I do too. I like Chaves and Puerari, and also Mikulic. Cuesta may turn out to be pretty good. My biggest problem is in central midfield. The Fire have no two central midfielders who are good enough to produce a title-challenging, much less title winning, team. This problem goes back years. Until this problem is faced head-on, and until the Fire realize they need to upgrade the central midfield, we're screwed.
i'm not huge on nyarko AND pappa one is fine, both all the time is not... both occasionally is fine though and i agree with you...
Denis was a competent assistant coach for our defense who became an incompetent defensive head coach. He had a great team that he made worse due to his tactics...and we ended up trophyless.
Two words told me what kind of coach Denis was: Tomasz Frankowski. Tomek scored two in one game for us and then ended up in the Hammer's dog house and he never told Frankowski why. How do you get out of someone's dog house if you don't know what to do? The guy's got 9 goals this season for his team so far. That would be nice to have on any team. As for DdlC, I like the two Uruguayans. But were they Frankie's find? And we still got no midfield to get them the ball (maybe Bagio if he's played more -- guy had five goals last year. Maybe Ristic) and the defense is again giving up goals. I'm thinking he's not the guy for us. At this point, despite his lack of experience, I'd try Wynalda, barring Sir Alex falling in love with Chicago on his next trip here.
Are you sure they're even bringing him? You know ManUtd's history in this town. Plus isn't their visit during the royal wedding? Maybe Sir Alex is gonna read the vows or sing or something.
This is from Peter Wilt: Chicago under Hamlett: 24-17-19, 1.38 goals/game. Chicago under de los Cobos: 10-15-11, 1.28 goals/game. 2 years, 2 eastern conference finals; took a 4th-place team and finished 2nd both years.
A fair point, but that is not all of the story. Cuautehmoc was slowing significantly at the end and was not the same player he was when he first arrived. When he missed games (I think at least 10 that last year or a third of the season) there were times we looked better without him and times we missed him. Still, I don't think you can say that we went from a crap shoot penalty kick away from MLS cup to out of the playoffs and scoring only 2 goals in our last five home games as we were pushing for the playoffs last year because of one guy. The team Carlos inherited was an experienced team with some very good players. We then added people that got pretty good responses on here including Krol, John and Martinez and a draft class that was hailed as one of the best. We also "replaced" Blanco by adding two DPs in the summer window. We lost Chris Rolfe who aside from being my favorite player was replaced on the wing by Nyarko. They are different, but I'm not sure you can say we downgraded there (I know many wanted Rolfe up top and I'm certainly NOT saying that we wouldn't have been better with both Rolfe and Nyarko). So, they were different teams, but I wouldn't join in your "two words" analysis. Carlos wasn't handed a poor team last year and ownership certainly opened up the check book for him as well. It was absolutely reasonable for us to expect much better results than what we got. My biggest complaint with Denis as a coach was actually very similar to what happened in the Houston game. We would often come out playing great soccer and often get a lead. Then we would crawl into a shell far too early for my liking. On Saturday, I was thrilled to see Baggio getting involved in a forward position. Hell, he was even channeling Blanco with some nice back heels. But once we secured the lead, we were trying to hang on for dear life, and like too many games under Denis, we ended up accepting a bad draw. This is actually much, much better than getting our asses kicked out of the gate and then trying to claw our way back from a deficit, so I guess I am saying that Carlos improved last week by stepping UP to Denis coaching level by accepting a bad draw.
I'm not going to disagree that Blanco was a big loss. He just wasn't THAT important that we would fall off a cliff in terms of results. Stats are dangerous things in soccer. If you simply plug in Baggio for Blanco in 2010 statistically, they are not too far off. Same number of minutes played. Same number of goals (except that I think all of Baggios were from the run of play where Blanco had a couple of penalty kicks, I believe). Blanco had significantly more assists at 8 to 3. Of course, that is offset by Nyarko going from 4 assists to 10. We didn't lose our offense. We lost one dynamic player, but I believe ratdog convincingly laid out an argument at the time that we were actually a better 'team' when Blanco was out of the line up. I didn't necessarily agree but its too simplistic to say that we should have won MLS Cup in 2009 and it is excusable that we failed to make the playoffs in 2010 because Blanco didn't come back.
All true, but Blanco's importance can't be understated. It's also important to remember who scored the goal to get the Fire into the Conference finals after playing for a tie and losing in New England during the first leg. Blanco was slowing but he was still the most influential figure on the team.
Oh I remember ratdog's argument. I disagreed with it then, and I disagree with it now. I do agree with you that a number of factors came together to cause our free fall (losing Rolfe, McBride showing his age, GK instability, terrible locker room chemistry, etc.). However, the single biggest cause was the loss of Blanco. Certainly by plurality and probably by majority. Looking back on it, we may have actually been better served retaining Hamlett. I don't rate Hamlett very highly (or DLC either for that matter), but of the two at least Hamlett's familiarity with MLS would have prevented our inevitable fall from being so drastic. Maybe we would have missed the playoffs by two points instead of 10.
The right person for this team is with the Philadelphia Union, his name is PETER NOWAK. He will be ideal becuase its an organization he knows very well and he is very aggressive both as a player and as a coach.
A fantastic DP signing and two consecutive trips to the conference final where we were an eyelash away from moving on to the championship? I'd be content with that right about now.
If you want to compare player moves pre and post Carlos, I'd be happy to. The last year and a half have been a frickin disaster with the exception of the Uruguayans. A few competent but unspectacular players and then a whole lot of nothin. At least nothin that we have seen yet.
I was/am a big blanco fan, but by the end of his last season here he just looked so slow. By the 70th min he did not move. I really think he was much better as a 2nd half sub as he was attacking legs with 45 plus min on them and he looked so much faster. I have no idea but I bet few of the goals he was involved came in the last third of the season. My biggest criticism of DH was if we were down at 70, we had no chance of coming back. The one plus this year is that we can actually play through balls successfully.