Because he was playing like shit. Benching him did nothing to alleviate his salary cap impact. You realize that not playing a player doesn't mean we don't have to pay him, right? 1) He was playing very badly. 2) If he was intent on leaving, or they had decided to release him, it made sense to blood a replacement. There is zero indication that the move to Tarbell was in any way financially motivated (with regard to this past season).
If you don't feel that there is much of a drop in quality, you may want to go with the much less expensive player. You don't turn down a player just because he have a good deal on him. And besides, saving $200-300k on a GK allows you to acquire a quality left back for that amount .
This isn’t world soccer though. This is MLS where a strict salary cap takes away from all kinds of other theories, formations and strategies. Many signings and players contracts are directly affected because of the salary cap. You can talk about different formations and tactics in European or higher paying foreign Leagues but you can’t do that here. Tarbell is not an improvement over Bingham. Far from it.
He's also not a major dropoff, based on Bingham's form this season. Bingham impressed the hell out of me last year, but based on his actual form this season, and Tarbell's form in the cup games prior to being named the starter, Tarbell was playing better. This is getting a bit off topic, but I was moderately surprised that Bingham was unable to reclaim his starting position, particularly after some poor games by Tarbell. But at the time the switch was made, I completely agreed with giving Tarbell a chance.
GK is the single most important position in the game but MLS clubs don’t see it that way. With the exception Tim Howard, look at what most GK’s are making.
Just to make my December merrier, I'm going to assume until proven otherwise that Mikael Stahre is our Pep and Qwiberg is our left sided Dani Alves. (that is until Qwiberg doesn't make the roster out of camp and we play route one football all year)
Well, I disagree. The same truth applies to soccer everywhere, you need quality fullbacks/wingbacks to play modern formations, and be flexible in your tactics. You see a few positions as "more critical", and I don't think you can be that unbalanced. Regardless of whether Qwiberg is the answer, I don't know if he'll add quality to the team or not, Having solid fullbacks in the team will help us both in attack and defense, just as much as if that money had been spent in any other position. We've spent money in the past on midfielders, #10s, center backs, it's all a hit or miss. You need look no further than last season, and how much better this team was at both ends of the pitch with Lima in the lineup, to see the impact a fullback can have on the team.
I am fine with the signing, but in terms of my concerns about style of play (and I may be the only one who's really concerned at this point), it is a NOOP, without knowing more about him. If he is a good attacker, then yes it's a positive. But emphasis on "organization" and "discipline" while of course nice things to have if all else is equal, generally run counter to positive soccer. I.e. you make choices all the time to trade off attack vs. organization / discipline. I don't really buy the argument that a more organized / disciplined defense enables positive soccer. The more you emphasize organization / discipline, and make decisions in that direction over attacking, the more you are playing negative soccer. That said, while I am a huge advocate for the Quakes finally playing positive soccer, I am actually in favor of them making major personnel additions to improve the defense. The reason is that you may have less defenders at any given time the more you committed to the attack. So those defenders need to be really good. I would even be OK with it if the Quakes only made defensive personnel upgrade moves this offseason and left the rest of the team more of less alone. I think we have good enough forwards and attacking mids. We just need to play a more attacking style while being able to hold the fort down on defense with some quality defenders.
I'm a lifelong goal keeper and I'm not sure I see it that way. You can't win games if you can't score. Also, GKs are paid less than "skill position" players in every league in the world.
I would second this. I'm comfortable at every position in front of the back four, especially if we re-sign Hoesen. The only defender I have confidence in from last season is Lima. I'd count Flo in there was well, but in an ideal world, we would sign enough defenders that he could move into midfield and replace Ceren.
Yep. And and I'm not going to count Cummings as a quality starter until I see him play once. We also desperately need some big time set piece guys, and CB's are usually where you get those.
But this club has always had great goalkeepers since it’s re-inception and even before. Cannon twice Onstad, Busch and then Bingham. I’m sorry but I just don’t see Andrew Tarbell as being the heir apparent to any of those guys and he isn’t. Even if Bingham had lapses , he was still a better and especially a more experienced Gk.
I just don't put Bingham in that category. His numbers from last season had him on pace to give up 52 goals. I don't think Tarbell is a great goalkeeper, though he does have the potential to improve. He hasn't played a full season yet. He punches too much, which leads to opportunities that didn't need to occur. If the Quakes signed another keeper, I'd be fine with that. If not, I'll expect Tarbell to get a lot more consistent, or be replaced. He's a good shot-stopper, at times, but he made a lot of mistakes. So did David de Gea his first year. Not comparing Tarbell to one of the best keepers in the world, but pointing out that even the best need time to settle in.
Bingham isn’t as good as the other Quakes keepers but he is still better. It’s obvious his exclusion had more to do with salary caps than anything else. Tarbell is entering the final year of his GA deal and therefore won’t count against the cap. That means quite a lot when it comes time to decide who your Gk will be. They are literally getting a free position by utilizing him as opposed to Bingham who they will have had to shell out a lot more money.
The reason they didn't try to re-sign Bingham is because they had, in their estimation, an equally good goalkeeper who cost them significantly less. Bingham is a good goalkeeper, but keepers are, relatively speaking, easyto replace. The Quakes obviously did not think they could acquire the kind of defender they wanted for less or they would have. They could have kept Colvey, who wasn't expensive, but they clearly didn't rate him very highly. The other defenders in the league worth anything would cost roughly the same as Qwiberg, anyway, so I don't understand the issue here. They could always try to acquire "MLS ready" defenders in the draft or pull them up from their academy, but as we saw with Lima, very few players are really ready to be consistent first team contributors from college into MLS. The team needed a starting outside back so they got one that they liked. Even if his salary is 200k, that isn't a huge amount. I think most people are just forgetting that the Quakes had gotten incredible deals with guys like Bernardez, who made far less than he was worth most of the time he was in San Jose.
I'm not going to argue with you in this thread about why Bingham did not re-sign a contract, or why he wasn't an improvement over Tarbell on any given day. That's more than covered in Bing's thread. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/the-official-david-bingham-thread.1648353/page-38 I understand your position on the matter. Without knowing why Bingham did not sign a new contract, whether the Quakes believed that he wasn't good enough to offer him one, he wanted to try a different league, etc. this discussion is merely conjecture. I have no issue with the Quakes spending money on a GK, I don't think Bingham was the right GK to spend money on.
I like the signing. He'll be an improvement over Salinas at LB. He's probably a better wingback option. I just wish he was at least 5' 10" so we can add a little more ability to defend the aerial stuff. We're a short team that can't defend set pieces worth crap. I wonder how Stahre will address that weakness.
And I think most would agree that the money spent on Howard was a complete waste. He did nothing to make Colorado a better team overall. They still couldn't score goals to save their lives and had awful results because of it. That money could have been spent anywhere else on the field and it probably would have had a better impact. Goalkeeping is important, but it's also not a position that MLS has historically had trouble filling. I can only really think of one or two goalkeepers in my time watching the league that I thought were truly awful.
I'm not arguing at all and never was. I know all about Bingham and followed him even in college and I also know he is a hothead. I just don't see Tarbell as being this great or even good GK option. I do see it as a convenient salary cap signing for the roster though... It would be one thing if there were no strict salary caps in place but for this league, Howard's signing was and remains a joke.