough for our 2009 season. Thats a truly awful year.

Or inversly you could have popped a dozen goals out of our total last year and we still could have been one of the best teams in the league.

But 7 goals isnt much. Its 3-4 breaks on defense, and 3-4 breaks on offense. It may not be within random chance in MLS, but its really close. Its a very narrow bit of quality to make up.

And, last but not least, in 2010 we finished 6th in the West, in 2011 we finished 7th. Relative to the other teams in our conference not terribly dissimilar. We were about in the same place relative to everyone else in our conference as they year before.

 

The point is, in 2011, the team more or less "stood pat" in the offseason and the performance of the team relative to the rest of the league regressed. I think we are going to see the same thing this year depending on whether or not some significant new signings occur over the next month. On paper, right now, the team looks worse. A little bit more depth from journeymen MLS players, but otherwise, with no Dawkins at least through the first few months, worse.

 

I agree.

 

Given how incredibly great the team was last year, this is actually not a bold prediction . The only question is how far they will fall. If they actually do better than last year, I would be completely shocked, in a happy way .

 

You're rationalizing. We played more than a full match a man up, and failed to score. Leading shittle, Frank refused to make any subs, and they wore us down and won.

We were abysmally bad in '11, and yes, I remember it very well.

We did have a decent stretch at the end of '11, which presaged our success in '12.

Whatever, it should be water under the bridge. In '12, we were superb. We were the ones doing the wearing down of our enemies, thus all the late goals. Our enemies simply couldn't play with us for 90 minutes.

THIS coming season, we need to continue that attack up the wings thing. It works for us. And because we won't have Simon, we'll be starting Chavez and Shea, or Chavez and Garza, or Garza and Shea. We're going to have serious speed on the pitch all season, and that works in MLS. We'll be seeing Hustedt getting some minutes. There will be other players stepping up. Beta should have a better season than last year. And let's remember, a lot of our guys are still quite young: Baca, Croninja, Shea, Garza, Morrow, Beta, and plenty more on the bench.

We have a deep roster, and we just improved our depth. And we may well have another signing or two waiting in the wings.

GO QUAKES!!

- Mark

 

Is this team a Supporter's shield winning squad again? No. Is this team a playoff team still? Yes.

There's this t00:

Also, we're not making out of the CCL group stage, nor advancing very far in Open Cup per Frank Yallop's MO.

 

You just cannot stand agreeing with me.

 

we definitely won't go far in the USOC if we surrender our home field advantage and play at kezar

 

Well, that too, though in this case I was actually poking a little fun at my own prediction.

 

Very true. I went there for these games before and each time it was an adventure by itself.

 

No, im being rational. Your letting the dissapointment of '11 cloud your honest judgement. The team in '11 was below average, but the team in '10 wasnt very far above average.

We had 2 decent stretches in '11 if you will recall, at the beginning and end of the year. It was the middle that was bad. But to a certain extent seasons will have runs of form in them, this one strongly effected by injury, but the team wasnt taking repeated hammerings and being played off the field. It was being outplayed, but not by much, and not by so much that a few key additions wouldnt have been enough to tilt things.

We did a bit more then just the couple tweaks that would have got us back to 2010 levels though which is why 2012 blew past 2010 and into 2005 territory.

Right now the biggest challenge this preseason will be evaluating Garza and Hustedt and the health of Chavez to determine if we need to replace Dawkins immediately or wait for midseason. There are a couple advantages to waiting till midseason. First we may be able to get Dawkins back, second we might have another more pressing need to address but finally if we dont need to make an expensive signing having that cap room will allow us to lock some guys up longer term and avoid any worry of a cap crunch for 2014.

The key is if we think Garza and/or Hustedt are able to play now and allow us the flexibility to look again mid season.

 

This is how I am seeing things.

 

We're just going to have to disagree on this. I will say that you're right that the '10 team wasn't far above average, maybe even average. We were better than eight teams out of sixteen. But the '11 season, we were better than only four other teams. OK, enough of that. It's over and done with.

And don't forget major attitude and fitness improvements. Before the '10 season, we worked hard on fitness. Before the '11 season, we did not. Before the '12 season, we again worked hard on fitness, and I think that's a major reason that we killed our opponents after the 70th minute. We seem to be working on fitness again this season. I know that Kaval is committed to our guys being fit. (Because he told me so.)

Also, I think that Frank and JD thought that they needed to get new outside middies because Gjoey was injured (probably permanently), and our other options at outside mid had proven inadequate in '11. (Including Jacob Peterson, who should have been good as an outside middie.)

So we had some clear needs going into the new season, even given that we played much better toward the end of the year when we started playing Baca in the middle of the pitch.

My concern with waiting until the middle of the season to re-load is that 20 out of our 34 games will be in the bank by July 13th, and the transfer window does not open until the 15th. Thus, we could be hopelessly out of it by the 13th. I would like to see us sign at least one or two more serious players before the start of the season. We still need another quality CB (which means that we cut a decent CB), and we need at least one more quality outside mid. Shea and Chavez are great, but they've both proven a little fragile. This means that Sam G will get plenty of minutes this coming season, which I think is potentially a good thing, but I'd like another quality outside middie.

I think that Sam is ready, and I think the coaching staff think so too. Hustedt, I'm not so sure about, but he looked good against the DynamoeHumms.

GO QUAKES!!

- Mark

 

The problem with having a bunch of teams clustered around the middle in a league like MLS is small differences can lead to disproportionately large consequences. When everybody is packed in close, small changes make big differences in terms of record and standings.

If we are in 13th place the season has gone down in a fiery, fiery wreck. Shouldn't be anywhere near that with a team that is mostly unchanged. Losing Dawkins hurts a little, but we had a huge margin of error.

 

we will be good, even losing dawkins we have good depth. everything looks in the green so far, and the only position i see in the yellow will be left back next season but im sure we will address it then. Granted we always want bodies in for help, anything to make the team better, and we do have to contend with lots of extra games, so yeah it would be nice. but if we stood pat, ive got no problem with that either, we kept almsot all of the pieces of success