Please allow me to be a little on the denial side here. While I am in no way throwing in the towel, I just hope we have some kind of a respectable finish towards the end of the regular season (i.e. not dead last in the league). I am looking forward to 2009 already. But hey, wouldn't it be great to be proven wrong come October?
Shit, I don't care either. I hope we make a respectable showing, win some more cool games like the one against Houston, and pick up a couple more good players. I think we'll be a force in the league next year, but LA is still going to whoop on us for another two years. The decision to play at Oakland is necessary to cash in on Beckham, but completely saddening.
It's also a year of experimentation. Oakland fits into that category. We'll have to wait 'til next year for Riquelme and Stanford.
Necessary for who? Did it benefit the Quakes or the Galexifilth more? Why the hell is it necessary to give away three home games. Biggest mistake of the FO this season by far, followed by Puegero and then Goodson signings.
The Quakes organization as a whole. They reaped the financial rewards of playing in front of the largest MLS crowd this year. And they would have reaped more rewards in terms of future fans of the team had they performed a little better on field and had the Coliseum staff not been a bunch of incompetent dicks. And as for the team, I'm not ready to throw in the towel (at least the delusional fan part of me isn't), but it's definitely a rebuilding year.
We knew this going into the season so it isn't a surprise. Nobody but a fool would expect world beaters from a start-up squad. This is, and always has been, a party year to celebrate our team's return, victories are just icing on the cake.
Exactly. You can't call it rebuilding when you started with nothing, unless you want to consider that SJ is "rebuilding" from 2005, which would be an odd way to look at it. There would be very special circumstances associated with that kind of "rebuild". But along with trying to compete for a playoff spot (which I think they will do - not necessarily end up getting into the playoffs, but at least being in the running until late in the season), I'm hoping the other thing that comes out of this season is a strong sense for who the team wants to keep around to build on.
Exactly my point for the "Re" part of the "Rebuilding". And I am not just saying rebuilding from 2005. We're rebuilding from the years we've already been established. We had a team, it was just given away someplace else.
Frightfully positive from the Beermeister! I have to add that I'm impressed with a lot of aspects of the team. Garcia, Guerrerro, ROB, Hernandez, and of course Johnson (who?) have all been signficantly better than I anticipated. Even Corrales has been better than I thought, as has Kelly Gray and KK. The team could use one more top flight skill player, but if we figure out how to turn Buck Shaw into a pit we still have an outside shot at a third place finish behind Houston and LA and the playoffs in the inconsistant west.
We need at least a couple of more skill players. Maybe we get Fonseca or some other decent strike from Latin America. We still need an organizer on defense. We don't have anyone on the backline like Califf, or Agoos, or Conrad at KC. Maybe, if we had "Fonseca" Grabavoy's efforts would look better, and a "Fonseca" would take pressure off of Grabavoy and give him more room to create. But our team doesn't play through Ned very much either. When they do, we look better. When they don't, we look like crap. Finish third in our division?! Are you high? I'd be happy to finish sixth! Fifth would cause me to do a happy dance for a month. Every other team in the league, including TFC have had time to sort out the core of their team and get some decent players on the roster. We're starting from scratch. Every mistake is magnified. Our players are learning how to play with each other as they go. The unsettled roster doesn't help matters either. And of course all of our guys were considered surplus by their previous teams. And if they weren't, we could not have gotten them. One thing we do need to concentrate on is drafting better. A couple of guys have come out of the draft in the last few years who could start right off. (Forko, Goldthwaite, others) We need to be looking for those guys. GOOOOOO QUAAAAAAAKES!!!!!! - Mark
I think we play traditional Quakes ball: attack through the wing midifielders, use two central mids to disrupt and distribute from deep. The bottom line is our road record is as good as anyone's in the West except LA. And we've only played five home games, 3 in our "pit". We may not be the third best team at this point, but only one team is more than two wins ahead of us. If we learn to dominate our home field we can pull this off.
You're playing fast and loose with the numbers. While most teams have only one or two "wins" more than we do, we are: 5 points adrift of FCKD and the Crapids 6 points behind the GoatShaggers 7 points behind the DynamoHums and 8 points behind the SaltLickers. So that's one win and two ties we need to make up on FCKD and the Crapids, just to start to climb the ladder. We might be able to catch the Wiz and escape absolute suckiest team in MLS. I'm hopeful of that. But I'm not going to hold my breath. I think that you are trying to extrapolate from too little information. gooooooo quaaaaaaakes! - Mark
And we have a game at hand on 3 of those teams, and multiple home games at hand. It's not a probability that we'll make the playoffs, but I see no reason to think we can't, say, trounce RSL when they come to Buck Shaw. And if we keep doing that kind of thing, we are (surprisingly) still in the playoff race.
I think it's fair to say that we got screwed this year by a combination of Becks/Blanco/MLS in addition to the tough task of taking an expansion team w/ thrown-out players and making it good. Becks: Made our owners give away two home games to cash in on him. Blanco: One more home game. MLS: WTF is up with this horrid schedule? It's ********ing garbage and somebody should answer for it. Four road games in a row??? That's just plain bull.
We're not even half way through the season yet. Our schedule is backloaded with home games (11 of the last 15...and the July 19th game @ Toronto is the last time the Quakes travel to the Eastern time zone this year.) The transfer window will open in July and we've tons of cash to spend, plus the "benefit" of knowing where it needs to be spent. Add to that, we have a pretty decent side for the talent assembled. As FY said in a recent interview (paraphrasing, here)...the Quakes aren't worlds removed from the rest of the field. If they can hang close till the second half of the season, improve "quality" in a couple of key spots and start finishing some chances, they still have a good chance to make some noise. Changes are needed, no doubt, but it's too soon to totally give up. It ISN'T too soon, though, to reacquaint ourselves with our pre-season expectations...have a side that is competitive, plays attractive soccer and doesn't finish dead last. Beyond that, Beerking is soooooooo right....wins are frosting.
You could make a case that 95% of football fans around the world are fools. Most teams don't have a prayer of winning in most leagues, but that doesn't stop their supporters from wanting and expecting to win each and every game.
Sports fans of all sorts in the US like to have their teams "in the hunt" all of the time, hence the playoff systems we see everywhere (even in college). The MLS system will probably keep the Quakes "contending" for a playoff spot right up to the final days of the season. I will say that the system does give credit to teams that can put it together during the season's second half. So far, I am not surprised at where we stand. It's maddeningly frustrating, but I had no illusions about what faced us this season.
Dammit, i see too much optimism here. Where's the fire extinguisher? I can't believe we are already acccepting being last with more than half the season to play. The clock is ticking away, but this team can still make the playoffs. It seriously needs to sign 3-4 players to do that. I was predicting we would make playoffs before the season began. I'm not giving up on that prediction yet, but getting very close to doing so. I expected to see more activity in player signings than we have though. Replace Grabavoy with a creative player, add a forward that can goal poach beside Ryan Johnson (the Ruud van nistleroy type, but he doesn't have to that good, just the kinda guy that can score the ugly goals as well as the nice ones on a regular basis, teach Denton how to distribute, add a Califf type center half.
I think that making it to the playoffs will hinge on what we do during the transfer window. We bring in that creative player and the goal poaching forward that FAS mentioned and there's no doubt we make the playoffs. Mid-season pick-ups really can turn a team around. Just look at what Blanco did for Chicago last year. Ask again about playoffs after the transfer window is closed.
I don't know whether you're a praying-type person, but I suggest you start right now if those are your goals. Rub some sticks together or something. I don't know how else you're going to get your wish.