But, seriously, does anyone on these boards think that Pajoy and Long Tan are coming back next year? Can anyone tell me why either of these journeymen should be brought back next year?
I wouldn't mind bringing Pajoy back for some depth--he does some nice stuff and could be a useful half a partnership if paired with a more decisive and clinical finisher. Every minute I see Long Tan on the field, I die a little.
I think Olsen was in Switzerland scouting Dudar. Salihi was more of a Kasper move I think. Salihi was connected to us by the same agent that brought us Boskovic. This agent (the name escapes me now) works with several Balkan players that have come to MLS like Marko Perovic in New England and others. The Salihi move was something that was born in our front office most likely involving Kasper's enthusiasm for scouting Rapid Vienna (remember Kasper got Boskovic from there before Olsen was coach), the relationship we have with this agent and the friendship between Salihi and Boskovic which I'm sure facilitated the whole process. According to pre season interviews Kasper, Olsen, Ashton and to a lesser degree Onstad are all involved with the roster decisions and everything gets hashed out by commitee. So Olsen was aware of the move, and probably signed off on it, but it wasn't necessarily his idea.
The part that really kills me about all of this is that there is absolutely zero accountability to be found anywhere. It would be much easier to deal with poor decisions that I didn't necessarily agree with, if I could at least hear about the rationale behind the decision. When there is none given, what are we left to think? Only that incompetence abounds. This keeps going on and on and all I can think about is what would happen to Coach Shanahan if he just up and decided he wasn't going to play RGIII anymore after the 1st month into the season.
United is 10-5-3 when Salihi starts or is used as a sub. They're 2-4-2 when he's benched the whole game. It's kind of a misleading stat but I thought I'd throw that out there.
I have been thinking about the Salihi situation a lot. There must be something else going on here. Because there's no way the Ben Olsen I've respected and loved for so long could possibly objectively look at Tan / Pajoy / Salihi and decide that Salihi should be nailed to the bench. So here's a wacky, out of left-field conspiracy theory for you... When it was just Chang as the owner, the club had a bit of problem. If they didn't sign any Designated Players, we the fans would have been going nuts, complaining about our cheap ownership and lack of resources. So they signed a couple of "cheap" Designated Players that didn't cost ownership any significant extra money (couple hundred thousand as opposed to a couple of million like others) but we had "Designated Players" so we were trying to win and weren't cheap like the Revolution... Bosko was the first, and his contract was up this summer and they negotiated him lower. No more DP for him But Salihi was signed this Winter/Spring with I believe 2 years guaranteed. Late Spring / Early Summer we get new ownership, one of whom is a "rich uncle" with lots of money to spend. So now we're starting to think about a couple of BIG Designated Players, not this cheap crap that we've been doing the last couple of seasons... Only problem, Salihi is signed for another year and a half. How to get rid of him? Make his life so miserable so he desperately wants to leave and then come the Winter transfer window he can line up a new gig and we'll do one of those player and club agreed to mutually terminate the contract thing and Salihi will be gone. If you'll notice, Salihi was getting reasonable playing time in the beginning part of the season (you know, back when we were playing nice short passing soccer that produced great results) as he worked his way into the team. But about the time new ownership came along, he's banished to the bench. To be fair, I don't really believe this (well, maybe I do a little) and I'm sure there's tons of holes in the theory and timelines, but given the alternative (that Ben Olsen actually rates Tan and Pajoy higher than Salihi), I almost hope it's true because I could reconcile that with a long-term approach to building this team...
With player contracts being with MLS & not the team, it's not necessary to waste a player or make him discontented to get rid of him. He can be traded to another team with DCU eating some of his salary if necessary.
If it is true, it's a potentially destructive approach long-term. A team that is willing to mistreat a player like that is a team that other players are likely to not want to play for. I haven't seen any indication that Salihi is anything other than a hardworking professional. If the team is engaging in some sort of effort to make him unhappy so that he'll want to leave, that would greatly lower my opinion of the team generally and Ben Olsen specifically.
The conspiracy doesn't work for me because of the fact that we can trade him and his salary to another team within the league, or we can arrange a transfer elsewhere for the right price. In either case, not playing him only makes these two things harder to do. And not playing, if he's better, could cost you a playoff spot which, IMO, is more important than any of this crap. And, even if you thought you might want to use him as a 2nd or 3rd forward and just get his salary down, he's not getting any better just sitting around. Either he's got some problem we dont' know about (professionalism, illness, adjustment problem) or somebody has messed up. Your choices are Kasper or Olsen. I'm praying it's Kasper and that he's held accountable because Olsen has at least shown some results. Our player acquisitions have been bad for a while.
I can't imagine anything like that happening with Shanahan. I would hate to see Salihi on another MLS roster where I'm certain he'll be productive.
If we eat the salary, then when don't have the salary budget to replace him. If we don't eat the salary, who would spend a DP spot/money on him?
I would very much hate to see him leave for another MLS team, because I just KNOW it'd bite us in the ass, and that would make me mad all over again.
Not buying this at all. I can think of several reasons why it's illogical, but the most compelling one is that the exact same freaking thing happened last season with Charlie Davies and Ben Olsen. I fully expect the same outcome.
I feel like this has been building toward a collapse, but technically, DC are in the thick of the playoff hunt. It probably does more harm than good to fire a coach now. And if you think it is the FO, aren't those changes usually made in the off-season? There hasn't been accountability for a while now, but I'm not going to get shrill about it at this particular point in time. Politely showing some people the door at the end of the year would probably be wise and if DC miss the playoffs again and no one is held accountable, I'll be shrieking at a pitch that only dogs can hear.
Yea, the best result would be like a DeRo or Pontius hat trick and a Salihi brace, just to show the FO what could have been.
One difference I see is that it was pretty clear that Davies was unhappy with the situation and wasn't really afraid to voice his displeasure. That just makes the situation worse for all involved. Salihi hasn't shown any indication that he's unhappy (though I'm sure he is, and part of it might be the language barrier). Though, I think Davies could have been salvaged, but that would have required both him and Olsen to be less stubborn. With some effort to iron out the situation, he wouldn't be stuck playing in the Danish league and DC United would still have a potent striker in its arsenal. Olsen is supposedly a "player's coach" but he hasn't shown much ability to deal with player issues. Granted, these guys are supposed to be professionals. But, if we're constantly going to be cycling through our DP's after a season or two, we're going to have a tough time signing quality DP's going forward. Davies was gone after a season. Olsen's handling of Boskovic has been hit-or-miss. Salihi has been completely underutilized. What DP is going to want to come here knowing that they'll end up on the bench if Olsen doesn't like their haircut or he gets a man-crush on someone like Long Tan?
I don't buy that conspiracy. On the other hand I also don't buy the theory that he could easily be traded within MLS. We would only be splitting his salary for this year. The new team would be on the hook for all of 2013. There are precious few DP spots left available in the league to go around, and those spots can be filled by any player in the world. What are the odds that Salihi is the one? Not impossible, but not likely either unless we're willing to trade him for an even bigger undesirable contract like Rafa Marquez.
This doesn't make sense, though, does it? Nobody in the prime of their career wants to be a fourth stringer -- which is what Hamdi is now. Nobody wants to be disrespected -- and its hard to see putting Long Tan in before Salihi is anything other than that. Certainly they can't think that making Salihi miserable is the best option. If they really want him gone, they sit down with him and his agent and negotiate the problem away. They do it now because this can't be anything besides a tumor in the locker room, and they do it now because they need to have a player coming off the bench besides Tan if they expect to actually win any games against more than rec league team. They do that now to show some class so they will be able to attract higher quality players in future with some character (vs. retirees or head cases) from places like Europe. This is what's baffling. Salihi hasn't really even had the chance to screw up, he's seen so few minutes. He's exactly as advertised, EXACTLY what we all were so jazzed about when we saw the video feed. If Ben thinks he sucks that bad, I'm amazed. He can't look at Tan and be thinking Salihi would be worse. If Ben is so petty that he won't play Salihi because of some slight, I'm even more amazed. If Salihi has committed some sort of major moral infraction (Talon has been walking funny), he should be cut. In any case, why not come clean and allow both sides to move on. EVEN in simple dollars and sense terms, if the team continues to play like crap it hurts the bottom line probably as much as eating $100k to terminate a contract.
People can point to games where he wasn't effective, and that's a fair complaint. But, like you said, he hasn't had enough playing time to do something so egregious to put him lower down in the depth chart than Tan and Pajoy. Yeah, each of those guys has scored, but it's not like they're tearing up the league. I'm just not seeing what Olsen sees in those two that puts them ahead of Salihi, or what has led him to conclude that one of our expensive DP's needs to be riding pine.