Roster 2023

watching the NT game and jonathan gomez has a motor at wingback and makes good smart runs. what he needs is some work on execution when he actually receives the ball. not sure how much is rust and how much is raw. but he's a LB and has been running end to end all day in a NT game, though admittedly B team.

he's the right age for U22, wouldn't cost a slot, and based on sociedad letting him come, likely expendable.

 

so you're passing on stuff you don't believe? like, haha, GM said it about year 1? i see the same passivity year 2.

i think the GM work is slightly better but people neglect they punched some ageing player holes in the roster before they got started so most of it is just to get back to 2022. DQ and fafa didn't absolutely suck. they needed to go because old and only so good. but i feel like i have to remind people what manotas elis quioto used to do. and people respond like, but they were good. to which i respond, that's what MLS playoffs take. i don't think people get it. bassi and franco need to be "that" level. if they are as good as DQ and fafa that's treading water.

 

I didn't imply sh*t, I said it. The "excuse" last time was "reboot." What's the excuse this offseason?

You know, as in, I pay attention to what they "do" as opposed to what they "say." Too much of the spine is intact. So we're gonna give that spine another run with changed wing play and "wait and see" what happens.

I also explained to your often status quo spouting self -- as in we have a disagreement on your thesis and not your quote -- that we continue to have the same pattern of behavior eg they are telling you exactly who else will be signed ie two U22s. You continue to miss that an ambitious team not just going through the motions and seeing if it's good enough, WOULDN'T BE SO DEFINITIVE. We have a budget -- they admitted that last year. We have a program -- and that's not senior starter signings -- it's U22s. Do you honestly feel like this is a playoff lock where they should be this low rent? Do you honestly feel like oh sure let's give Coco HH Steres Clark etc. another year and let's see?

Kinnear was not so definitive. Kinnear adjusted to reality. If Gray or Cerritos or Ale was in the way, bye bye, and some more adds would happen.

My issue is I don't see that urgency. I don't see the Astros-style ambition where we compete for elite talent and if we need an x we will have an x or even two ASAP to fix it. I see we will field a team, have made some changes within limited resources, and based on quality and injuries, maybe gotten a guy or two who could help. For a next to last team that then cut or traded some people.

You can parse sh*t, dude, but every year they do this incremental hopeful sh*t and your pesudo-objective pseudo-journalism approach plays right into it. You need to put your d@mned feet in some subjective boots and demand something if you ever want this fixed.

Day late, dollar short in terms of fixing things. I can search Twitter for Dynamo and find out what mediocrities or prospects they are after.

 

You're missing my point on wait and see as your analysis of MF shows. The word from on high is two U22s, that's it, one of which would be this LB kid. (Btw another foreign player and I quit trying to count how many slot guys we have at this point.) So there is one "budget" or "signing" left. Regardless how they look. With the limited exception of Zeca their pattern last year was programmatic efforts. As such I assume they have a plan for MF, who starts, who regularly subs, who is depth and plays HD2.

Per usual you are barking up the wrong tree.

(1) They act like they are about done but in reality terms aren't done with the attack yet. Whether Bassi is a an AM or a RF the other slot needs filling.
(2) If Bassi plays RF then the MF is trash and they are committed to doing nothing more than a U22 about it. You oddly "quote" but somehow don't "kvetch" about it. I thought Artur was OK on the tape I saw. Just OK. I don't see how adding "OK" to HH and Coco who got destroyed last season fixes anything. We weren't any good a MF to be this complacent or wait and see. Little production, Little defense.
(3) Their history is they would probably play their foreign deal guy before they play their HGP or Raines. Quinones, Thiago, Zeca, etc. With all that implies about making the kids I like next men up. I wish. There is a reason Gitau skedaddled.

And if you think one more U22 is enough, or even reliable given our batting average last year on youth signings, hahahahahha.

It's amusing to me how many pro-franchise "let me give you the news" folks have showed up as the team gets worse. This doesn't need news. It needs editorial. It needs this isn't working.

So, have fun ripping on me, people got their rocks off ripping me over HH, no one apologized for how that or our season went.

Be an actual FAN WITH WANTS. Do you think this is enough. Do you think this is serious. Do you think this has any urgency about it. I am being asked to pay over $100 to watch this, this season. I want more or I won't be bothered.

 

I guess without paying for it you won't be able to comment intelligently since you can't see the games.

 

I listened to the Asher segment on Glenn's show and the Ben Olsen segment on Max Bretos' podcast. Both were very good segments. Asher comes across very well and organized in his thoughts although still too much talk about "the process" and other techniques and corporate method-speak like "game model".

Here's one observation, they clearly are changing over a LOT of the organization on the soccer side (coaches, academy, performance folks, analytics, etc.) to the point where I can't believe if we improve but don't make the playoffs that Segal will clean house. Makes no sense to let folks build an organization and then pull the plug on it before its gets started.

 

Btw the kid you just unblinkingly said IS the LB, looks to me like another one of our U22 hail marys. As in most of his career is second division Holland age 21. He did play 8 first division Utrecht games this season but was benched mid October after a loss and hasn't dressed for them since. Dutch teams are known for not playing much defense, Dutch teams are known for creating wingbacks who are more about attacking than defending, and the team he is playing for allows 1.5 G/g. More bluntly, I know certain fanboys adore anything Europe but I consider non-Ajax Holland lateral or (more often) downwards from here. Player has zero YNT caps for the Dutch -- is "international" in a slot sense not a "NT" sense -- and has basically been dropped by a midtable Dutch team. Not as in came off the bench. As in disappeared to the reserves age 21 with extreme prejudice then sold. This is not even signing Adam to play LB when at least he was playing in Sweden.

That should be a trialist at best. Or a HD2 signing. And you're just gonna rotely xerox the rumor then call him the starter? Perhaps he is -- perhaps we are that silly -- but that paragraph just said, shouldn't be.......like I said, wake up the subjective side of your brain says whether this could possibly work......

 

Btw the U22 initiative is intended to be 3 baby DPs for ambitious teams to bring in high 6 or low 7 figure SALARY young studs not dumb teams to make $1-2m loans/purchases of players so not a big deal they only pull $150K salary ie Quinones. This Van der Kust kid is so underwhelming on paper I think his purchase + salary should be <$500k total in which case why are we even calling that a U22. The idea to U22 is that they make a lot more than $600k where the cap tool buys you something.

So this would only loosely be a "LB international," or a "U22 signing." He doesn't have our passport and he technically is U22.

Kind of like when they talked about making Coco DP, he was $400k salary. That's an acquisition costs DP.

We talked about resources. Does this one sound like resources?

 

You want me to get super blunt, you likely watched Gomez play for USMNT the other night, should a team with any brain be chasing him -- sufficiently out of favor in Spain they let him come here -- or be signing some Dutch reserve kid who got dropped then sold.

Might take an actual U22 but not a slot.

That's not even hard.

 

sorry westie but stupid is as stupid does. you sound like the folks talking up hiring stewart as NT GM and acting like that worked except what it actually produced was berhalter as HC. or the people who defend the GM/HC split here. how has it actually worked? who have we actually gotten?

the way you tell if it is working is table progression or player quality. you're pretending like you can have strong staff that somehow don't manifest it in any objective way in terms of the team. does that make objective sense.

to be fair, i have said over and over we have a sunk costs fallacy so i agree we will be slow to undo what we paid for. GMs get years here no matter how much trash we field.

i think personnel is the prime driver of how well a team does. i think all this other stuff is marginal. few games, few table spots. precisely where they finish within a range of possibilities the roster predicts. i think y'all are being horribly naive. my select team everyone got stuck in. they did "instill" that "culture" but pushing every player to do it. but if you didn't satisfactorily do it, they got someone else. and IMO it was the iterative personnel effort that did it more than supposed culture. culture made it more competitive in houston. personnel were required for state.

last point, i'd swear we were discussing their new analytics department a few years back. how many times can they sell you the same swampland? and i'm not clear on are they outsourcing analytics or using this company to set it up in house.

 

I think you mistake "not viciously attacking" for "defending". I dropped season tickets years ago for a number of reasons, one of which was some terrible seasons and Jordan's mealy mouthed non-answers. This team has upgraded from the Brener-Jordan era, if you don't want to acknowledge that then you are just being ignorant. Last year they made a mistake with Nagamura but attempted to fix it vs. carrying him into 2023 just to fire him in July. There seems to be real dollars behind many of the moves, not just flowery shallow press releases.

 

that has never stopped him before. he’s going to read a box score or watch “90 mins in 90 secs” segments and write 10,000 word tomes.

 

I like how I disappear from here for roughly 3 months and come back to see Juve is still dominating every single segment by attacking everyone and this team in every single thread for no reason. I like consistency in my life.

On another note, can you even be a fan if you don't watch games, don't go to games, and just trash everything about the team and anyone who likes it? I don't think you can.

 

I think you misinterpreted my comment - the old Dynamo would have held on to Nagamura this offseason THEN fired him in July 2023 after wasting another season. The "New" Dynamo at least made a decision not to tank two seasons trying to make a bad coaching decision look better

 

i don't care if they drop $4-5m on some broken down HH. or do you forget the "payroll" vs "table" discussion last year. as in, you can open the vault up and then still suck, and i am not being bait and switched into being happy with a slightly more expensive dog. i want wins not more money. money was always a proxy for why is this uncompetitive.

side point on that, everyone's spending is going up. i think our outlay got us to about midtable after everyone else did their spending. it's not just subjective -- do we spend -- it's relative -- do we keep up with what goes on around us.

you have obviously drunk the kool aid on the soccer discussion. 2021 -- 6-16-12 36 GF 54 GA 30 pts; 2022 -- 10-18-6 43 GF 56 GA 36 pts. they allowed 2 more goals than the previous last place team. they did score 7 more goals and didn't finish last, but if you paid close attention it was a 13th place team that then finished 13th again. they got 6 more points but also 2 more losses, essentially a function of risky tactics that added some wins at the expense of ties and also added losses.

i find bassi interesting but your ilk neglects we ditched DQ and fafa and have basically no offense but sebas left when the offseason starts. franco meh. smith is dinged and won't start the season. so we signed an average DM and a decent wingback in escobar.

btw if you aren't looking too close we have like 3 CBs (micael isn't official) and 2 healthy wingbacks (smith it sounds like is rehabbing) rostered. hence we are out LB shopping having just signed a LB which should sound familiar after last year's RB carousel.

i think they have roughly a 3 year plan. i think last year they hired staff and left the roster intact. i think they are going to steadily but in no hurry swap out the old team over 2-3 years. roughly the length of HH's contract or the remaining time on parker. i think their plan is to compete 2024-5. do i then owe them my watching 2023?

i think the MF is rubbish and the backline and forwards have some talent but are thin. bassi is interesting but it's no lock a second division frenchman will handle this, and he basically poses the "DQ problem" of where he fits in the formation and who that shoves out. i wish it was HH but since we signed one wing it may be baird. we were a poor attacking team and we lost like 15 goals, signed 2 guys, only one of whom recently produced. we do have a bunch of interesting kids but history is we don't play them much. the backs we got 2 goals worse last season and then kept 2 starting type CBs. we did sign 2 wingbacks but only 1 is actually healthy to play. our keeper is dessicated and appeared to deteriorate as the season went on, strikes me as a smart soccer player but broken down in terms of being able to get up high or down low or dive at feet and get back up after.

i think you underrate how much change it tales to make a team competitive in MLS which is ironic considering your critical stance of recent seasons. i think we didn't actually move up any table spots last year, and i think this runs 10-13th this year again. we either don't know what it takes or are playing a long game in no hurry. after seeing dallas and austin turn it around in a year you should have more fire in your belly and ask more from the team.

it's now been 6 years since playoffs and i can't tell you when the next one will be. i should not have to beg and MLS is not this hard. put down the kool aid and quit making excuses. i know you want it to win like i do but in 2017 i could just tell they'd done enough. this doesn't feel like we have 4 forwards capable of 10+ goals or assists, a 10 capable of about 10 assists, a defense with a defensive MVP and solid parts of championship teams albeit old. this is still more nibbling.

the only consolation is we probably finish ahead of StL for sure. beyond that it's earned and they're gonna either try harder or i won't be watching.

 

"I don't know man. I feel like there's a lot of ground to cover and the teams above us are making moves too. That's a 6 spot & 10-15 point jump. The first half of our schedule is brutal. I don't know that Franco, Artur, and Escobar are THAT good. That's basically the new lock down starters at the moment, and we lost a CB without adding one, to a defense that gave up 56 goals last year."

by your own standards go jump in a lake dude

i watch the games. i played at 20 times the level you ever did. that makes it 20x more painful to watch rubbish.

to be crystal clear, i was a fan of this team the day it opened and you when you arrived at the sport started out a FCD fan, and remain a frankfurt fan. and the irony is for all the sh*t talk we don't disagree much that last year would be rubbish, or this one either. as my quote of you on another thread shows. you just compartmentalize to the point you contradict yourself. i am at least consistent what i think of what i see. i won't say someone needs to go bye then blink when their loan is up or contract runs.

i am allowed to get sick of that. and i have a feeling your 3 month absence has a lot to do with getting sick of the end of last season and then not being exactly eager for this one. i grouched for those 3 months because this is the only time period when things can change, tnis and the summer. i believe in personnel. i don't think magic happens once the games start. coaching, gel, etc., marginal stuff. you either field a competitive team or not. i never had to ask if they were c. 2006. and if they started slow i knew they were actively trying to fix it and make the playoffs.

what, am i supposed to be happy with my 13th place substitute?