IIRC, and I'm old so I often don't, wasn't DCU on the trail of an Argentinian holding mid before getting Acosta as the Plan B? Also, there was talk of a Ligue 1 or Ligue 2 D-mid as well. Also, don't forget the Nocerino fiasco. In other words, there was an attempt to replace Kitchen and probably Arnaud. When foreign help wasn't available, the Plan C was Sarvas from Colorado who is paying part of his salary this season. Also, Halsti was supposed to be part of this but then shit the bed coming into camp late and out of shape which probably was the last straw for Olsen & Kasper. That left Olsen with Sarvas, Jeffrey and Clowes as possible D-mids. He tried to convert NDL on the fly with very mixed results. Clowes was a dud and was cut. Jeffrey has stepped up big time. With the acquisition of Sam and the return of Nyarko from injury, Vincent was put back where he says he should be as well -- the middle of the field. Sarvas, Jeffrey and Vincent are a serviceable group -- not great, but serviceable. The breakdowns last night were out wide with Mishu and his running partner NDL. All they had to do was their jobs competently, they couldn't.
All fair points. Also, if Korb had recovered from surgery as expected, he would probably have started over Mishu during this game.
Yeah, they were expecting Korb to be back around April, so I don't blame them too much for not getting another fullback.
IIRC, Korb had some other procedure done to clean up a different problem. I don't remember what it was, but he will be out the whole season, now, according to a Goff tweet from about a month (?) ago.
Yeah I think you can live with a cycle of short to mid term injuries anywhere from a few days to as much as a month or two at a time. That creates a healthy rotation in the squad throughout a busy season, and you just hope you can be as close to a full roster as possible for the playoffs. What kills us is the season ending injuries that seem to affect us every season in recent years. This year it's Rolfe and Korb. In previous seasons it was EJ missing an entire season, Pontius with 3 season ending injuries, Arnaud forced into retirement, Boskovic in '11, Namoff in '10, Jeff Parke, De Rosario, Lance Rozeboom, Collin Martins etc ...
Probably ... but a lot of the players that had these struggles were on the wrong side of 30 so perhaps a little over reliance on veterans. Namoff, Boskovic, Parke, De Rosario, Johnson, Thorrington, Wolff, Russell, Arnaud, Halsti and Rolfe were all 30+
Yes, but poor planning didn't help matters. Teams should plan for some over 30 difficulties and some under 22 inadequacies. We don't do either sadly.
I guess the positive is Robinson's ********-up went just wide of the goal? He got caught and nearly blocked Hamid's clearance into his own goal. And I think he had at least one other screw up as well that went wide, but the game was a few days ago.
No reason to spend that much money on a back-up right back. If that's the plan, he should be testing the market for a new team. Drop DeLeon and Mishu and you'll have $300k in cap space. Kemp, Opare, Birnbaum and Korb all make less than $110k. Obviously Birnbaum is an anomaly, but for $150k a piece, you've find plenty of serviceable backup defenders available.
Namoff, Arnaud and Rolfe were concussions, EJ a heart condition, didn't Parke get some sort of eye problem? Those are sort of "freak" occurrences, so I would say bad luck has a lot to do with it. I don't remember what happened with some of those guys.
Parke was an inner ear/middle ear issue that affected his equilibrium. Boskovic was an ACL tear in an Open Cup match. DeRo was another knee injury in 2012 that he really never recovered from. Russell and Thorrington were never more than 1 season pickups who retired because they were old and not good anymore, not because they were injured. Wolff was similar -- two seasons at the end of his career '11 and '12.
[QUOTE="griffin1108, post: 34547793, member: 35830" Russell and Thorrington were never more than 1 season pickups who retired because they were old and not good anymore, not because they were injured. QUOTE] But Russell had that great pass/assist to Nick DeLeon against the Red Bulls which put us into the Cup Finals, IIRC.
And because of that Russell reference, I just went and watched the 11 minute highlight reel of that game. Never ********ing gets old..............
http://www.dcunited.com/post/2016/09/06/lloyd-sam-nominated-att-goal-week-week-26 Sam's goal is in the mix of GOTW. But honestly ... it wasn't that wowie zowie
FWIW, Simon Borg says Villa should have seen red for trying to throw an elbow at Robinson. Game was in extra time and 2-2 at that point.