Also, one key difference is Dallas has 7 HGP and a few draft picks on their team, plus Castillo and some other young latin players. To me, the serious part of our youth movement begins and ends with maybe Torres and Manotas. That's it. My point is to have several, and not just stop at one Castillo equivalent. You hold up RGV and the academy, but that's elevating system over substance. What precisely have they produced so far? Deric? I hope RGV works too, but it's being populated right now with castoffs and cut players. Where is the magic awesomeness supposed to come from? One version of what I'd point to is the team Schmid built in Columbus a few years back. Some US U-20/23s and young players into which some key veterans were then placed. Again, I want to insist on a better level of incoming player, and not just be content with any old stiff. This used to be a team that produced Holdens and Camerons. [I also did notice that you started saying Portland and Columbus do spend money on some players. This is like a week after you chided me for pointing out the more affordable six figure forwards. So which is it, flip flopper? Should we spend like them, maybe more than Bruin? Or not. Last week I was gold plated. Now it's, that's how much we need to spend. You might have them fooled but I noticed your inconsistent slip up.]
If anyone believes Castillo is a one man show in Dallas, then you are badly mistaken. That is a young team of quality talent. They have kids coming up from their youth and draft making a impact. Castillo made us look bad because of the build/counter attack that left him (in his favor) one on one with players mainly Sarkodie, that couldn't defend him with out help. Bruin is a good striker by MLS standards. Until someone else steps up and scores more goals than he does, he's the best one we got. The only standard you can compare any player in this league to is other players in this league. Bringing anyone other than the elite strikers that are in the MLS into the conversation for comparison needs to be evaluated mentally. Bruin showed that he was capable of scoring 20 goals in season, he also had a ton a service and wasn't left up top by himself. I'm dumbfounded by this tactic the last two years, he isn't a lone striker. Drogba, Adi and BWP are those kind of strikers... not him. Service and tactics play a huge role into a striker who isn't a golden gift from GOD himself to put the ball in the back of the net. He will never "make things happen" like other players have the ability to do, he needs a pass that plays him into a position. We didn't have guys to do that besides Davis and Barnes last year and year before. This year I feel they had added players in the mid field who have vision and imagination to put a ball in a area where players like Torres and Bruin can make a difference.
I don't like to compare ourselves to a team in the suburbs that has never won a damn thing and their best "cred" is that they have beaten us as of late. I will take 2 Championships and 2 more finals appearances vs arguably one of the best LA teams to date than the 1 finals appearance (probably emptiest too) in the most boring final I had the pain of watching and losing to Colorado. I clearly said "I Hope and We hope" that RGV is going to work out because obviously the Academy itself hasn't been any type of catalyst to get us first team ready players. So I am not "holding up" anything. Schmid did a great job indeed but he also had one of the best players to grace MLS in GBS. Holden was already EPL quality when he arrived so he really wasn't a "rookie" type player. Cameron is the only one we have really developed. You use apostrophe's but who else is there? Samuel Appiah? You definitely have a comprehension problem. I never said let's not spend. Go back and show me where I said that. I was simply arguing the value we have in Bruin and to prove he is an average striker making an average salary and as soon as other strikers produce they get a bump. The other salaries I posted was to compare the money we have stupidly "dumped" into beasley , torres and showed you how other teams have also been successful even while also stupidly "dumping money" into a Defender - Forward that really isn't worth it (Yet at least). If anything I am very consistent. Now those are comprehension skills! This is exactly what I am talking about Naranja thanks for adding substance to this argument and not just emotional "fluff". Hopefully Torres and Bruin/Manotas can compliment each other and score. Maidana does have numbers so service will come. Barnes.......we shall see.
JuegoView: Dallas made Dynamo look bad last year, last game, because: A. Dreadful tactics. Dynamo played high-line of defense on FCD's wide field playing into their hands of leaving space behind to exploit. B. Dreadful personnel decisions: Olibiyi in CDM against Diaz. Olibiyi looked like a child against men. Diaz makes that team go. In a previous game Raul Rodriguez was set out wide to mark Castillo. Castillo left him a smoking charred husk of a defender. ;
Honestly I feel Dallas is like Portland and somewhat Columbus, they are a whole team fighting for one purpose.. to win. They just happen to be younger and not as experienced. Houston won 2 champions this way, 11 men on the field dying for one cause. Of course you need some standout players to take the game by the neck(Houston D-ro, Mullan and Ching / Portland have Valeri, Nagbe and Adi), but they aren't able to do that if the men around them aren't on his page to do there job. We suffer so much from this over the past couple of years and it seems the team as a whole has noticed this issue. Now we have guys who can possibly do this in Barnes, Torres, Maidana, Bruin and even Clark, all we need from the team is to stick together, do their respective jobs and the coach needs to find a formation that plays to the strengths on the team not just what he is comfortable with. The pieces of a winning team are there in the roster, despite whatever cockamamie 12 page thesis JC writes. We may not have a championship team this year, but being competitive and making the playoffs for me is progress. Progress before perfection.
I said marginal playoffs, same as lately, maybe in if the right people are used, maybe not if get hurt, stubborn, silly. I said Bruin is not a championship forward. He has made the playoffs and is a top 15 forward but the problem is there are 20 teams and I am not sure he is even top half. Re the until we can do better discussion, well, I don't think we should have re-signed him. We re-committed ourselves for several years. Now that he's re-signed, people act like I am speaking heresy. Just last season the idea Bruin was holding us back was orthodoxy and there was an assumption he'd be traded or let go. That's our Foster/Schaub problem. We can't quite believe it won't work out and won't quite risk doing worse to maybe do better. The limitations are evident and the success is not there and yet if just given a chance, maybe this will be the year. At a certain point can't we look at it and say, his ceiling for goals is low teens, when he was on cup final teams he disappeared in the finals, this is not the guy. Instead we will go through the Foster and Schaub cycle of hope for another year or two, meanwhile the more interesting forwards will have to fight the pecking order. The problem these days is there are no studs a la DeRo or Ching who can take over, it's a lesser, streaky thing, lot of mid-level talent not enough stars. Problem is also that Bruin is not the only "settler" on the roster, most of the backline is very hopeful. You do a few of those and you can't seriously expect much. You can hope but hope can leave you side of the road. It was better when we depended on maybe one Ngwenya surprise a season. Now it's half a team I'm supposed to take on faith. I think the system that used to produce routine playoff teams has been converted into something that we don't execute well and that leaves us curb-side when the playoffs arrive. I think it's what the coach "does" and not what the talent "calls for." People act like I crazy talk but if you went more 433 with this team and quit pretending we can stop people on defense, we'd be more entertaining and perhaps more successful. Play to strengths. Quit acting like what we need is more defensive team effort and unity. If you wanted the defense tighter, some of that winter money should have been spent on better backs who are stoppers. I hope some of the signees turn out but it's all a little "mission statement" when what we need is actual "talent." Boils down to it, I believe in a working, non-gimmick system; and I believe in talent to fill it. With Dom you knew all else failed he had a system. Boring, sometimes round peg square hole, but with reasonable personnel, routine playoffs. This 451 is not as reliable and many nights I watch doesn't quite work. So we are no longer a team skating on system. OK, then the talent level needs to go up because we have to overcome the arrangement. The more you are telling me that we should just skate by with players x, y, and z, the less I believe we have any chance, because they aren't special enough to create success alone. I actually think we have a decent offensive unit but the formation completely wastes it. I would like to have a more sniper striker because at the rate we create chances they need to be crammed in the net more routinely. Otherwise it's a clunker offense fronted by a wasteful striker. I would like to see more use of the technical and speed players who would help with possession, beating the other team back, and providing us mismatches instead of just trying to cross into someone marked by their whole backline which is already back. I prefer a Beasley/Williams/Manotas/Torres/Boniek fear of god with speed idea to the current cross emphasis rubbish.
You argue in circles at times and miss what some people say. Almost everyone that is invested in this conversation has said the lone striker will never work with the players we have and wants something like a 433. Every formation has to play to the strengths of the players on the team or it doesn't work. A 433 would actually play to the strengths of the roster, which lends its self to a speedy/creative team. I prefer (I think I will vomit a little) a Barcelona 4-2-1-3. Gives the guys who can create a position to create, the speedy guys a position to challenge the defensive line, middle fields a the tactical position to trade off covering our defensive line while the other supports the attack. The outside backs provide width and speed to over lap a run, there are multiple players in the box to receive service whether by air or land to but it in the back of the net. ---------------Deric Williams--RR--Agus--DMB --------OGB---Clark -----------Maidana Wenger----Torres----Barnes My starting line up
Soccer America's WC preview picks us 10th - so we've got that going for us, which is nice... http://www.socceramerica.com/article/67928/mls-western-conference-preview.html
Damn, I'm finding myself agreeing with *rey* all the time now. http://keepernotes.com/2016/03/05/keeper-notes-2016-dynamo-and-mls-predictions/
Why would i read a private club's blog where a select group of people talk Dynamo AND Dash ( a team i dont follow)? Particularly when i can come here and interact with yall about Dynamo, tacos, Houston news girls, cute Dynamo videographers and other silly stuff?
You don't actually have to read the Dash stuff if you don't want to. There is no quiz you have to study for. We keep Dynamo and Dash stuff separate, so no cross contamination. Don't have to worry about catching cooties, I promise.
Oh, I so wish all of the Orange Kool-Aid drinkers like @brahmafutbol would post on here about how "negative" picking the Dynamo 5th or 6th in the West is. Are these people real? It might be possible to finish in top 3 West like Leicester City but would you bank on it in preseason. Westside take (with limited preseason viewing) - Dynamo with too much talent to finish 8-10th but not enough for 1st-3rd which means 4th-7th most probable range of finish. But if the season plays out and the team comes together a nice playoff run is not out of the question. That said, the ceiling could cave in on this team early and with injuries to key players. First 7 games look very tough and with 4 of 6 at home they have to find ways to get results early - I dare say tomorrow is early "really need to win"
I think this team will not be fully ready to go on Opening day. Too much "figuring each other out" still needs to be done from what I've seen. Hopefully, they find a way to get a result regardless.
Some moron over at Vavel predicted the same: www.vavel.com/en-us/soccer/611066-houston-dynamo-looking-to-improve-in-2016.html
But this "moron" predicted us 10th in the whole league, while the other predicted us 10th in the Western Conference.
Dmaniac, the best thing about you (besides your old informative Dynamo articles) is that you take the time to respond to comments, even from a****s like me. And I really don't have anything against the Dash. You could be writing about Real Madrid (the real Spanish team), or about the Miami Heat: those are teams or sports I just don't follow. I realize that keeper notes was intended to be a beyond-Dynamo website. No problem with that, just making an observation. I prefer Dynamo-only sites. I'm sure you must have thousands of other Dynamo fans who love to follow Dash and High School soccer. I can't keep track of all the bloggers out there, but isn't the guy who authored this article somewhere here? We need to have the MLS Cup winner here again. I somehow feel like we all (INCLUDING ME) are just giving up and accepting our role in this world. Like the forward who plays for the Washington Generals, knowing that they are going to be defeated by the Globetrotters once again tonight. We all have very low expectations. We need to demand an MLS Cup winner.
No worries (there are sites the cover high school soccer?). To each their own, although not sure I understand the difference between a Dynamo only site (also not aware that any exist to be honest) and a site that covers the Dynamo. All you have to do is click on the tab that says "Dynamo" and you can pretend that it is the only thing the site covers. I'll even link you straight to the Dynamo page! http://keepernotes.com/category/dynamo/
I try to be realistic, but want to believe this team can be great again this year. I will wait to see how Coyle starts rotating players before making a full judgement, but I don't think this offseason has really increased our top end player quality (though there does seem to be more variety in player type off the bench). Losing Davis and adding Maidana may get us back to 2011 if everything goes right, but that still didn't win us a cup. Who believes Maidana is at the level of (Valeri, J. Morales, M. Diaz, etc...)? Our best chance with this roster is that our defense comes together a bit and Barnes and Cubo fully play up to their potential for a full season. Personally, I haven't seen Coyle consistently put these two in a role where they exceed. I haven't liked Barnes on the wing and Cubo needs to be surrounded by players that understand him (hopefully Maidana, probably not Barnes). Up to this point, the puzzle pieces haven't fit for Coyle no matter how hard he tries to jam them in. I will likely have a good idea of where this team is going after the first 5-7 games, once I see how Coyle plays our players.
I think Maniac and Ponce might've worked with him before. Maybe a few others could here could point him out. Re: 10th overall...not that far a stretch if we did get 6th in West. That'd mean 5 teams better here and 4 in the East. Not insane thinking if we manage to get 6th. Based on today that's not an insane idea that we manage to be one and dones in the playoffs. We'll have a better grasp by the end of April.
Hollywood is working on a new Dynamo movie. Star Wars' Adam Driver will be playing young Chaco Maidana. Matt jordan will be played by Ant Man's Corey Stoll And I just spent the last 30 min looking for the man/thing/object that could play Chris Canetti, but gave up.
Holy c***. Our new star player is actually Kylo Ren the most evil dude in the galaxy? Why didn't he use his force powers to freeze the opponents and throw the ball into the goal? The dude is not committed.