P/I/P Seattle @ Revs, 7/7, 7:30pm [R]

It will be interesting ti see if Brad has lit a fire back under the roster after their lack-luster showing against DCU. I see this one as a strong showing by the Revs
Revs 3--0

 

Revs Pts (through 17 games/fullseason 34 games):

2013: (24/51)
2014: (23/55)
2015: (24/50)
2016: (19/42)
2017: (20/45)
2018: (27/54 predicted)

So best first half in recent history. Not miles ahead of previous seasons. Felt like they have left alot of points on the board with some of the ties. Are all the home games in the first half leading this not being a true comparison?

Will be interesting to see how things go over the next 3 games (game 18-20). Over the last 5 years they have been 3-11-1 to start the second half of the season. Will be feeling good if they get some serious points over the next couple of games.

 

Yawn, another draw. Disappointing against a tired Seattle team at the bottom of the league.

 

That was the most boring game in a long time. 1 SOG for each team but I can’t recall either one.

 

Sounds like Brad HEAPS is trying to distance himself from the team's performance? YOU are responsible for making them show up. This is your them, you picked them. Now do your job or quit

Id be pounding on Burn's door daily if I was you. You need about 10 new quality signings or you too will follow the other coaches that were given straw and told to weave gold. Burns failing to provide talent will cost you your job in the end and Burns will muddle on. Im betting Burns does little to nothing

 

I dont think it was an issue of the revs not showing up. It was clear from the start that 1 team was trying to win the game and the other was playing for a draw. What the game really highlighted that with the exception of penilla the revolution have 0 attacking players that can demonstrate quality around the goal. I dont know why caldwell started, he was useless as always. Rowe on the wing doesnt have the technical ability to thread passes to dangerous areas or to threaten the keeper with his shot. In the middle he isnt good enough as a creator or a defender. Bunbury has a high work rate, but never really found the space to produce a tap in. The same could be said for fagundez.

I liked that agudelo tried to take on defenders to create seams in the defense. I was surprised to see nemeth be the odd man out, but agudelo at least felt like he was offering something in his place. He and farrell had some nice combinations. Somi also looked ok, but that has more to do with seattle never asking him to defend than an improvement in his ability. To only have 1 sog is disgraceful, and i blame rowe and caldwell for short circuiting the attack with sloppy pass after sloppy pass. I hope dielna is ok, there were reports he may have picked up a knock.

 

Yeah that was unbelievably frustrating. Caldwell usually has a pass rate in the high 80s but had some ugly giveaways. Rowe was just being Rowe, he isnt a good passer most of the time. Both guys need to be relegated to the bench if the revs have any aspirations of even making the playoffs, let alone advancing. Zahibo should start.

 

I agree that zahibo is the best of those 3 guys by a wide margin, but he still feels dissapointing when i see him on the field. To me, his best talents seem to overlap with what caicedo is doing, instead of complementing him, which is why rowe plays instead of him. Although rowe is bad, he at least participates in the attacking 3rd, which is where i think zahibo struggles the most. My #1 wish item this window is for a credible guy to play next to caicedo, but failing to pick one up i would probably go back to the caicedo-zahibo pivot because the other guys just arent working

 

A horrible game to watch, really ugly.

I think both teams were playing at such a high pace, trying to pressure everything, so neither team ever got a chance to settle in.

I thought the Revs controlled much of the game in the final 20, but still failed to create any threatening shots.

Only good chances I remember were a few good crosses by Penilla early in the game, but no one around to finish them.

 

its because we stink. We have many players that coudnt play on a good team and they all know Brad's high pressure game and have adapted. We havent.

On a different subject, watched Lee play on Sat night. The guy that was third string for Brad, started at AM for LA.Benny pushed to RH. Such a smooth player... controlled the Mid, turned the ball over rarely... a perfect fit for that team. The result ..a win..4-1. Letting him go was soooooo stupid by Brad and he should have forced him to honor his contract or get no check. Whats even worse was how totally wrong Brad was on what he brings. For Lee's sake, its good that a real coach sees it and is using him as he should be used

 

Man, you're a broken record.

You lose all credibility when you assert "we stink", when there are tangible metrics (like PPG) that easily contradict that. We've been consistent enough that it's pretty easy to see how good this team is: it's slightly above average in MLS. If you are still convinced that "we stink", lets see some tangible stats to support that.

 

Broken record? I guess so ... and not just on this subject. Also broken on Burns being the biggest problem for this franchise. His bungling has been around for years and is holding this franchise back from going anywhere. The Lee situation was the latest. The handling of JJ was second (he had a year or two left and took us to two finals on his back), we could have had Parkhurst when he came back to MLS but because he asked not to be taken, we said "OK." He's still playing, and better than anyone we have in his position. Im close to adding the hiring of Brad to this list but am not there yet because I don't feel Burns has given him the tools to succeed. On the first subject here (Lee), trading him to LA was a horrible, horrible mistake. It doesnt matter what he wants, he signed a contract. Beyond that, Brad's rating him behind both Diego and Zach H was stupid and insulting. I dont think I'll ever forget or forgive that. How's Zach doing? Lee is now starting every game for LA and that team's stock is rising. How's our stock doing? Where are the signings? We need help and while other teams in MLS seem to be able to sign people. Burns cant or wont

Stink - ok so were an average team. Is that good enough? Not for me. I can't think of a single reason to buy a ticket to see the Revs play. We can't beat a last place team at home and have no star quality players. We all know what happened to the ones we had. Kinda sounds like a stinker of a team to me

 

History has shown they made the right call on Jones. We could have invested millions on one more pretty good year from him, but we'd still be paying him even now.

So, you had no problem with the plodding attack the previous few years that was built around Nguyen? At least we can attack and score quickly, that's something that was never possible with LN needing to get his touches, play the ball back and around. Heaps spent his whole tenure here trying to get it to work - it wasn't working and it wasn't going to.

It's no shock that Nguyen can look good as a complimentary player in a different system (with more good skill players) - he's a skilled player himself, no doubt. But it didn't work here and it wasn't going to.

Friedel is building a different kind of system and he's made a lot of progress in 1/2 a season. Sorry that you can't see that.

Can't think of any reason to buy a ticket? That's a shame, because (excepting the Seattle snoozer), they ARE an exciting and entertaining team to watch.

 

I think the distressing part is you putting in the parenthetical "with more good skill players." I'm not sure yet how much of a fan I am of Brad's system but I don't understand why I should not want my team to have "more good skill players" regardless the system.

I really don't want to open the Jones wound but I think that, during the Heaps tenure, there was a year where Burns/Krafts added MORE skill around LN and we had a pretty exciting attack (certainly not plodding). It didn't/doesn't mean that we needed Jones specifically but couldn't we have added equivalent or even better skill around LN? In the years since the "wise" release of Jones, Burns hasn't ever filled the void.

I'm not negative about what Brad has achieved in 1/2 a season but I also don't believe the team that I've been watching is going to go much higher. What is the goal of this organization? If it is to be just (slightly above) average then why should I be excited by that?

 

Wow, my time machine is working again! It's April, but it sure seems pretty warm fro this time of year. So what are we gonna do about Nguyen? Is Friedel gonna keep him on the bench forever? And I hear that Heriveaux kid is pretty good, and he can step in to Nguyen's shoes on a moment's notice!

So the World Cup is coming up this summer. You gotta go with one of the usual suspects like Germany, Brazil or Argentina. They always look good when it comes to the World Cup, no matter how out of form they may be. And Iceland. Don't forget about them!

 

We should all want more skilled players. I just don't think Nguyen fits the type of play. There are plenty of good, skilled players who don't contribute to building a winning team. It may happen for him in LA, it may not. But, we tried it here and it didn't work.

I would counter that the main thing that Jones did, countered Nguyen's primary game. His biggest impact was on his quick, cross-field long balls to spring us on the attack quickly (as soon as a team is a threat to counter, they have to be defended much differently).

I think Jones saw the problem with the Nguyen/Heaps system (always having to face a full, set up, organized defense) and just did what he felt needed to be done.

I don't think anyone in the org thinks that this is the team we're going forward with. I think Friedel has done good things with this group mentally and physically, but the next step is bringing in more good players.

And, whether or not anything significant happens this window, Friedel brought in a whole bunch of players in the off-season, several who have made a significant impact. If he can duplicate that again next winter, who knows how much better we can be.

 

I'm cautiously optimistic that Friedel will bring in 1 or 2 new players. They won't be big names, but if they can make the contributions that the guys he brought in this winter have, I think we will all be happy.

The biggest difference is that Friedel seems to understand that the guys who might be coming in now are ones he made contact with 6 months ago. It's a long process, and in past years, I think it was a combination of ineptness and lack of vision/long term strategy that hindered us from signing good players every single transfer window.

We will know in a month or so how this is going to work out...

 

If the Revs had wanted to bring in a player to replace Jones "like for like" they could have. With Nguyen and Jones on our team we had a level of skill we have not seen since the days when Shalrie, Dempsey, Ralston, and Twellman. played together for us. And the way we played, and the results we had, showed it. For one season we were reminded of what it meant to be good, to be dangerous, and not to be a bunch of plodding idiots beating their chests at the glory of striving for utter mediocrity.
The problems the Revs have were not those such as Nguyen, it was with team leadership that kept telling us that if but you put oatmeal around a fleck of gold then you will have a meal fit for a king.
Has Friedel changed this? No. Can he change it? Who knows. Should we believe he has changed it without actually seeing the evidence on the playing field? ............. Well, Mr. Burns' Kool Aid Drinkers, If you want to be that kind of chump, then,sure, go ahead.

 

I like the revisionist historians talking about 2014 as if the revs were good that entire year. You're forgetting the 9 game winless streak that summer leading into the Jones signing and the fall run to MLS Cup. If the revs lose that cointoss, they may have missed the playoffs altogether despite MVLee's epic season. JJ put he team on his back and willed them into MLS Cup down the stretch, but before him they were very mediocre led by a mediocre coach.

Moving forward to today, is Burns as good as other GMs in the league? Objectively, probably not. Is he as bad as people make him out to be? Probably not. Like any MLS exec, hes got strengths and weaknesses. Plus, the revs are big on having their own way of doing things that may not compare apples to apples with other clubs.

My interpretation of the coach/GM role with the revs over the past decade is the coach makes the grocery list and the GM buys the groceries. Judging on that, Burns hasn't been very good at buying higher end groceries, but it's also possible the quality of players the revs were going after wasn't strong enough in the first place. Maybe the rest of MLS shops at Target or Kohl's while the revs are hunting for deals at Ocean State Job Lot. You get the idea.

All I'm saying here is with Friedel, I like his background, the new approach and his demand for accountability from his players. I'm keeping an open mind this sense of accountability and urgency is carrying over into the FO, leaving
the door open player acquisition could be done differently (faster) than in the past. That said, if keeping an open mind to the possibility things could change for the better is too much koolaid for some, that's fine. We all view things differently.

 

Not sure which historian you consider revisionist, Heroditus, but in case it was me let me re-note that what I wrote was: "If the Revs had wanted to bring in a player to replace Jones "like for like" they could have. With Nguyen and Jones on our team we had a level of skill we have not seen since the days when Shalrie, Dempsey, Ralston, and Twellman. played together for us. And the way we played, and the results we had, showed it. For one season we were reminded of what it meant to be good, to be dangerous, and not to be a bunch of plodding idiots beating their chests at the glory of striving for utter mediocrity"

Now you yourself note that it was when Jones was signed that we were able to escape the mire and start the fall run to MLS Cup. Which was exactly the point others and I were making....that you go for more skill on a team, not less, then players like Nguyen come to life; as he absolutely did so here in New England. The point is that the asininity of our management was such that even after that brutally clear confirmation of what transpired after we signed Jones they [i.e. Burns & co.] refused to act to have a similar player replace Jones, refused to act to maintain that skill that had immediately led to that success.
So, yes, in that one season we were reminded of what it meant to be good, to be dangerous, and not to be a bunch of plodding idiots beating their chests at the glory of striving for utter mediocrity. And the beauty of that season is that we had the full experience, from the plodding idiocy of the first half to the dangerous good of the MLS run [the best we have looked in the past decade].

That 9 game winless streak you are referring to? The one none of us have forgotten? That is the bold line underscoring the haplessness of Burns and the idiocy of acting as if the way to success is through less, not more, quality.

 

Yeah this is exactly where we disagree, Aristotle. The revs were a bunch of "plodding idiots beating their chests at the glory of striving for utter mediocrity" UNTIL Jones came in and they went on a tear. Before him as I said there's no guarantee they would have made the playoffs. Your use of "good" and "skilled" to describe the 2014 revs is generous. It took a career year from Nguyen to even get in position THEN the game changing acquisition of Jones to get them over the hump in the playoffs. Even then, it was hang on for dear life in the second leg vs NYRB. It was a fun run, one of my favorites, but they overachieved that year.

 

Ok, RevsLiverpool. I'm going to ask you to try reading what I wrote. Both posts. Please do invoke whatever understanding of Aristotle you may have gained in whatever prior analytic you may have engaged in. Then I'm going to ask you to suggest what season should I have referenced for that MLS Cup run?
For emphasis, let me point out that the Revs of "Jones and Nguyen" cannot happen until, or, as you say, UNTIL, "Jones came in". You are saying absolutely nothing different, in terms of factual account, than I am.
You say that the Revs were plodding idiots before Jones came in? Then they went on a tear? Gee, mister, I should stand humbly corrected, eh? I guess what I wrote ["And the beauty of that season is that we had the full experience, from the plodding idiocy of the first half to the dangerous good of the MLS run --the best we have looked in the past decade] is just revisionist claptrap, eh?

RevsLiverpool. It seems so important to you to damn what I wrote that you are quite willing to damn yourself in order to get there. Hey, it's a plan, sir.