There is a difference between spending money just to spend money so you can say we are a top spending club and spending money to actually try to make it mean something regardless of the amount spent.
I am now retired, but over the course of my working life, I have sat across a desk from more than one person with a degree from a "prestigious" school and thought to myself, as we were attempting to negotiate something, "this person is dumber than a bag of hammers" (one of the many "folksy" insults I learned as a kid). Judging the new guy based solely on the one job, without knowledge of all the circumstances involved, is just too cynical for my taste. I realize many believe there are plenty of excuses for cynicism, but I have never been one to listen to excuses for much of anything. He will either do the job or not.
I don't really think there is anything substantial in his statement about spending. All he's doing is protecting himself and the team from criticism that they don't spend enough. The Earthquakes could start spending more than they currently do without venturing into the territory of being willing to take big losses in an effort to field a competitive team. Frankly, Kaval was not very smart in saying he wanted to be ranked in a certain place with regard to spending. Circumstances change, and you aren't going to be spending the same amount year to year. In other words, this does not concern me at all. Considering the Quakes have been mid level in spending for the last few years, at least, all they have to do is spend just a little bit more to bump up into top ten, but that, in itself, doesn't matter. The Quakes have been bad due to poor coaching leadership and incredibly bad roster decisions. If you can fix one of those things, your team is suddenly going to look much, much better. So far, the Quakes have gone toward improving the quality of players they sign. It will probably cost them a little more, but they could have been getting more out of their money this whole time. They didn't because they had John Doyle as GM.
He parlayed his Quakes gig into another one with MLB, several corporate boards and a teaching position at Stanford B-School. We should all be so stupid.
money isn't everything but it helps. and it's indicative of a cheapness throughout the organization that is holding us back like the refusal to cut our losses with kinnear, pay him off, and get a new coach in the door.
It only helps if you are otherwise competent. When John Doyle was given more than a million dollars with which to sign a single player, he spent it on Emeghara. Things would not have been better had he twice the amount of money to spend. Were I Fisher, I certainly wouldn't be excited to give a guy like that a bigger budget. If Fioranelli shows more promise with regard to the ability to sign players who can contribute, the amount of money the team spends will probably go up. I don't think holding on to Kinnear is an issue with money, either. I wish it was that simple, but if it were, I am confident Fisher would have swallowed the incredibly minimal loss. The problems with the organization are very deeply rooted, and have very little to do with the amount of money they have been spending.
What's your theory as to why the Quakes retain Kinnear? And what are the deeply rooted problems that have little to do with money?
The spending thing vs. revenue - it all comes back again to the same old chicken and egg problem that has dogged the team for years. Maybe they are not spending more on players because stadium revenue is disappointing and yet maybe it wouldn't be so diaappointing if the team was better. To Jesse's credit he is not going for the quick fix, where you sign an aging big name guy to try to help market the team. He is thinking long term and trying to build a club that can be successful in a more sustainable organic way. That's why he is saying no one over 28 and doesn't care if it's a marquee name or not.
No grand design or anything, basically just an issue with a lack of philosophy with regard to soccer. Fisher and Wolff let Doyle run the entirety of soccer ops (which he did extremely poorly). Their lack of knowledge about how to run a soccer operation led to them looking for MLS, and former Earthquakes experienced management to run the team. They put a great deal of faith in him and Yallop early on. Unfortunately for all of us, Doyle is probably one of the worst GMs the league has had. You can see the same commitment to management with how they have worked with Billy Beane. While I think Beane was a very good GM for the majority of the time in that position, he did put together some very bad teams. The difference being that Beane did have a vision for the way the team would be put together, those teams just often fell a bit short at crucial moments. There was never any building up from a bad team, no clear path to success with the Quakes because Doyle had no idea what he was doing, or at least wasn't really making a very good effort to construct a good team. My point is that Wolff and Fisher were very forgiving of results so long as they were sold on the plan for the team. Doyle managed to convince them for a long time that he did have a plan and that it would yield results. That never materialized, of course, but it seems to me that Kinnear's continued employment is basically an extension of that. Kinnear being hired prior to Fioranelli means he gets a bit more leniency because Doyle was the fall guy. Like I said, it's not something revelatory or particularly grand, just defaulting to an expert who turned out not to be much of an expert.
Bottom line is , if they fire Kinnear , they will have to pay out his guaranteed salary as well as his assistants. Then they would also have to pay a new potential coach, whomever that is and the new side kicks. I doubt Fisher wants to pay six different coaches. MLS clubs rarely do.
This guy has been here less than a month and he's already doing exactly what I feared and trying to copy the EPL model of jacking up ticket prices no matter the results or market relevance of the club. I've been seeing lots of people up in arms about the ticket price increase for next season and talking about canceling their season tickets. And then last night we had a barely half-full Avaya for a prime saturday night game. Even made it onto Empty Seats Galore twitter: From last night: Announced sellout crowd of 18,000 for #SJvRSL. #MLS pic.twitter.com/B0qT0Bah2c— Empty Seats Galore (@EmptySeatsPics) June 25, 2017 The Quakes are not Arsenal. You can't just jack up prices whenever you want. The fanbase is not as willing to pay price increases. Soccer is not the #1 sport here and the quakes are competing with a lot of other sports off the field. They barely register in the market. We need to follow the bundesliga model of keeping season ticket prices low so that working class people can afford season tickets. It makes for better attendance and better atmosphere. Bayern Munich have cheaper season tickets than the Quakes. The EPL economic model WILL NOT WORK HERE.
As I posted in another thread, raising ticket prices after four consecutive non-playoff seasons is an affront to heretofore incredibly loyal fans. There is an unwritten rule, which perhaps needs to be a written pledge from the Quakes FO: No playoffs, no price increase. I believe the Quakes will be punished by their diminishing fan base for this misstep. But if the Quakes get more sponsors to pay them to bring more non-fans for free, they won't care.
Hey, if Fox played any role in the coaching change, he gets a thumbs up from me. Maybe he complained he couldn't sell an inferior product like Dom Ball.
I would think the decision to increase season tickets prices for 2018 was done before Mr. Fox arrived....and I doubt he had much to do with Dom being let go....the guys only been here less than I month.....do you think he has that much clout with ownership right off the bat? If so he must of really impressed them during the hiring process...
Unless one of the interview questions was: "Will you be willing to make a coaching change within a month of being hired?"
I assume so, too. I also believe Quakes management was caught off guard by the level of customer pushback, which is better reflected on Reddit than on this board. The price hike was adding insult-to-the-injury of years of below-the-playoff-line-soccer. Lots of fans have clearly had enough, and a human sacrifice was required. I'm guessing many fans identified the preferred victim in their emails and calls with ticket reps.
a few STH that sit around me last night were complaining about price increase....a few are debating whether to renew
When I saw that Kinnear wasn't at Fox's unveiling press event and that Fox didn't mention Kinnear, I knew Kinnear was toast.
They didn't have to pay salaries to a new set of coaches as all the replacements came from within the organization.
Fox seems like a cold-hearted SOB to me. I still think he is the one that was the main force behind the dropping of the axe. I could see Jesse being "well, we finally got our DP, let's see how the rest of the season goes", and Fox, especially after hearing from some season ticket holders, just ready to drop the axe right away.
I don't think that Fox is influential in Kinnear's firing. The die was cast long before Fox joined the team; in fact, his actual start date is July 1st. Kaval wanted to get rid of Kinnear with Doyle last year. Fioranelli gave Kinnear enough rope. Playing for ties at home while making excuses about "we're digging into the roster depth" was Kinnear tying his own noose.