I'm really sad we don't have a Yank Owners Abroad subforum... well, now that I mention it... Heck, maybe we'll get enough coaches one day to warrant it's own subforum. (Ha, just saw BostonRed actually suggested it. I'm always one step behind the beantowners...)
Thanks. Well if you don't want to put him in ya, which for the life of me I don't understand, can you at least change the category to:academy AND coaches Or three different categories of:ya, coaches and academy?
Was thinking the same thing. Bradley is coaching first-team Premier League players who have with hundreds upon hundreds of league career appearances in the EPL and other top European leagues -- he's not coaching academy kids -- so it makes more sense to me to simply change the title to "YA Academy and YA Coaches" or something. Or create a separate subforum for YA Coaches. I do see the upside in having Bradley's thread outside of the regular YA so it won't get buried, and I understand YA Coaches is mentioned within the little description of YA Academy, but the inclusion of a Premier League manager there makes little sense to me without coaches being in the title and not just in the faded fine print that not many will bother to look at. If "YA Coaches" is part of the title, then problem solved.
What's the rationale for having this thread in YA Academy and not plain old YA? I think this move would signify that Bob has definitely graduated and deserves his thread in the other forum.
Coaches go in YAA. It helps boost traffic to the page and keeps all the popular threads on Page 1 in both areas.
1. Mix himself requested that his thread stay where it had originated. We obliged. (And please folks, nobody make a Bob Bradley user account to request that we move his thread...) 2. The presence of coaching threads in Academy does not indicate that we think any less of them. We just responded to concerns about the front page of the original forum getting too crowded and decided that coaches and the developmental aspect of the Academy idea (because coaches are supposed to help develop players) made a bit more sense and was more practical than anything else we were considering). 3. Update (to all of those interested in this): Still waiting for comments from other mods (who are either away on vacation or bogged down with work in the real world) regarding requests for changes to policy.
I agree with this. I think that the continued issues/questions that posters have are as much a branding problem as they are a policy problem. It doesn't make sense and it's not intuitive to look for a high-profile thread like Bradley in forum with a title that clearly connotes both a lesser/inferior status and a focus on youth. YA Academy strongly implies that it's a forum for youth prospects. But we're also throwing in senior team managers and lower-division players. Just change the name to reflect that.
I'm kind of leaning that way myself, to be honest. It'd be nice if someone came up with a stroke of genius with regard to a name that didn't automatically imply lèse–majesté with respect to a situation like Bob Bradley's to some of our regular users. And in so saying, I'm NOT trying to dismiss that concern. I really don't want the forum structure to annoy folks, especially regular users. It was in fact annoyance on the part of some of hardest working regulars that gave rise to the changes.
That's why I say give the coaches and admin personnel their own section. YA Coaches & Such gives them some equal footing while maybe giving them more traffic than they get now, buried in the Academy. Most, even Bob at Le Harve, didn't get regular updates, even though they are coaching every week and making moves that people might talk about if they weren't overwhelmed by PL2 and BL U19 matches.
I am on board with BostonRed's idea. Make a new section for coaches and trainers etc. To add to this. possibly include American owners abroad in the coaching section. It could be called something like... Yank Owners, Coaches and Trainers Abroad.
I confess to not totally getting the "If they've played in MLS they should be in the main forum, no matter if or where they play abroad" rule. This is Yanks Abroad. Take the Alex Bono thread: Rumors fit well in the Academy forum generally, and who cares where a player plays domestically in the context of YA? Surely it makes little sense to put a (hypothetical) guy with a few MLS appearances in the MLS forum if he plays in, say, Sweden's second division. Of course, it's possible I no longer know/understand the rule...
Don't worry. They quashed my request. I'm the one who doesn't understand. I'm going to leave it well enough alone.
But that's just one example. It's honestly something I don't understand -- I'm not really interested in playing thread cop, rather just trying to make this place as navigable as possible.
I have recommended before we put the coaches and non-playing personnel into a separate thread. No more arguing about where a coach belongs and maybe they will get more attention than they get now.
Not to be That Guy, which I totally am, but maybe this is an opportunity to reconsider dividing YA into subforums that are self-explanatory? I could easily, because I don't have to do the work, see this happening in ways that would require few, if any, thread moves, and would be crystal-clear to posters.
A somewhat related question about the YA forums going forward... It makes sense that we don't consider teams in Canada as overseas for YA purposes because the teams are in a US-based league (MLS, USL, NASL), but now the Canadian Premier League is kicking off in 2019 and will be entirely contained within Canada (at least for now). Has the Grand Wizards Council made a call on how any YAs who sign in Canada will be treated for the purposes of these forums? It makes sense that the league will be a YAA league, but wondering if players who head to Canada will be eligible for their own threads. I don't care either way, but figured we'd want to make a decision soon as the CPL teams are announcing signings.
I think any Yanks that sign with CPL teams should get their own YAA threads, yeah. But I'll defer to @bungadiri and @dark knight to make the final call.