I assume, by "results," you mean wins/losses/ties. I don't think anyone claims that they don't matter. But they are not necessarily the only things that matter. I personally weight the team's record very heavily, which is why I am surprised when I see so much discontent with Olsen as a manager this season. Whenever DC doesn't get a result, people are ready to jump out to complain about Olsen not knowing what he's doing or this being the inevitable result of "Benny-ball." Keep in mind, I say this even though I have certain people on mute. Even when DC wins, there are faint murmurings in background. I agree that it is hard to complain too much about a coach who is winning, unless he starts attacking children with yard appliances or campaigns for Donald Trump. But that's sort of why I wanted to ask what people's opinions really were, because a lot of people seem discontent with him, but don't want to bad mouth a guy who is winning.
Off-topic, but 2013 will probably go down as my all-time favorite season. I still can't believe DC won a trophy and qualified for the Champions League with such an awesomely terrible squad.
This isn't just Benny … This is what happens when you play really negative ugly tactics. When you lose people are a lot less forgiving. When you lose playing pretty a fan at least walks away with something positive. There's a difference between "at least we tried to defend the draw" and "at least we tried to win" Of course it's not necessarily logical. Not sure if a 3-2 loss is any better than a 1-0 loss.
Bennyball is essentially the same system that Jose Mourinho, with far better players, uses and the Special One is an acclaimed mastermind of the game.
I just think it's a very tenuous thing, given DCU's salary structure, to assume 'Benny Ball' is how Olsen wants to play. I suspect we may see something very different if he got 3 or 4 high priced players but he ccetainly seems to know how to get results (which IS his job) with an unremarkable payroll.
Criticisms of "benny-ball" fall into 2 categories, one I kind of buy, the other I don't. The first is that a prettier style of play will over time draw more fan support. I agree with that. I'm a huge fan (like everyone else here), but even for me even some of United's wins have been hard to watch. One game a couple of youth coaches sat behind me and chatted away about everything soccer, but the game. And I don't blame them - there wasn't much happening to hold their attention. The second criticism is that we can't win the MLS Cup with this style of play. I'm not sure I buy that. There's a fair amount of luck involved in the MLS playoff system. One good performance and you're almost through to the next round. Untimely injuries or suspensions, and 7 months of work go down the drain. Over the years there have certainly been unlikely MLS champions that merged from the playoffs. You could make the argument that the best strategy to win a championship is to bag enough points year in and year out to be able to participate in the crapshoot that is the MLS playoffs.
Im not sure I agree with that, but maybe I'd feel differently if I saw this play out in DC with Hazard and Fabregas in the midfield....and Costa or Drogba in the striker spot. Impossible, though, right? Except: Chelsea legend Didier Drogba set to follow Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard to the MLS http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/chelsea-legend-didier-drogba-set-6035877
There never was a 2013, it was skipped due to triskaidekaphobia. Yes, I had to look that word up. Apparently, that superstition may come from references to Judas and Christian mythology? Huh, I learned something today. I didn't like the experience and am going back to bed, lest it happen again.
That's hopefully right. It's definitely not like the team is pressing him to make a big signing, but he doesn't want to. It could be the case, but there's been no indication that it is.
I imagine these things happen at Kasper's level. Even if I'm wrong about that, I see indication that there's a basis for your comment. Right now, it's reasonable to assume that the biggest hurdle in signing anyone "big" is that there's not necessarily room on the roster, nor enough cap space. If the team can clear EJ's spot and cap space, then maybe we'll see who wants what.
I'm in a different situation from y'all. When DC loses a home game, you guys have to think about it on the drive home. You talk about the results at the tailgate. Me, I turn off the TV or my computer and the pain of the loss is mostly gone. So for me, the ugly, ugly style is more of a problem. I have two concerns. One I voiced in a recent post-game thread, namely, that this style won't work in the two-legged playoffs, because IMHO Ben can't do a proper cost/benefit analysis on attacking vs. defending. We should have gone into Seattle looking for 3 points, not a 0-0 draw, which is what we did (even before the red card.) He's made the same (in my view) incorrect calculation many times. The other concern is that while he's done a great job getting players to perform above expectations, in almost every case it's your pluggers he gets to overachieve, it's Boswell and Arnaud and Opare. OK, he resurrected Rolfe, but that guy was always quality in MLS. I get it, we work on the cheap, but the quality of wide attacking play among young Yanks is clearly better now than it was 3-4 years ago, and we ain't got none, and/or we don't play none. The Revs have a handful of pretty good attacking mids and so one is always coming off the bench. The Crew have Finlay and Meram and Speas. I'll bet if we stepped up with a proper offer we could get Shea Salinas. Conor Doyle is not a competent professional in an attacking role; Aguilar is clearly better. The point is...Pontius and Johnson ain't Benny's fault, but the lack of a replacement or any discernible effort to find one or develop one is. Yes, he deserves credit for Kitchen and Birnbaum and Arnaud and so on. But he deserves blame for Deleon's career treading water at best, and he deserves blame for not trying to develop Aguilar as an option. We're just too damn one dimensional. His approach is too inflexible. He's far along in his coaching career that I'm 95% sure WYSIWYG. And that won't be good enough to do anything in the playoffs. Me, I put alot of value on the Shield. But not as much as the Cup.
I don't really understand a lot of this. Olsen is holding up a beacon for a working-class MLS team to be competitive while the league passes out competitive advantages to the rich teams like party favors. That means going defensive, going veteran, going American, going with guys who are playing to put food on their table, forgoing splashy over-the-hill foreigners or former stars out to earn some easy money before they retire, and most importantly by playing a consistent if unspectacular style of defense-first, defense-last ball. I actually think this team is more likely to win an MLS Cup than a Shield. Anybody can go on a 3-game win streak. I mean, Colorado won an MLS Cup in living memory. Colorado! But a team that only ever loses by 1 goal just needs a couple of lucky bounces to earn a pretty little star on their jersey. The ball is round. I care more about the Shield personally. I don't think DC is really a Shield contender but, look, there they are near the top of the Shield standings. (I think this speaks more to the miserable state of the East than United's relative quality but unless MLS decides to switch DC to the Western Conference mid-season, they'll get to continue beating up on teams like Chicago and Montreal at least until the end of the season.) I guess I just value results more highly than style. I would always rather watch a dour and successful team than a chic but losing team. After recent seasons, I'm a little shocked that any DC fan would value content over results. (I would love Shea Salinas though and I think he'd be a great fit too.)
Its not like we have had a "chic" team in recent memory. We have either had a dour and successful team or a dour and unsuccessful team. Any fan would obviously have the successful team over the unsuccessful team, that much is obvious. I do think that most fans (including myself) would like to see a much more exciting team than what DC has fielded the last several years. The attendance numbers point to that as well, as United first in the league in points and last in the league in average attendance.
Like what? I think for some (many?) DC fans, the money that Seattle and TFC and the Gals can and do splash on players has become an excuse to a) disparage the league's setup, which in my view quite obviously HELPS United rather than hurts it and b) not really, truly judge Kasper/Benny. I do too. But for someone like me who is a TV fan, the split is probably 80/20 or something. For those of you who go to the games, it's probably 95/5. I also was trying to argue that a somewhat more "stylish" team would be MORE successful. That under Benny, DC is too one-dimensional.