Diceson's latest. Notes & Quotes - November 05, 2003 The Sphinx had this to say: "I've made a mistake or two with the makeup of this team with players that have been a huge disappointment. That's ultimately down to me. But, I feel that there's enough in this team to move it further along next year with an adjustment or two. And I want to be here to do that. I cannot . . ." "There's been a lot that's been misconstrued. I need to talk to upper management about a couple of key, important issues that will benefit the long-term future of D.C. United, and have been danced around a lot for too many years. We need to get that sorted out for the future of this club. That's at the root of all that. I'm hopeful we can keep the consistency and move it along." I wonder.... Nah, I don't care.
Bravery Hudson seemed to mention the subject of bravery alot. Maybe we need William Wallace at D-Mid. I mean what the hell is he talking about. What we need is a younger line up that can go all 90 minutes if necessary. Etch and Stoichkov are not the solutions for obvious reasons. I hope he realizes this, but then again he hasn't seen it all season so why start now.
Why are they training in Germantown? Schlepping halfway to West Va. can't be good for morale. It seems like the team trains different places all the time - RFK, Mt. Vernon, Germantown, who the hell knows where else. This isn't the sole reason the team is struggling but it's kind of unprofessional at the same time. Real teams have a training site - one training site - and that's where they go to work. Roving around like this can't help the guys feel like they are very major league. This is something that can't be blamed on Ray and Trask. This is a Payne/Zack/Kasper issue and it needs to be addressed by next spring.
Its my guess that this is one of the " couple of key, important issues that will benefit the long-term future of D.C. United" that Ray mentioned. He has hinted that he is not happy with the training and practice facilities before. I am also guessing that the other key issue is him having 100% say in who gets signed and who gets to play, without interference from above. In the first instance one tends to think this is just about Etcheverry, but it may be that other players have been foisted on Hudson too.
I would guess that Q1 is may be the other huge disappointment. I mean, when you consider how inversely proportionate his talent and his drive are (judging from how long it's taken him to recover from injury, the shoving incident, and his absolute lack of effort on Saturday), Hudson has to be sorely disappointed in him.
They are definitely working on a better solution.. To try and help answer a couple of your questions, they had to move to Germantown because the RFK auxiliary fields were torn to shreds with both United and the Freedom using it all summer.. Besides, with the team training most days at 11:30 am, it's not really that bothersome to make the trek to Monkey County from No. Va.. It's a straight shot around the beltway and the traffic is as about as light as it can get at that time of day.. I agree that all this moving around with no facilities is getting tiresome, but they really don't have much choice..
Re: Bravery Only if we have Robert Bruce at striker. I think that when Ray talks about bravery, he's lamenting just the thing that many of us here are: the unwillingness of many of our "attacking" players to play the ball on the ground, control it there, and either take hard, serious shots from range or bull their way into the box and shoot! There are too many tentative touches around the area, too many lay-offs, too many situations where Bobby or Q2 or Ben get onto the endline and can play a cross right along the ground in front of goal, but there's no one in there to receive it.
I get the feeling that Ray is an old-school type who refuses to go public with certain issues. I suspect he has more integrity than we realize.