This is seriously brilliant to nickname Beckerman "Dreadnought." Dreadnoughts were, in their day, the most important and imposing capital ship a nation could build. The first such ship by the British, HMS Dreadnought, was so inspiring to the public that all such ships were called that, as today we refer to all boxes of tissues as 'kleenex'.
I opt to retain creative rights if there's a t-shirt deal (jk). But if someone wants to put ink to sheet I'll help out - either with funding or effort.
I have always been partial to "battlecruiser" although they weren't worth a damn in any stand up, knock down, drag out fight with battleships (Jutland, Hood vs. Bismarck).
It's all about firepower and accuracy, and those big battleships had it. That is, they had it until the aircraft carrier came along.
From the D-News piece Saturday "Five Questions with Garth Lagerway" - In regards to his contract: "I understand with what happened with Jason (Kreis) why there’s an extraordinary interest level in this stuff. But I think it’s a normal contract like most contracts, and I think most of the time those things are best handled outside the confines of the season." In regards to high salaried players: "I’ll say this, Mr. Hansen has given us resources that maybe we didn’t have before. But it’s got to make sense from my chair within the salary cap to sign a player like that. Maybe it will." Other good stuff besides. Thanks James Edwards.
Well, he says that he like working with Coach Cassar (Ave Caesar!) and Bill Manning, so, there's that. I also like how he said that expanding the league won't dilute the talent pool since soccer is played all over the world. Unfortunately for other sports, the NFL in particular, the talent pool is rather limited, especially at certain positions (quarterback for NFL).
I came across this article today that implies RSL has been extremely lucky for the past couple years and how RSL is over performing. http://americansocceranalysis.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/real-salt-lake-perennial-model-buster/ What do you guys think?
Carlos is being called up by Mexico's U21 team. Good for him. Looks like he may be a part of their Olympic team.
Hope he gets some good playing time, cause I REALLY hope he doesn't get some with us for a little while. Not until he stops with that one awful brain fart a game habit he seems to have somehow acquired from Omar Gonzales.
I find it interesting that RSL, one of the top teams in the league that last several years, MLS runner ups (several times over) last year, returning virtually the same cast as last year, with our mHO (MulHOlland) upgrade, is expected to have the worst goal differential in the league. Which, would put us last or near last in the standings. Just looking off of last year, RSL was .55 GD better per game compared to his model. DCU was .64 GD worse than his model. The average differential between actual and his model was .224. So on average there would be one goal unexplained ever 2 games (4 teams in two games times .224). Seems to me that maybe the model isn't that accurate. There are probably others here that can run better statistics than me.
I think the key thing here is that he's using actual shots taken multiplied by expected % that go in. So RSL isn't breaking the model because we take more shots, it's that (a) more of our shots go in and/or (b) fewer of our opponents shots go in. It's an interesting exercise, but I'm not sure what it shows because, like the article says, you can't tease out luck from skill. But given that RSL broke the model all of last year and we're doing it again this year, you've got to say that it's looking less and less likely that it's just luck. I agree with the article that Rimando is a big part of the explanation on the defensive side, because he keeps out lots of goals that he has no business stopping. Assuming he can replicate that for the rest of the season (and I see no reason why not), this should hold up. Schuler's lanky legs might help out as well. On the attacking side, though, he claims that RSL has just been lucky. But here's what his model can't capture: what if RSL pulls defenses out of shape so that our shots are easier than league averages even if they're taken from the same spot with the same body part? That's different from have very accurate forwards (I would argue that only Sabo is significantly above average in accuracy). It means that his "expected goals" number is wrong for RSL, since RSL's shots are actually easier on average due to poor coverage. I have no idea if that's true, but it seems likely. That's kind of what RSL's game plan is, right? Pass them to death until they get out of shape, then take advantage of that momentary weakness. That probably results in fewer shots, but more of them going in, while other teams take more shots which are less accurate. In fact, RSL was 8th in the league last season in total shots taken, but 2nd in goals scored (after NYRB).
Nice analysis. I didn't have a lot of time to look at his model, but I wonder if he could use # of passes to proxy for the offenses attempt to move a defense out of shape...
This is a good article with, among some other good stuff, a clip from a Hansen interview about Lagerwey's probably impending departure: http://realsoccernation.com/2014/04/15/the-dell-loy-question/
Can you get upset about that much, though? We're a stepping stone club. As much as that hurts to say, it's the truth. Within our own league, we are far from the top club you aspire to be at. What I'm glad to see is that Del Loy understands this. He doesn't fight it. Nobody in their right mind though Jason Kreis would be the coach he turned out to be. Same with Garth Lagerway and general manager. It's getting close to a new era. If you fight that change you'll become the Utah Jazz. We don't need or want that. Take the challenge of finding the next great general manager (we seem to have a pretty decent coach). People in this state fear change so damn much it confuses me. They're the reason Bronco Mendenhall and Kyle Whittingham still have their coaching positions. I'm not an advocate of having quick turnaround, but holding on to someone too long is a dumb move. Be proactive about it.
That's two different arguments. If Garth stayed I think it would be erroneous to say that we are keeping him too long.
It was never terribly clear during the Steve Pastorino era (everybody spit on the ground) just how critical the GM position can be to the success of a small market club. It seemed to me that we all assumed that RSL sucked because John Ellinger was a sucky coach. That may be true, and it may also be true that Jason Kreis was a great coach, but a coach can only do so much in soccer. He trains them, sets the lineup, and tries to implement a strategy, but then the whistle blows and he can only stand on the sidelines and whine at the 4th referee (or wave his hands around like a little girl if you are Bruce Arena). Games are won by the talent and leadership ability of the players on the pitch, and there can be NO question that the work put in by Garth Lagerway to identify players that fit the system was the key to RSL's current (knock on wood) run of success. Will RSL not skip a beat and bring in another GM who is as good or better than Lagerway? I hope so. But I am more fearful of what might happen if the opposite turns out to be true.
I wonder if the collaborative effort that Lagerwey and Kreis described about player acquisitions might have something to do with RSL's success. Maybe, if they're making decisions together, it's harder to screw it up. Also, adding a piece here or there when someone moves on doesn't disrupt the process. Maybe?
The real question is will Jeff and whoever the next GM is have the same communicative eye for talent that Garson had? IMO, Garson was the best in the league in terms of finding and bringing talent together. Yes, they had their misses, but they also found the right pieces from season to season and when they needed to they were able to do a bit of roster overhaul and still maintain RSL as a top team in the league. Basically what we are doing is moving entirely to RSL v3.0 if Garth moves on. Jeff is a bit of RSL v2.0, but in terms of the FO on up it's going to be almost a whole new team. New owner, new GM, new Coach. Hopefully we aren't looking to replace the president as well. I have my doubts that the team can maintain the level of success we've had over the last 6-7 years without Garth. That guy had a system and an eye for talent that almost no other team in MLS has. Losing him will be bigger than losing Jason. I'm not a big fan of the direction the franchise is going, that's for sure. The real test will be in a 2 years or so when Borchers, Javi, Sabo, maybe even Kyle and Nick retire/move on.
Why? The simple truth in this is that BECAUSE of that success, change is going to happen. Garth wants to be president of a club - and with his resume he is going to have a line of clubs saying "pick us!". Good for him. And good for RSL for seeing the talent in Garth initially and giving him the chance to succeed. If you thought he was going to be here a super long time then you don't know how successful people like him function. They want a new challenge. And just to play devil's advocate - all this "success" has one ********ing trophy to its name. In the last 4 years, the following MLS clubs have won more major trophies than RSL: LA Galaxy San Jose Earthquakes New York Red Bulls cRapids Sporting Kansas City Seattle Sounders DC United Maybe a change at GM moves this team to really rough times. Or, just maybe, it move this club out of the bridesmaid category for a change. All these fantastic players that Garth found, Jason coached, and now Jeff coaches have had a terrible knack for chocking in the big game. Maybe they need to alter what they're looking at? maybe we need someone different to do the looking