Viggo? Who's this Viggo guy? That is clearly Aragorn, son of Arathorn, who is obviously King Elessar Telcontar of Gondor.
Dang it, BS only lets me rep once. Totally OT but just watched the Hobbit and LOTR with the kids for the first time. AWESOME! ....okay back to... whatever.
This thread continues to be minutes in my life I'll never get back. Although I am getting confused on who I should send my "wasted work hours" bill to.
Wait, did you watch the extended versions or the theatrical versions? The ROTK extended version is around 5 hours. It took me two nights to get through it!
Sweet. I saw Hobbit in the IMAX 3D 48 fps format, and I wasn't impressed. The show was awesome and met my expectations, but the 48 fps made it look like a daytime soap. There were parts where you could see where the sound stage ended and the green screen began, the outline of the rubber noses, etc. The 3D was one of the best I've seen, but I wouldn't recommend the 48 fps format. I give Jackson props for trying to push the technology, but there are still kinks that need to be worked out. But that's just me...
Hey, nerd ********s, open a thread for your elfish circle jerk elsewhere. Alarming to me about yesterday's match: we still can't ********ing score. Put messi in an rsl kit and he'll dry up too, it seems
We shipped out Olave, Espindola, Johnson, and with one about a month to go before our season starts we have added Findley! Really do not know what to think about this.
http://www.realsaltlake.com/news/2013/01/preseason-recap-rsl-0-denmark-u-20s-2 Here are the highlights if anyone is interested. I actually like parts of what I saw. You can tell that we've lost some of the continuity and familiarity that we had built over the past few seasons. It will come though. Can't wait to see what a real starting 11 looks like. 33 days
Yordanny yellow in reg season = red. Velasquez making some good plays and Mansally making the deep runs like Kreis wants looked good too.
We added Sabo in March and he turned out just fine. Players shipping out will always happen before players are shipped in. I doubt we'll be that far off from where we were last year.
Yea where are at least some forwards in as trialists in this preseason?.. Only findley ..and we already know what he can do!.come on Garth .... Give us a big announcement that in the offseason you did your job and some forwards are coming this month!
IBIK shared a photo of Plata on the team bus. Marosevic came and went on trial. So, we know they are bringing forwards in under the radar. Maybe we'll get the official announcement this week.
One thing you have to remember is that in the first camp of the year, Kreis worked only on defense. He said many times all they would do in Casa Grande is teach defending individually and as a team. So it shouldn't be surprising that these guys - most of whom have never played together before - looked punchless on offense. It's concerning that they gave up two goals to Denmark, but one of them was a pretty soft PK and the other was an own goal off a set piece. Not that those things are excusable, but a patchwork defense giving up zero goals in the run of play is a start. They are supposed to start working on offense in Irvine.
I'm going with Phils and george on this. The offseason departures have been overwhelming and acquisitions have been very underwhelming. But I'm hopefully RSL has some big announcements forthcoming.
Prime, you of all people should be able to answer your own question. Garth and Jason aren't stupid...they're not going to jettison key players without knowing how to replace them and get better in the process. Let's look at the departed players and see who they've gotten to fill those spots: Position - Outgoing Player - Incoming Player (comparison) Backup GK - Kyle Reynish - Jeff Attinella (probably a step up) Starting CB - Jamison Olave - Chris Schuler (this is a tough one...Olave was good but never played) Starting MF - Will Johnson - Luis Gil (probably a step down) Backup MF - Johnny Steele - Sebastian Velasquez/David Viana (definitely a step up) Starting FW - Fabian Espindola - ??? (unknown) 3rd FW - Paulo Jr. - Robbie Findley (definitely a big step up) 4th FW - Justin Braun - Joao Plata (definitely a step up) By my count, that's one step down (from Johnson to Gil), two UTD's, and four steps up. Remind me again why this offseason has been underwhelming? And yes, I know for a fact that RSL is not done acquiring players.
Solid breakdown. Although it's unknown at this point, it's entirely possible that one of Gil, Seba, or Viana has a massive step up and winds up being on par or better than Johnson was. They might even push out Ned for starting minutes. Really at this point, it's just a matter of seeing who gets that 2nd spot at striker, and if it's anything like when we got Sabo, it might not be until right around the start of the season. Sucks for us fans, but we know Sabo can score, and Findley had comparable numbers to Espindola. Even if for some reason it's a few weeks into the season before we can lock down a #2 signing, I'm still fairly confident that the group listed can at least get the job done until then.
As much as I like your breakdown, IBIK, it still doesn't mesh with me. Half the players you list as "incoming player" are just guys being shuffled into spots they already occupied off and on the season(s) prior. In reality, we haven't brought in a new player to replace Olave. We don't know what Viana can do to replace Johnson (if he is the one do that), we already know what the options for replacing Steele and they haven't been great, and we have absolutely no clue how Findley or Plata are going to do replacing Paulo/Braun. I'd be hard pressed to straight up call Findley/Plata significant steps up over their counter parts right now, both have a lot to prove before I would even say that. At the bare minimum we are still without a #2 forward and have question marks in midfield. To be frank we are a few injuries in defense/midfield from having a fairly poor season, IMO.
While I don't think we will be as good as we have been in previous seasons I'm optimistic that we will still have a competitive team. And by competitive I mean able to make a run for the cup. RSL has had the benefit of longevity with it's players for the past few years which is a definite bonus in terms of chemistry, but I think it has also had a negative impact by making our players complacent. At the beginning of the past few seasons the guys seemed to be fire up, and we would come out of the gates pretty strong, and then we would fade off by the end of the year. I don't think we will see that strong this year, but with multiple players competing for meaningful playing time at different spots on the field, I think that we will have a stronger finish to the 2013 season. The new guys have something to prove, and I'm excited to see who actually steps up to fill in the roles of Olave, Espindola, and Johnson.