Great move... instead of not keeping him since he is out of contract we go ahead and sign him up so that we can sack him and have to pay him money.
There's a "club option" I think. The Crew can decide to exercize it or not. But Eggy is absolutely right here - the problem is that once they pick it up they'll owe him for the year. And HSG is notorious for not wanting to waste money by firing coaches. And somebody, probably Smith, fed Crewboy Craig his story here. Merz isn't just speculating here. He's definite. And he wouldn't do that and risk ending up looking like an idiot in two weeks or so, if it wasn't from a solid source. But the real kick in the stones is this: Unless the Crew loses, like, ten in a row or something, Andrulis will stay. So we probably stumble into the playoffs, maybe even win a game and then get bounced THEN WHAT? They aren't going to fire a guy after having a better year than the year before. This is revolting. Piss on them. They get no money from me. To hell with you John Wagner. To hell with you Clark Hunt. Gutless bastards.
And the worst part is that, like the rank amateurs that they are, they are poised to make the same mistake over again: Remember, Smith faced a similar scenario after the 2000 season when the Crew also failed to qualify. He retained Tom Fitzgerald as coach but fired him six games into the next season. You let a coach spend six months putting a team together, install his system and philosophy in a month's training camp, draft the players he wants to coach in the future and then, after six games, you can him and annoint an assistant as "interim" coach because no decent head coach from outside will step into that kind of situation. It's deja vu. They screwed it up last time, letting Fitzgerald start the season. So what do they do three years later? THE SAME DAMN THING. Are these guys really this stupid? That they can't learn from their mistakes????? Only the truly ignorant keep doing the same things and expect a different outcome.
I can guarantee that Smith won't fire Andrulis because he wouldn't know who to hire to fill his shoes. And that is because he's not a soccer person.
There's no doubt about that, but this is a HSG driven answer, anyhow. As we've discussed, retaining Greg would send absolutely the wrong message to fans and kill the Crew for years to come. A mistake here will cost them the image of a professional Major League Soccer team and drop them into the exhibition category. The Yankees have made that mistake with the Clippers and they now have next to NO regular fan base. I personally would simply take my Crew $s and buy more Blue Jacket tickets. There's PLENTY to do in C-Bus in the summer. I don't need the Crew to see poorly organized and mildly competitive soccer. Fans here are not as patient as KC.
Explain to me how someone who spends 4 years running a soccer club isn't a "soccer" guy. Soccer is not that hard of a sport to figure out. He might not have been one when he came in, but he's got to be one now. Unfortunatly for the Crew, he's a soccer guy who is choosing to make a very terrible mistake that is going to cost this team huge. It's also going to get him fired along with Andrulis next year and he deserves to be fired this year for making the decision this year. The real sad thing about this whole situation is those people who were saying I hope the Crew lose so the Crew have no excuse to keep Andrulis, were right. I mean how do you go against your team and hope they lose, but hey that turns out to be the only way a positive change will ever happen in this organization. So now I'm hoping the Crew lose the first five games of the season by 4 goals each and that finally gets Andrulis shitcanned because I'm not going to another game while he's on the sideline.
Easy, He wasn't brought here to do "Soccer Stuff" he was here to do "Money Stuff" He probably doesn't know as many of the "Soccer People" as he likes but I'm sure he knows enough "business people" out there. He did WWF for how long? Go ahead and ask him if he knows how to do a piledriver... go ahead ask him! I could go on and on but the fact is we've been let down.
If Andrulis returns, we can forget about McBride ever scoring 17 goals as he did his first season. 12 is about all he'll ever get again. 12 isn't bad, but its sure not up to his potential that we've seen with the Nats. Sad.
I was hoping after two days of not checking the boards that this would just vanish. But no. It's terrible, I am at such a crossroads right now. I want to support this team, I want to support MLS, some of the better times I've had over the past two years have been out in Columbus. But if I am being honest with myself I have no idea how I can justify not only the ticket expenses but the travel expenses too. It's crazy. I can't imagine not coming out to some games again. I mean regardless I will always be there to cheer them on against DC come hell or high water. But to buy season tickets to sit through the same *#*#*#*# like I saw July 4 weekend when it was a 0-0 draw against Dallas. No fcukin way. Yet if HSG goes through with this decision they are saying results like that are okay, and par for the course for this team. It disgusting and more simply just plaily disheartning.
Add that August 13th game against Dallas and that tie against DC to our list of crap games. If ya don't wanna buy season tickets, don't. Do the $10 per-game plan.
Im too pissed off to go through the whole thread to see what others have written. All I will say is this... I will not go back on my word of not purchasing season tickets until Andrulis is out. If he's sacked in the middle of the season, I might be pursuaded to purchase a small package after he's gone. Until then, NOTHING.
Kroger buys tickets in their section from the crew as part of a promotional deal and re-sells them. Last year, it was $35 worth of stuff, a pepsi product and you get a "buy one, get one free" voucher. I heard the Kroger staff could be pursuaded otherwise. If they couldn't that's like $45 for two tickets. And only if you have a plus card (which most people do.) V-Army re-sells tickets, all ticket money going straight to the Crew.
This is no longer the case... at least, Zak stopped doing this mid-summer as the scalpers were a big hassle and the turnouts weren't so good as last year. I don't know whether this will start up again come next season.
I see. I think the only way to do this is to not do a discount season ticket package and have the parking lot be the ONLY place to buy 137 tickets. My guess is that a lot people in 137 bought season tickets and didn't need individuals. Of course, with Ned and Fozzie, who knows what will/won't happen.
I only read the first page of this thread, so I'm sorry if this has already been said. I'm a Burn fan, so I'm not as familiar with the Crew organization, but I got the impression from that DC win that the players don't respect Andrulis. I saw it on TV, and I thought it was very telling that when McB won the game, none of the players ran to celebrate with Andrulis. Imagine every time you've seen a team win a big game: most of the players go and celebrate with the one who won the game, sometimes the defenders will celebrate with the keeper first and then join the others, and usually you'll see some of the players on the bench celebrate with the coach/manager first, then join the others. But on TV, you could see when McB won the game, Andrulis was looking around for someone to celebrate with, and nobody was looking for him. To me, that suggested that the players considered him a non-factor. I can sympathize with the way y'all feel. I watched West Ham keep Roeder too long last year, and I watched Dallas keep Jeffries too long this year. I hope things turn around for your club sooner rather than later next year. alansl
While I get the reference to Istanbul, I'm just gonna add that, in general, no matter WHERE you are, your hand in your pants is something that nobody wants to see. Just clarifying here.