The Dynamo absolutely should go after Chicharito, not only because he'd score boatloads of goals in MLS and would instantly transform the team they have now into a genuine Cup contender, but also because it would definitely register. If they knew what they were doing, the deal would pay for itself. Naturally they won't as the cost is too high, and I doubt they have the cap space anyway, but it would be nice.
They need to hope Chicharito wants to branch out into music and put out some records like a Spanish remake of "Party All The Time" like Eddie Murphy did - that's got to be gold!!
I missed this 442 article from a few days ago. They focus on the best franchise player from each team. They select Howard, Diaz, Dos Santos, Valeri, Piatti, Wondo, Armiñon, Lodeiro... And then when it comes to Houston, they say "None". Look, i know that this cheap franchise wont get us a "BIG" DP and that it is feasible that we could win without big names on the roster (?), but i hate being reminded how cheap we are. I have to agree with Mr Westside that the FO is selling this team as if they are going to win the MLS Cup this year. I hate their marketing. I know they are not going to come and say "we are cheap and we cant buy players to win a The MLS cup".
(a) I think our problem is scouting and personnel identification more than finances. Or maybe it's better put as, if we're not going to spend money we have to be efficient and have an eye for talent. Despite having a TD we are very erratic and often just poor in picking players to bring in. I would like us to spend money but at a point I feel like I am fighting City Hall there. (b) I don't know if Torres is insisting on his contract but one problem we have had with DPs is an unwillingness to be ruthless. Give them years instead of pushing them off the plank. Loan instead of sell. For that amount of money they either produce or are gone. (c) The pro-Torres set needs to understand that if he doesn't play like a $800k player this is a waste of the slot. It is insufficient to even be "decent." This is the Stud Slot and a rare instance when we spend a little money. If we want to be competitive the slot has to be staffed like it's for good players only. (d) Not quite buying the article, though. Montero's last two seasons were tepid. Beckerman is old. I don't feel like we have a name brand player performing like one -- what the article says Torres was supposed to be, which is fair enough -- but I think we have some new signings that could be as good as some of the players listed. The article favors teams getting MLS-experienced players. (e) I think the big change will come when Torres and Clark and maybe Boniek go next offseason. That could be a 10. My complaint would be that more aggressive GMing and Torres walks away and Clark gets traded someplace and maybe we speed up the transition. For a team willing to shove Davis out at just the right time, we tend to lag most of the rest of the time, make moves a half year or year late. Torres is a year and a half and the meter's still running. (f) The fly in the ointment will be can we sign the new attackers on loan, do the defenders last, and how much of this has to be redone next season. I don't think we can "win now" but the way the team was constructed will make it a complicated exercise to perpetuate into future seasons.
Juve, don't take this the wrong way (knowing you will) but Torres isn't - and shouldn't - walk away from a guaranteed $800k per year or whatever contract that everyone signed. I don't think he's wrong to "insist" the Dynamo live up to their end of the deal. It's not his fault the team and league were stupid. I guess you could hardball him sending him to RGV or loaning him to Albany, NY or something like that but you are being extraordinarily silly thinking you can run him off like a kid on a junior college team on partial scholarship
I think poverty of spending can be the fan's excuse for not paying, but in a competitive league spending is no excuse for the team. I don't like to listen to team poverty excuses real long from an apologetic angle because that's their decision how to run it, and my primary concern is whether they win or not. If we don't win because they're cheap I don't want that as some readily accepted excuse for it. So one reason I beef about the "but we won't spend" is so it remains no excuse. I will judge the end result and if they want to pinch pennies to get there that's their challenge.
Bigger names than Torres have been run out of this league. I admit that he could legally sit on the deal until the first option year, and maybe that's what's happened. But I think we could leave him firmly on the bench -- not fart around and give him new chances -- or otherwise make this less comfortable. I also think you're going too hard with the negative sell. There is the positive sell. Look, Cubo, we'd like for you to look for a new team wherever you want. A fresh start. This is not working out. We will not insist on a fee. If you stay, the new coach and I talked and you are not in the plans. You will certainly sit but may also be not dressed not train with the first team or be sent to RGV. You want that humiliation? It doesn't have to happen. [And while it's his right to insist on the current contract, will he do that at expense of future career? The more we actively push the Dump Cubo arguments, the less his future value becomes......y'all are sometimes too status quo concerned.....what about future salary and us driving it off a cliff?] The difference is PR presentation. You don't usually show up the player, but they magically decide they are homesick or want a new situation or want to better their national team chances. Sorry but I feel like endless chances to start and loans and bringing him back year after year is lack of aggression headed in the other direction. Passively clock watching. To me Clark should have been gone to Atlanta. We move too slow. You have to be decisive, this is the team I want, here are the ones who fit in it, the rest of you can get lost. You can present it in nicer ways and attack the player little in the press, but if you cautiously just wait out contract terms you are generally going to be behind the 8 ball and a dollar short. Right now we have a surplus forward and some older mids whose contracts we are fulfilling, and then we're a 10 short of being truly competitive. We don't have some huge budget to carry dead weight. Part of the difference is the ruthlessness to finish the job. The way we handled Davis was a rare instance when we timed things perfect, and we still got to retire him in orange. We have always had a problem with retiring or shipping out internals, and have lost our old pickiness on foreign signings (eg, Koke, Akinbiyi).
Part of what matters on this is sequencing. By the time we shed Torres, Clark, and others, we will have cycled back around on some of the loan deals, and we'll see how the defenders hold up for one more year. If the loans go sideways or defenders aren't around next season, the fact you cautiously waited out existing contracts makes the rebuild worse, not better. You want as much to line up in a given year as possible, and to be spending little or no time waiting out contracts. If you're waiting someone out and it impacts the product you should probably find a way to just get them off the books, and get in someone whose contract is not viewed as a burden.
For an example, I will never understand why we let Late Years Ching weigh down cup-competitive teams that needed just a little more offense. By the end even $200k was overpaying, he wasn't scoring, and we were losing tight games to LA in the playoffs or even MLS Cup for lack of punch. I know some claim his leadership helped get us there but if we had one more productive forward those years we might have 3 or 4 trophies and not 2.
Corey RoepkenVerified account @RipSports 2h2 hours ago More Dynamo have given permission to draft pick Jake McGuire to train w/ Philadelphia Union. The goalkeeper hopes to earn an MLS contract there.
I was wondering when roster finalization would happen. The front end is no surprises but the back end might be interesting. I don't quite believe the website roster is the actual one. It doesn't look like who they'd pick, which I think would favor some RGV getting deals, and maybe not some draft picks who are listed. (But I could be wrong) I can believe Holland makes the team but was curious if any other picks would, including McGuire. When they played him the first 60 in the closed door I wondered if he had beat out Brown. This would be a definite No. Odd that he's "getting permission," since the whole point is he wasn't signed and wants to sign someplace else. Maybe it's we've not officially done cuts yet, that I can tell. Maybe it's our way of keeping options open if someone hurts themselves in practice in the next two days.
"The 2017 Roster Compliance Date is March 1, 2017, at which time teams must be roster and budget compliant heading into the start of the 2017 MLS season." So seemingly contracts or cuts today or tomorrow.
http://www.chron.com/sports/dynamo/...Joe-Willis-rehabbing-knee-injury-10966065.php likely to release and avoid compensation.
Philly could trade for his rights if they wanted to. However, the Dynamo are just going to waive him so you can get him for free. Only reason you'd offer anything up is if you really liked him and you were afraid he might sign somewhere else. To that end, this is probably a trial wherein the Dynamo hope Philly will give some token amount to ensure they have his rights.
Corey RoepkenVerified account@RipSports 8s9 seconds ago More Noteworthy that Memo Rodriguez and Taylor Hunter are on their second first-team contracts with Dynamo. Both were released early in 2016. Corey RoepkenVerified account@RipSports 3m3 minutes ago More NEWS: Dynamo sign the following players to first-team contracts: Joe Holland, Memo Rodriguez, Taylor Hunter, George Malki
https://www.houstondynamo.com/post/2017/03/01/houston-dynamo-sign-four-players-first-team-roster Same story, official version. Holland played well and I liked Hunter in one game where I saw him. Memo was productive but didn't blow my doors off. Malki, meh. Based on how this played out, these guys are ok for their likely spot on the roster. I am actually more concerned about the people who got contracts/retained earlier in the offseason, who are B teamers: Alexander, Anibaba, Agus, Escalante, Garcia. Essentially the flurry at the end of the season. Holland and Hunter might have promise but that chunk of dudes is a dumpster fire closer to seeing minutes. It's like Jordan alternates between decent and awful.
Anyone know the status of Casner. He was a key player for RGV last season, looked good with the pros preseason and just needs a little more meat on his bones. Malki and Hunter didn't impress me as much as Holland Memo and Casner in preseason
They don't play the same positions, the defensive depth is horrifying, the midfield is decent. I've repeated the first part over and over but for the purposes here the quality of the bench brought in to train sets the bar to make the team. Malki and Hunter basically had to be better than Ivan M., Radjen, Segal, etc. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. Our "universe" for this was basically people we'd already signed plus picks and RGV. There wasn't serious competition for the bench spots. Probably because of expenditure of foreign player slots, we didn't bring in trialists to press the reserves for the roster. But we also didn't bring in domestic minor leaguers or released MLS players. We may come to regret being a little flip about the bench, since I think it more so than the XI will reflect Jordan's often-lousy eye for talent. I wouldn't necessarily assume Casner is back: RGV FC Toros: Michael Kirk (Arturo Sanchez 46); Robby Segal, Kyle Murphy (Ivan Luquetta 77), Ivan Magalhães (Danilo Radjen), Kai Greene (Leo Ayala 77); Emilio Garcia (Charlie Flores 77), Todd Wharton (Charlie Ward 65), Christian Lucatero (Marcelo Palomino 65); Victor Garza (Jhonathan Velasquez 77), Ruben Luna (Francisco Pungo 77), Camilo Menroe (Eric Bird 65) From their friendly with HD U18. He was one of a small list of players that neither team had signed. One way of looking at that was it made him available to HD. But having been cut it means he owes RGV nothing, like last year. He could sign there, he could do something else. There are other people who might have had HD aspirations in preseason who had been picked back up by RGV. Those would be committed, he wouldn't be.
Casner always looks decent. He just needs to up his productivity in terms of goals/assists at RGV. Memo torched him in those categories last season.
That begs the question because Lucatero and Escalante made the first team in addition to Memo, and out of those three plus Casner if I wasn't aware which ones were Our Protected People I don't think I'd have Casner being the one sent to the Valley. Casner's game isn't super polished but when he's played in preseason games he creates more than the others. I would be curious what happens to Casner as he was out of contract: http://www.uslsoccer.com/news_article/show/728566?referrer_id=2333971 The assumption is he'll sign with the affiliate but McGuire just underlined how that's an assumption. I'd be curious if he's practicing with them or what the story is.