DC United vs Philly Cheesesteaks

The Olsen years have not been terrible all things considered - a couple of really bad seasons and 3-4 decent seasons. As the league has gotten better, making the playoffs is more of an accomplishment than it used to be.

That said, the real frustration is knowing that, for many reasons, there is an absolute ceiling on what this club can achieve, and each year the ceiling gets lower. The new stadium and resulting increased revenue provide reason for optimism, but so much has to change for us to successfully complete against organizations such as NYCFC, Orlando, Atlanta, Toronto, etc. in the future.

It's early in the season, and this club has turned things around mid-season before. But these last two games suggest that panic time is not far away.

 

I think Ben Olsen is limited in what he brings to the manager's position, but he might be a decent Assistant Coach. But we've known this from the very beginning, and I think even Kevin Payne knew it when he tapped Ben for the job. Yes, lack of talent is a given until and unless we get a less parsimonious management. But who are the candidates? One name I've not seen in this conversation is Bob Bradley. Ignoring for a moment whether he is sufficiently talented, how likely is it that Jason Levien would hire someone he just fired at Swansea? Or that BB would agree to work for him?

 

I believe that there are better managers in Central / South America who could do better with the talent DC United has. I have zero belief that the current ownership / FO could find and hire such a person.

 

The other way to look at it is that they were very bad, by a host of measures. Our overall record, his inability to get or even compete for hardware (relative even to other D.C. United coaches of times past), declining attendance and interest in the team, quality of play and strategy. What about more mundane qualities like overall losing to our rivals: Olsen is 7W-7D-11L vs NYRB since joining and we were 17W-6D-4L before he arrived in roughly the same number of games. We could go on like that all day really.

 

Ding,ding, ding -- winner. You have over $700K in Boswell, Franklin and Rolfe. Add Marcelo and you are over $1M. While I love Boswell and I believe his return really helped stabilize the team in 2014 and beyond -- he is reaching the end of the road. Franklin never should have been re-signed. Rolfe is just a victim of circumstance and I don't begrudge paying him this year. Marcelo -- WTF? Take that $1M and spend it on young players from CA/SA and you might have a team that is dangerous.

 

The roster numbers are damning. We get desperate, find someone in the twilight of their career who needs a long term payout, then sign them for top dollar to a multi-year deal because we're on the ropes. Good teams are built. This one seems to be forever thrown together to avoid falling off the cliff. There's a pattern. Players come here and have a quick renaissance -- DeLeon, Rolfe, Franklin maybe, Mullins, Nyarko, Sam, others -- then get re-signed and seem to fade away.

Maybe this is the curse of the end-of-career guy. Maybe this is because Ben's management style works on the kind of blue collar, work ethic guys who by definition are the kind of folks that we aren't getting -- if they still had the fire they might not be traded/cut? They have something to prove, are brilliant for a couple of months, then meh. Either way, you need a mix of the young and old, of touch and speed, of clever and hardworking to be good in this version of MLS. We have too many guys who seem neither fast nor clever.

We needed points against the two worst teams in the conference. Not only did we lose both games, we lost them both convincingly. But for Worra and Hamid, both games would have been even more unflattering. We looked to be the less talented, less motivated, less committed team. At home.

Without question, injuries have hurt us this year. But honestly, who's our central midfield? If everyone on the roster were healthy, which of Vincent, Marcelo, Buscher, Jeffery and Harkes would you like on the field with Acosta? With only NINE goals in 10 games, could we play two up front? If so, which ONE of this fab 5 should we pair with Lucho? Its a trick question, since no two of them have gotten the job done.

This is not a good roster, though there are many pieces that could be good with good coaching and a few key upgrades. Based on the last two games I'm thinking that this team has the makings of a 2013 run. And nobody deserves that.

 

This is your yearly reminder that Shawn's idea that only Kasper decides the roster is patently false. Article after article after article refutes it:

 

And somebody obviously thinks his performance is adequate.

 

I'm not sure your cut and paste is a realistic assessment of the responsibilities of the position which varies from organization to organization and day to day. Since I'm not aware of a team made up of civil servants I pretty much doubt this job description serves any purpose other than to help 8th graders pick a career for their next essay.

 

It might make sense also in the context of organizations with paid scouts, a front office that isn't depleted etc.

Fact is, you can ask Olsen if he makes choices on acquisitions and he will say yes, I've done so at Meet Benny events before.

 

I don't think there's a club around where the coach doesn't have a big say in personnel matters although if you ask Nowak you may get a different answer about his freedom of choice

 

You probably won't find much disagreement around here.

 

I'd just like to remind everyone that 8 months ago, we were the hottest team in the league, when Benny was coach, KP was makin' the deals and the roster was almost identical.

I can understand and even agree intellectually with many of these arguments, but in light of that one simple fact, I just can't get behind them.

Could be we've been smashed by an injury tsunami and we can't get into a groove. only 2 of the recent injuries have been over 30s, so age blah blah. There's not much talk about practice conditions or training regimens, about how our captain can't stop doing stupid things with his head, about how critical the dual-creative-play of Nyarko and Acosta are to our offense. After a few bad games we end right back up at Fire Benny, Fire KP?

 

So ~8 months ago we beat a few bottom feeders, a struggling Toronto and a decent NYCFC. Before that we won 2 of 13 matches and after that win streak we crapped out completely to Montreal in the knockouts.

 

There are some coaches that have up to 100% of personnel decisions. Bruce Arena was pretty close to that.

It's usually the coaches that have clout. They can demand a certain amount of control as a condition of their hiring. You can get those terms when you're in demand.

In the case of DC it has been reported for years that we use a collaborative system. Since neither Kasper or Olsen have a record of sterling success individually, the idea is that together they get better results. Ashton is also very much in the loop with this. As was Kevin Payne ... unlike Levien who is mostly an absent participant.

 

Don't be so hard on yourself, nothing anyone could do before, during, or after a match could further jinx these fools. They listen to Sinatra sing "My Way" before every match and somehow just miss the message