What is the definition of standing pat? What I think of when people say this is that the Quakes didn't sign Dawkins. But other than that, they did add quite a bit of depth. I think the bigger issues rather than keeping Dawkins or not "upgrading" certain positions were that the Quakes had a frustrated coach who didn't really want to be there anymore and a lot of players under performing. You can't predict Morrow's stark drop in form and the stuff that happened with Gordon and Lenhart was also avoidable. Similarly, Chavez was absent quite a bit due to qualifying and also under performed. Had those guys even been half of what they were the year before, the Quakes make the playoffs. The only place where we saw significant upgrades come in were for positions that few people seemed to consider in need of upgrade in the first place during the offseason. The additions of Goodson and Stewart certainly weren't on my radar, but I would argue the team's turnaround had a lot more to do with defensive building and getting the team to be a cohesive unit again more than anything else. The always be upgrading adage is perfectly fine, but adding offensive power (which is what I think most people are referring to in terms of upgrade) would not have stopped the poor defensive form and I don't think it would have changed the way Yallop wanted to play ball, anyway, so it's difficult to predict whether or not a different midfield would have made any difference.
The Quakes gave up all of one more goal in 2013 relative to 2012. And they scored almost 40 less goals. If that doesn't say that the problem was not the defense, it was the offense, I don't know what would. They were able to kind of stop the bleeding due to the lack of offense by shoring up the defense, but they were fortunate enough to win a lot of close games. So it turned out that at the end of 2013, the Quakes sort of reverted to Quakes 2010, which is not all that bad, but not nearly the dominant team they were in 2012. My definition of "standing pat" is not making significant upgrades in the roster. I don't consider adding depth players to be significant upgrades. It's just kind of "shoring up" of what you have. And by not acquiring Dawkins, they did worse than "stand pat", they reverted in terms of impact players.
Total goals conceded tells you some of the story, but not all of it. I'll have to check but I would hypothesize that the Quakes conceded a lot more goals in the first part of the year in 2013 than they did in 2012, and they certainly conceded more in the first part of 2013 than the second part of 2013. Shoring up defense isn't just about goals, though, either, it's about limiting opportunities by the other team, and hopefully, turning those into opportunities for your team. I'll argue the entire team was weak defensively, from the forwards, to the midfielders and defenders. If nobody is doing a good job of defending, then you aren't going to get a lot of time on the ball, so your opportunities will be limited offensively as well. Again, aside from Dawkins, who would you single out as somebody you would want to upgrade? It was natural for the forwards to regress from career highs, but could you predict it would be such a sharp decline? The weakest positions offensively and defensively for the start of the season were the wings. So keeping Dawkins would have been great, but the team still had Salinas and Chavez who had done well in 2012 and weren't nearly as good in 2013. That one is a little harder to predict. Beitashour's injury and bad run of form was also not something you could predict and the Quakes had serviceable depth there. My overall point isn't that upgrading would have been a bad thing, just that figuring out who to upgrade was difficult given the 2012 season. Given the general age of the wide midfield and wide defenders, those were not places that immediately jumped out as positions that needed significant change, so doing what the Quakes did in getting reinforcement players was a reasonable decision. Look how long it took the Quakes to find chemistry again. Those problems were not personnel related in terms of who was on the team, but rather they were driven by players who were unable to keep themselves out of suspension trouble and the team overall being led by a coach who apparently had little interest in continuing his career with the team. Based on the record of the team post Watson's appointment, I'm going to say those issues were causing more harm than the roster itself.
Outside of the frugal owners, it sure would be nice to upgrade the roster and not worry about the salary cap.
The Quakes are going to need to find a way to field an upgraded roster, or they will miss the playoffs again next season.
So who are the candidates for an attacking mid? speedy forward? @stillidie noted one above. Any one else who is realistic?
speedy forward - darren mattocks looks to be on the way out of vancouver after his comments to jamaican media attacking mid - we should call montreal and inquire about andrew wenger, I think he would make a good #8 cm.
See, that's the problem with the "stand pat" mentality. You can create 101 reasons why it makes sense to stand pat. It worked so well last year, why would it not work the next year? And, in 2nd guess mode, well, who would have thought that player X would have such a decline? So there is a psychology involved that sucks you into "standing pat". But at the same time, there's a psychology that causes a "stood pat" roster, especially one that has won some hardware, to under-perform. A sense of complacency that is difficult to combat even when you are aware of it, a "topple the champion" syndrome, where other teams look to knock down the team that was arguably the best by the previous season's measure, a resolve by the "failed" teams to improve, which means that, if successful, they will pass you by when you are "standing pat", even if you are as good as you were the previous year, etc. I think all of those things were in play this year. So you have to kind of force yourself to find ways to make changes and improve your roster. Yes, it may not be immediately obvious what changes you need to make, but you need to be bold and take some chances, because "standing pat" is almost certainly not going to get it done.
If a team does well the players on the roster are likely to cost more the following season. Contracts often contain incentives or raises for good performance. Thus, even if a good team tries to stand pat it really can't if it is already at the top of its salary cap; someone has to go or be replaced because there isn't enough money for everyone - even if you keep the "good" players, your depth will suffer. If a team is below the cap during the season, it leaves some room for future rising salaries and could "stand pat" easier - but if it is underpaying players it might have less chance to do well. If you have owners who are willing to pay for more DPs, then a top of the cap team that does well can still improve.
That's true, but I don't think it really applied to the Quakes in 2013. Somehow they were able to sign almost everyone, and then on top of that they were able to have enough money left over to acquire Goodson, Stewart, and Alas. I think it must have been because they had some space under the cap to begin with, and because I think they got some extra bucks for CCL qualification (and there of course there was the Wondo DP signing, which didn't impact the cap that much because of the DP / cap rules). In maybe in one case, Corrales, they were able to reduce a salary significantly (I think part of his salary went into the coaching part of player / coach). I think he went from something like $180k to $60k.
Mattocks is an intriguing idea, but we're probably not sexy enough for him. Who knows. Tell me more about this Andrew Wenger.
One thing we haven't looked at is the Quakes reserves and the failure for many players to develop. There are a limited number of roster spots, so when you are investing time and open slots in guys like Garza and Bingham who don't really get a chance to see the field for whatever reason, you have to figure out what to do. So not only would you have to identify better talent if you wanted to replace them, but you'd have to try to figure out how long that talent will be worth what you can pay him and whether or not it's worth giving up a younger player who is cheaper and may prove to be beneficial longer for a longer amount of time. I honestly don't really think the Quakes stood pat the way that you are characterizing it. I think the risks they took were on the players who were on the fringe of making it to the first team that were already under contract. They failed in that regard on a couple of guys, but those failures could have just as easily been realized had they spent money to acquire new players. Given what we know about how the Quakes will spend their money, there are just some realities that we as fans will have to face. One of those is that it's unlikely players that are contributing at a decent level are going to be replaced by "big name" talent. Instead, they will try to create "big names" by making a team that is more than the sum of its parts. It simply didn't work in 2013 like it did in 2012, but I still think it had more to do with Yallop's attitude heading into the season as well as the attitudes of some of the players. The talent level of the team was capable.
mattocks - we are not sexy enough and we also can't guarantee him the minutes he would want due to gordon/lenhart/wondo (unless we traded one of those guys to Van as part of the deal)... listening to that interview with that jamaican show... man, he is one self-centered guy... listed off all the awards he won his rookie year, talked himself up a ton, bad-mouthed rennie and vancouver, said he didn't want to play there again next season. but fact is he didn't produce on the field this year... much like the 2013 quakes he seemed to have a hangover from his stellar 2012 season and got complacent and lazy. he could quickly turn into a locker room cancer and go bobby convey on us. that being said, he is an athletic freak... speed, physical, aerial prowess (highest vertical I've ever seen from a soccer player on that header goal against TFC last year where his head got higher than the keeper's hands). scary good potential. wenger is an enigma - montreal experimented giving him a lot of minutes at forward and it didn't really work out. he has an elite engine, solid passing and soccer brain, and though he has a good shot he doesn't have that striker instinct to finish a high percentage of his chances in the box. he has missed some sitters and just failed to get good shots off when he gets in dangerous positions... missing that killer instinct. He also played some CB and CDM in college. Watching him on the counter against the Quakes this year I think his best position is CM and he could be a dillon powers box to box type guy.
Signing guys like Gargan and Harden is not what I would call "taking risks". The team made impact signings in 2012 under the same set of operating conditions. They failed to do it in 2013 because they thought that they didn't need to, and they were wrong. This could have all been prevented if they had hired me as kind of a high-level strategist / "thought leader" kind of guy, but I don't come cheap!! :--)
Haha, well I wouldn't call Gargan or Harden risks signings either, and they weren't supposed to be. But I'm also not sure it was all that clear cut that guys like Chavez and Gordon were going to do what they did for the Quakes at the time of the signings. They ended up being impact players, but it was hardly a guarantee. There's a little bit of hindsight there. Bernardez is one example where I think it was obvious he would be better than what was currently on the roster. I guess if I had a question it would be, what would the consensus be had the Quakes signed an "impact" player and they failed to live up to the promise? Would it be changed to, well the Quakes just didn't go after the "right" players? There are always going to be things to complain about in down years. Standing pat isn't something I would accuse the team of doing, though. We should see what happens when the Quakes go after a different kind of player this off season. I expect a different look to the midfield, but as I mentioned somewhere in a different thread I think, I really hope the Quakes ditch the forward arrangement they've gotten accustomed to and look to find a forward who works a little deeper and plays forward with the ball on the ground. That will hopefully force the team into allowing for some more freedom of movement. The positional arrangement is too rigid and I think that was the reason for the relatively easy time other teams had defending San Jose.
Chavez, Gordon, and Bernardez >>> Harden and Gargan. Chavez was a 6-goal / 4-assist guy as a starter in Dallas the year before. Bernardez a Honduras nats starter. Gordon was a guy who had dozens of goals in MLS and a high goals per minute average. Harden and Gargan are bit players at best, roster filler. That's the thing. You have to take risks, which by definition means that they may not pan out. But in order to be the best you have to take some calculated risks, otherwise you're going to be an also-ran at best, because other teams are taking risks, and some of them are going to hit pay dirt (like Portland did with Valeri) and then you fall behind. The Quakes took a bit of a calculated risk on Geovanni in 2010, and although he didn't quite pan out as well as hoped, if he had, they probably would have won MLS Cup. And as a fan, I appreciated that they went for it, even if he didn't turn out to be quite as advertised.
Appearances means...not much. He scored 21 goals in fairly limited minutes - comes out to about 1 goal every 3 full games, which would give him about 10 in a full season's worth of minutes. Not elite, but he had shown to be a productive forward in the league.