Off-season roster thread

George, with respect, the degrees of freedom are dwindling day by day. If it were December now, it would be one thing. For better or worse, opening day is 6 days away. It seems likely that we will be starting the season more depleted than we were at our worst in 2008.

 

I think one of the signs to look for will be this potential ghambian or ghanaian signing (which ever it is). If it's another young kid, it's a rebuild year. if it's a more seasoned vet, than it's probably not (as much of) a rebuild. I'm far too lazy to do the work, but I bet our avg age is significantly lower than most other teams right now. Take rally, ries and heaps out and I bet the avg age drops 6-7 yrs.
I'm ok with what ever the decision of the team is, I'd just like to know what the philosophy is; a little insight, or have the injuries with TnT and Badilla, etc throw the strategy out the window right now and are we in scramble/chaos mode.

All I want is some transparency. tell us something or anything (real).
if they would just say, our philosophy around rosters is....Minnesota Twin-esque. Team not individual, low dough (for example), I'd be thrilled. just help us as fans understand

 

interesting. can't say I really understand why you think this (feeling better about this year than others), but....

for me, it done the opposite. Its exposed just how massively over-reliant we are on TnT. The fact that our midfield was over run by the railhawks makes me realize just over reliant we are ralston. Sure SJ and JL can hunker back and defend and SJ in particular can really spring some offense, but Rally is really the key to transition and we are very lost if he's. it's reminded me just how bad our LM spot is.

Reis,
Heaps
SJ JL
is our core

We can probably rely on Nyassi and Dube (as solid regulars who can contribute).

after that, it's all about health and guys stepping up and doing big stuff

Rally has to be considered a question mark still as to how much he can do this season.

are the only sure things we really know have right now. Rally's limited minutes are very concerning. TnT should be viewed as nothing less than a crisis. Finding goal is going to be a massive problem for us. I'm worried about our mid field's ability to create offensive runs.

 

You know, I work under the assumption that people tend to learn from previous mistakes, so I guess I should say that I can't believe we're in this position again.

I'm pretty sure that if I had this management's track record of failing to produce results at my job, I'd be looking for work right now. I wonder how much pressure is put on management by ownership.

 

In any sport, I'm always suspicious of the "rebuilding year". Only a small percentage of the time is it truly a carefully-planned rebuilding effort. Usually it means that mistakes were made, the team is FUBAR, and will try to distract from this by lavishing attention on guys who happen to be young (and possibly, or possibly not, talented).


It would be a shame if the Revs chalked this up to a rebuilding year. We have an aging-but-still effective core in Reis, JL, SJ, Ralston, and Twellman. We have also added solid vets in Badilla and Albright over the last year. Heaps is a warrior. It's been abundantly clear to everyone on this board that when you take this core and add in young talent like Nyassi, Mansally, Videira, Alston, Igwe, et al, all we need is a little more depth and veteran cover to make this a serious championship contender. We just need another legitimate centerback and another legitimate forward. Is that really so much to ask from a front office?


On the other hand, if the FO decided that our current group can't reach the promised land, what's the point of keeping the aging guys while they still have value? If we're going to rebuild, blow it up. Trade for young talent. Sign international prospects. Do all the veteran "Klein for Findley & Sturgis" deals you can -- although since Alexi Lalas isn't a GM anymore it will be harder to find quite that good a deal.


Instead we are sitting in an uncomfortable halfway house. Our veteran core is good, but they just don't have the support they need to be a top team all season. Guys like Heaps and Reis have not-so-subtly hinted at this problem in years past, and it's happening again. So as fans, we are left to watch our core slowly decline and go to waste. If our young talent pans out and becomes tomorrow's core, who will support them?

The Revs aren't going to suck, but sometimes a sea of endless mediocrity is even more depressing than a last-place season. Sometimes it really does seem like mediocrity is a drug that always fools the FO into thinking that we don't really need to make major steps because the Team will pull through. But it never does, although it's always good enough to avoid the painful shock-into-reality of terrible season.


The 2009 Revs have talent. Some of it is old. Some of it is injury-prone. Nonetheless, it's there and it's real. We have a group of young guys from which I expect several to step up in a big way. The situation screams "go for it". Why aren't we going for it?

 

Clearly, you haven't learned from your previous mistake(s) of thinking that this FO would learn from its mistakes.

 

Go back and reread my statement---I feel LESS comfortable this year than in years past.

 

I agree we are depleted---esp by injuries to key players. Yes we lost Parkhurst and Smith but at the moment we have insufficient info as to how well our rookies will do or if we will be adding any of the Africans. Even without making any additional signings I find it hard to assess just how well this collection of players will do when (and if) the current roster is healthy. I also find it hard to make a judgment as to how they will do as a roster from the three games played without key players.

As usual Monty is quick to take an extreme view of my statement. I'm not saying we need to wait till August or some end of season date to make an assessment. I am saying if I was going to put a bunch of money down on a bet of just how well this roster will do this year---I would not be willing to make a bet at this point because---I don't yet have any confidence in making a call on the available data.

My professional life has been centered around making life effecting calls based on assessments of data points. At this point I'm concerned by the signs I see with my patient (the 2009 Revs) but my intuition says I need to be patient in drawing any conclusions.

 

You know what concerns me, Doc?

I agree that there are a ton of questions on this roster that we can't answer right now. But I don't think Nicol and his staff can answer those questions with a whole lot more certainty than we can.

Will Twellman and Ralston hold up physically?

Can Gabriel Badilla cut it in MLS? And if he can't, who can step into the center of defense?

Is there anyone on the roster other than Twellman who can score consistently?

Is there more to Mauricio Castro than what we saw last year?

I think that even if you asked Nicol, he'd tell you that he doesn't really know the answer to any of those questions. We're a week away from the start of a new season, almost six months removed from the end of last season, and going into a season with more questions than answers kind of pisses me off.

 

I can't say I disagree with anything you say. The only difference is that I'm only mildly concerned since I see no reason to get pissed off when the jury is still out. Besides: concern is rational while being pissed off takes days off your life span ----and at my age you don't want to waste any days unnecessarily.

 

This is a very fair question, but i want to point out that this is the case anytime you sign a player from outside the league. Unless your talking about a world class player in his prime, anytime you sign a player form outside the league there are questions of how will he adjust to MLS and what level of impact he will have on the team. It does not answer any questions in the preseason it just creates new ones.

Question are not answered in preseason they are answered though the course of the season. If your expecting answers in the preseason you are either going to get suckered by a lot of Hype or setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

your right.

 

Honestly, I don't know. I don't think anyone does, not even the Revs at this moment. I'm just saying that's how the club can get from here to a shot at the MLS Cup.

As for the particulars, Joseph, Larentowicz, Reis, Twellman, Ralston, Heaps and Albright are in place. Obviously the club needs to get them all healthy and have them stay that way.

The Revs are supposedly in the process of signing mystery Africans. Who? Will any one of them have a positive impact? No clue, but it sounds like someone's coming through the door.

Will two young guys step? I worry about this one less than health or the mystery African because we've gotten to see the young players and a bunch of them have crazy pace. If Igwe has added some strength or Nyassi develops a better final ball or Mansally learns to find gaps in the defense ... well, you get the idea.

And then there's the summer. The Revs have taken knocks for not bringing in a DP. You can argue whether a DP would have been disruptive or cinched a championship in 2007. Last year, one probably wouldn't have mattered. I'm not a terribly big fan of bringing in a guy who thinks MLS is a pre-retirement lark. It takes a veteran who wants to play hard (Schelotto, Blanco), not a guy who wants to come in and coast (Gallardo, Denilson). MLS is a lousy league to spend your dotage. It's hot. It travels across the continent to play games. And the league plays a heavy running, up-and-down style.

In a pipe dream, I'd love to see the Revs use the DP for a kid like a Celso Borges (Costa Rican international currently at Saprissa and quickly putting himself on the short list for best player in North America), but it seems the Revs are having the same sort of pipe dream. Nicol seems to want a guy who's either in or approaching his prime and he's not burning the DP slot on anything less. So what the Revs do in the summer probably will depend on whether there's an obvious hole to fill, whether the Revs find the right player and whether the club is actually willing to spend some coin.

Yet that's down the road. Four, five things have to go right before that even becomes an issue.

 

This is true, but one must also appreciate that, with respect to the Revs, the club does not have a great track record of established professionals from Latin America eventually working out for the Revs.

 

comfortable doc = no mls cups
uncomfortable doc =.........all hands on deck???????


ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

It's really hard to understand why. Some have been good players before and after their stay with the Revs. Is it something about our coaching staff or our style of play that sets them up tp fail or is it just the low odds of SI success have not balanced out yet and the Revs are "due"?

 

It could just be that they bring in the wrong players for their style of play. They do play a fairly direct style, yet they have signed mostly Central American SI's. I know they drafted Khano and Shalrie, but those are SI's that came up playing a more direct style, and likely the reason why they succeeded here (term used loosely for Khano). I've always been surprised that they never really went after any classic British center backs, or center forwards. They instead deferred to the more technical, less physical players of latin America. Maybe that is because they wanted to become a more technical side, but just couldnt ever adapt either the entire team, or their coaching styles to accommodate it.

Part of their success came because of that direct style. I think the league regressed a lot from about 2001 to 2007ish, as far as the technical aptitude of players and teams. Over the last couple years however, the league is beginning to look a lot more technical, and skillfull. Especially with teams starting XI's. I hope they can adapt to the change in style, and I think it is why they have looking for a lot more playmakers, from Castro, to Videira. It will be interesting to see.

 

Well, before Nicol they were terrible in almost all aspects of player personal. They were pretty much handed JMM and Burns at the start. Then from there, their "notable" players were notable in name only, not in performance. They were just bad at signing ALL players at that point, regardless of nationality hahaha

 

Same old song.

Look, the fact that there are so many "unknowns" when we've had this much-vaunted, now-dwindling "core" for at almost 5 years now is PART OF THE PROBLEM. It's not like these problems popped up overnight. They have routinely failed to address the team's shortcomings for years now, a "wait and see" approach is foolish at best--you can "see" right now that the Revs don't have their s--t together. And it's not unfair to expect that after all these years facing the same problems, that they should.

Imagine Player X. X has great skills, but some serious shortcomings (can't play with his back to goal, say). In addition, X is a bit injury prone--he blew out his ACL at the end of last season. But we're looking forward to him really having a breakout year next year, because he is among the better players in the league when he's on.

So now imagine Player X shows up to preseason 30 pounds overweight. He forgot to have the surgery needed to repair his injury until last week, and added to that, he did zero work on improving his play with his back to goal.

But just wait until he gets back into form! We don't know how good he'll be until he's back in shape and over his surgery, so it's not really fair to judge him as a player, right?

In short, the Revs are Clint Mathis.


ps- the above mention of Schelotto made me do a facepalm, IRL. Every so often I remember that we could have signed him, but chose not to. Aughagugguh.

 

No matter what happened in pre-season, you'd have to say the same thing. They could beat everyone of their opponents by 5-0 scores and then it would be, it's just pre-season. And I'd agree, for the most part.

They are not going to answer any questions until the regular season gets going - and most of the questions will take 1/4 of the season or so to get answered.

In the short term, if we're missing Castro, Twellman and Ralston, we'll struggle. When we get those guys back, we'll do reasonably well. But, if we're going to be contenders this year, we'll need some of the young, unknown players to become significant players (Videira, Alston, Maxwell, Barnes, Igwe, Thompson, Tierney and Valentino). If they get playing time early, it's going to help them becomes serious contributors through the season.

 

So do I. I'm not particularly freaking out over pre-season games.

Ugh... where do I start?

It's unreasonable to ask guys with little professional experience to become significant players. Could it happen? Sure. Mike Videira could surprise us all and become the CAM this team has needed for years. Kevin Alston could prove that he's just so talented that he has to be on the field immediately. But to put yourself in a position where you need that to happen for you to be a serious contender doesn't seem very smart to me.

I just don't like the team right now. There's no one on the team that I'm confident will score goals - including TNT. The defense is full of questions, and the two guys who aren't questions (Albright and Heaps) are pretty average by MLS starter standards. Is Ralston going back to the right wing, or is he going to play the withdrawn forward spot and get beaten on all year by hacks like Jim Curtin and Mike Petke? And if Ralston's not on the wing, I think we've got issues spreading the field because I don't have a great deal of confidence in Nyassi, Thompson, Castro, or Mansally.

We're counting on too many young players to produce, we've got too many questionable veterans, and I'm concerned we don't have enough depth to sustain a few key injuries.

I hate to say it, but I fear we're a house of cards that's very close to a complete collapse this year.