Official: Union Alumni, Where Are They Now?

Although I highly doubt Dom Dwyer would be the same Dom Dwyer if we drafted and "developed" him

 

So Danny Mwanga, Jack McInerney, Aaron Wheeler, Pedro Ribeiro and Antoine Hoppenot haven't scored 85 MLS goals and married Sydney Leroux?

 

The only awful jokes are the ones that no one laughs at.

 

3 year anniversary of a touching tribute of all the Union goalies. The Union are going 2 years strong now without a goalie controversy! #DOOP https://t.co/K1VW9CEYh9

— MLS Talk (@MLS_TALK) July 31, 2018

I totally forgot about this gem of a video

 

A lot of people have talked about Earn's legacy and this is basically it.

Did the team get any better on the field? No. But he did clean up the mess that was the Philadelphia Union. We're not a laughing stock anymore, we're just a tad bit better below average franchise that we always have been.

Whether that is a good job or not, I have no idea.

 

Honestly, it really just feels like we went from “they suck but they’re also incompetent and it’s kind of funny” to “they’re not incompetent, but they’re still too poor not to suck,” which is frankly far more depressing. I miss the days when we thought firing Sak would fix everything.

 

10-10-3 against MLS teams this season and 5th in the East in PPG at the All Star Break. Better than I expected at the beginning of the season.

"Have no expectations and you'll never be disappointed." (BTW, that's a good tagline. . .)

 

6th in the East in PPG, tied for 13th in the league in PPG, and 14th on GD.

 

If nothing else, ES's tenure has confirmed that the core factor holding the Union back all along has been Sugarman's ownership, not NickySak's incompetent management. A culture of disfunction was certainly allowed to flourish under Sak's watchful eye, which certainly set us back six years starting from day one, but we now know with more certainty that the Union will only ever acheive lower-mid table positions with the occasional first-round playoff elimination under the current ownership, even when their FO doesn't follow the plot of a reality TV show.

 

I dunno, I feel like we've gone from a goalie fetish to a young CB fetish.

 

You are correct. My bad. Same amount of games as NER and one less point.

 

I think it's a little bit different having Simpson rather than the M'Bolhi, Valdes, Adu, Kleberson, goalie sagas.

 

Agreed. The best managers in history swing and miss sometimes with player acquisitions. Up to this point, ES's only major acquisition failures are the twin albatrosses that are Simpson and Accam. His other signings may not have lit the league on fire, but at least they contribute at a level that is appropriate for their compensation levels. There don't seem to be soap-opera-level drama busts like we had in Sak's era.

 

Cool. Hack is a good guy, interested to see how he does there. https://t.co/22yrudXhsI

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) August 2, 2018

Hackworth named Louisville City Head Coach

 

I was a little surprised to see this. I kinda thought he would be a youth team lifer after his Union experience. He’s been fairly successful at the youth level.

 

I'd have to disagree here. Several of the players such as Anderson, Alberg, Davies, and Ilsinho were paid well above what their contribution actually warranted. The money tied up in them has really hamstrung us from signing improvements in the summer. Very few of his signings have been major successes.

 

Alberg’s numbers were pretty good (esp first season) for what he made, even if he wasn’t the playmaker he was supposed to be. Ilsinho wasn’t vastly overpaid, either, especially now. What I think really stands out is that Earnie was supposed to bring in young players like Wijnaldum who would then go on to have outsized contributions a la moneyball. Literally the only person he did that with was Gooch, and that doesn’t really count. We’ll see about these African players that people seem to be high on.

 

Valdes, adu, kleberson were all serviceable mls players. Simpson can't even get games with Steel

 

Yea I definitely don't remember any of those guys rotting on the bench.

 

Not for lack of skill! I mean, dude’s teaching our academy now, so at least there’s that. And Valdés is the best CB we’ve ever had, he just really didn’t want to play here after he made Colombia’s squad.

 

That's the coach's fault, not the players

 

Louisville seems like a good fit for Hack to be honest. Wish him luck.