As much as I sense your sarcasm as you get older D), he can't really do any worse than we've done the past few years.
Addition by subtraction is certainly a positive. The real issues are the lack of knowledge of the International Game in the FO. I do not doubt Jay Heaps passion and desire to win. The problem is the Club either needs a technical Director with Heaps working under him or it needed to hire an experienced coach and Heaps as number 1 assistant so that he could be mentored for a year or two with the experienced head eventually being promoted to the position of Technical Director. If somehow ownership is committed to spending money and the FO gets lucky there is a small chance of a mid table finish next year. If not relegation (if it existed) would be a favor to the Revs. Never forget that Thomas Dooley was available for the coaching job. He would have been perfect for either the TD job or a head coaching job mentoring J. Heaps
I'm not clear if the issue was SN's ability to identify players or the FO's desire to sign them. Its probably a mix of both but I tend to believe that the issue was more the latter.
And that's what the Revs FO has also said by canning only Nicol. I do go back to the list of 20 he brought back from Argentina and was told no on everyone of them though.
It is becoming more and more clear why Jay Heaps is the coach here. I know others had said this right away, but I just didn't want to believe it....No one else wanted step into this mess. Burns has no ********ing clue what he is doing. Bilello knows how to fold jerseys well, but certainly has no clue how to run a soccer club. Kraft's obviously don't give a crap, they aren't going to spend the money needed to be successful in MLS 2.0. Think about it, if you were an established soccer coach, hell or even an unestablished one...would you want to risk your reputation with this club who refuses to even keep their best players?
Pretty much (although last year was significantly better than the previous years). We should probably wait and see which of them get re-signed. Just about everything that's happening in MLS last week and this is about cap room. Everyone's focused on squeezing down their current salary expenses so they have the most room possible for acquisitions of all types. The expansion draft, the players released, the re-entry draft, the options declined ... it's all geared to opening up cap room. Regardless of how effective they've been at acquiring players in the past, maximizing the available cap room is critical to building a better lineup, with a strong bench. I liked Zerka a lot last year, but his salary is too high for what he does. Lekic and Carraglio are forwards - so pay for performance applies. Based on what they did last season, their valuations have changed. I doubt any EPL teams are beating down the doors for Carraglio based on his scoring 3 goals in MLS last year.
It was? Zerka has been a decent signing, but who else? Coria and Caraglio were just unmet potential. Domi, Dabo, Augustine... That is no better than recent years at all.
Yup. In fact, if we sign a under 22 yr old player for $100k (total salary + fees) next year during the summer, we could call them a DP because of the young DP rule
yes I am waiting I am waiting All year All year I am waiting I am waiting All year All year Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere
If a players signs after July 15th, then the threshold drops down to half of the 335k, or roughly 170k.
Yes, great bunch of signings. Let's see, who did we sign? Domi - injured most of the time and didn't finish the season. Dabo - injured most of the time and didn't finish the season. Lekic - sporadic, was used as a single striker, but was better when paired. Caraglio - Overall, pretty good, considering he was coming off a serious injury and hadn't played in a long time. Feilhaber - I guess he counts, although the Revs didn't do anything to acquire him. Zerka - Also pretty good overall in the half-year he was here. Out of all of these guys, only one, Benny Feilhaber is definitely going to be part of the team next year. I'm 50-50 on Lekic. I might have given him another shot, but I don't fault the club if they don't. You'd think they'd want to keep their much-touted new signings, the guys who KADs would point to and say, "see, the Revs are not totally incompetent at signing decent players." Zerka and Caraglio are two key players that they need to hang on to. Pissing them off by trying to renegotiate their contracts is a sure way to send a signal to anyone else considering the Revs that this is a wonderful organization that always does the right thing by their players, right? Half a season of doing everything that was asked in a difficult situation, where the only thing keeping you going is hope for next year, and this is the move they make? Having lots of cap room is useless if you can't use it.
Here's something to think about, and I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but this Caraglio situation is really bothering me. Last year, 6 weeks before Caraglio was signed was when we had the Fortgate incident. Even outside of the Fort though, unrest had become the norm for Revs fans. We hadn't won a game since May 12th, and we looked bad overall. Attendance to that point was dismal. Then all of a sudden the Revs announce their first ever DP signing. Now, I'm assuming they knew of this contract, buy out, loan or whatever at that point, and realized they would have to fork out minimal dollars since allocation money would mostly be spent to cover the cost. It's not like he killed us on salary after all. So the fans were placated by this move ... and it worked. And now all of a sudden, the loan is an issue, or the salary cap is an issue, etc. Why? What exactly changed? Did they expect some magical player who hadn't played in months prior to signing to come in here and light up the league? And when he ONLY had 3 goals and 2 assists in 12 starts for a shit team, that was enough to say ... nah, we don't want to pay you or your agents that much? So I'll repeat ... what exactly changed? Was this move last year done just to shut the fans up?
When Benny was in misery at miserable Derby County, he must have thought: "There can be no Hell as Hellish as This".......betcha, now, he's changed his mind.
Interesting how there's practically no one left on the roster to put on the back of the new jersey - to take advantage of the free customizing.
They're going to be making a lot of Feilhaber jersey's. He'll be the fan favorite, mainly because he's the only decent player left on the team
Great, great points. Caraglio helped Bilello check off the annual Season Ticket Holder renewal rate was x%. But now the team wants to low ball their "DP" it's time to move on. Great post, repped.
I am sure you posted this jokingly but before anyone takes this and runs there is no way this franchise would pay thousands of dollars just to shut a small group of fans up. Not happening. This team, on its shoe string budget, would not drop a dime to put shiny happy faces on the fort citizens
I admit I haven't read this entire thread, but do we know that the Caraglio contract caught the club off guard? As oblivious as some of the F.O. seems to be on lots of issues, I'm sure they knew that the contract was when it was signed, and they were just hoping to re-negotiate at the end of the year. Maybe this was always part of the club's plan, knowing that they could say that he didn't play very well and this sure isn't the EPL so his asking price is now much too high. Are we sure we aren't looking at this transaction in a vacuum? Do other MLS clubs do this type of thing with their players? I honestly don't know -- just asking.