Room stopped being rotated in halfway through the 7v7+1. Training is over after an hour of public viewing
We all recall the tale that Bez told before the season about how he had a couple new players more or less close to signing but Nancy vetoed the deals, saying that he wanted to see the guys who were here first. Well, he's seen them, and they mostly either stink or clearly aren't ready for prime time. Maybe he should have just STFU and let Bez sign some reinforcements. Currently the Crew is spending over $3 million on defenders, and for what? Moreira and the three stooges? They have the third most expensive midfield in the league at $7.5 million. Do they play like an elite unit? They pay $4 million a year for forwards who don't score. This team is sad.
Bez is the GM and Nancy is merely the coach. I think this is where Bez needed to say hey i already know these guys aren’t good enough and went and found some talent. However this July window is the best opportunity because there wasn’t many options in the winter and the Turkey earthquake May have taken away our only legitimate option.
Gyasi Zardes, Kei Kamara, Justin Meram, and.....Lalas Aboubakar all have more goals this season than our DP striker Cucho Hernandez. That said, to your larger point I am actually fine with Nancy telling Bez to hold off on reinforcements for multiple reasons. First, I am on board with Nancy trying to learn what we have here and see if anything was salvageable from the Porter era. And second, because I don't think Bez has proven himself very useful at building around the edges, or plugging holes on short notice. You laid out the club expenditure by position, and what we are getting in return. I think it's reasonable for Nancy to ask Bez to press pause instead of compounding the problem.
Maybe we should just restructure Bez Responsibilities and not have him make any Decisions on the roster. Bez is a bad GM and our scouts might also suck. Fire or demote everyone! Whatever we been doing ain’t going to work …. Time for change
Just rambling, but I think this team desperately needs help at the back and with better depth in the midfield. Here's a quick breakdown that no one asked for. Defense desperately needs 2 high caliber starters. IMO Morreira counts as 1 of the 3 CB starters, but I don't think feel like we get enough from Degenek for him to be a long term option...YMMV. That said, he immediately improves the current team whenever he's back from injury. Quinton should be getting rotation minutes to give him time to grow, but injuries mean he's the guy and we're seeing he isn't ready. He'd look a lot better surrounded by veterans, but we (the team/Bez) have really done ourselves a disservice by not finding Mensah's replacement sooner. I'd like to see someone who can challenge or even supplant Farsi at RWB, but as long as he stays healthy I am not sweating this spot much. I'm fine with the starting midfield trio of Morris, Nagbe, and Matan. I want more from each of them (especially want Nagbe to be more aggressive), but we need our depth pieces to be doing more. If Morris goes on NT duty or Nagbe gets hurt, we're starting Crew 2 guys in their place. They might have talent, but I wish we had some reliable depth here. On the wings/attacking midfield, there is a lot of money tied up in Molino, Diaz, and Yeboah. Injuries or not, this trio makes up $1.8M from the MLSPA salary dump (even if it doesn't 1:1 reflect cap hit). We're not getting great production and, even when healthy, I'm not sure if these guys fit within the system. Just a big miss on the roster here. I actually like what I consider to be our forward lineup of Cucho, Zelarayan, Ramirez, and JRR. The first two are the high end talent you need to win big. Ramirez, while maybe a little limited (goals or bust), offers experience and the ability to be a spot starter. I would like to see a whole lot more out of JRR, but him as the 4th option is a small worry compared to the rest of the roster. I think the part that is frustrating about the roster [as it stands now] is that it feels like we're wasting the talent of Lucas and Cucho. Historically, we've rarely spent money on guys at that level. Now that we have, the supporting cast isn't good enough to maximize their talent. What's my point with this post? Probably just to vent...I think the current roster is capable of more (I'll settle for not sucking at set pieces as a quick fix), but it's frustrating to feel like the roster needs multiple significant pieces to really get back to challenging for a title.
I don't disagree with your post, but I don't think we should look at our previous ownership as having any bearing on current ownership. I think one of the Browns players is worth almost as much as our entire franchise.
This roster has failed to make the playoffs three out of four years, and might be trending towards four years out of five. Are we really sure it’s that good? Or have three of the last four years just been flukes? Year one I’ll give a pass, that was the post-Precourt clusterfvck.
At the end of last season, I thought the answer was yes. Think of all the points we gave up at the end of games; those regular late game collapses felt like a coaching issue to me. I figured if you could just not give up a late goal in half those games, you move a lot closer to upper echelon of eastern conference teams. In my mind, replace CP with someone who could better manage the team and the problems take care of themself. Looking at this year, though, I'm not sure all the pieces fit as neatly (and we did let some pieces go). I still think the roster is better than our current results are showing, but as things stand today I think we're a 4-5 seed at best.
I think even that is optimistic. Our eastern conference finishes are: 2019: 10th 2020: 3rd 2021: 9th 2022: 8th 2023: 10th currently Everyone is probably sick of me saying it, but I’ll say it again because it’s the truth, the team is worse than last year on paper. Players left, and everyone was more or less replaced with inexperienced academy players. How fans can truthfully expect more is beyond me.
I agree, but can only speak to myself as a fan, not the greater Crew fan community. For me, the expectation was that the team wouldn't just settle for: "Players left, and everyone was more or less replaced with inexperienced academy players." When we did, well, I'm not shocked to see the results. Or, rather, I was pleasantly surprised at some of those early season results, but not at all surprised that, as we picked up more injuries, the wheels are, well, not coming off, but getting pretty wobbly. I still very much like many of these young players. But legitimately good teams are normally a mix of veteran talent and up-and-coming stars. We don't have a critical mass of MLS-quality veteran talent, many of our young players likely won't ever make it as MLS regulars (but they're getting playing time now, because the roster's so thin), and a decent chunk of the roster is made up of MLS offcasts and also rans.
Agreed CB is the issue but if we could get depth at RB & CM that would be great but probably unlikely till next year due to salary cap and roster spots unless we can unload some guys (for roster spots) I think we are starting the wrong Combo up top. LZ , Cucho & Matan are all small . I prefer Ramirez & Cucho with LZ and Matan off the bench or at RWB until one of the other 3 sub out. You can’t rebuild all at once so I think we get the best CB or CBS we can find and if we can unload some guys to free space (senior roster spots & salary cap) we get the best guys we can to upgrade the roster. We can’t take risk with injury or potential we need guys that are certain to come in and start. Next year we will have a lot more money and spots available to truly overhaul the team.
I enjoy your posts ... it's the last line of this one that has me saying, "wait a minute." You are expressing an opinion that could be debated pre-season ... and still debated now. Pre-season: 12 of 13 MLS "experts" had the Crew making the playoffs. https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/columbus-crew-2023-season-preview Now: Five Thirty Eight has the Crew at 63% to make the playoffs. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/mls/ The next 9 games, starting tomorrow, are the soft part of the schedule. If they get to Leagues Cup still stumbling along, they are likely in real danger of missing the playoffs. At this moment, though, I can't imagine dying on the hill of "rebuilding year" after 14 of 34 games. Shame on the Haslams, Edwards, Bez and Nancy if they are writing off 2023 ... especially with sponsorships rolling in and a sellout streak ongoing.
We win these next two home games and we are just fine. I think we can make the playoffs but that’s a low bar. I don’t think we will do much in the playoffs if we can’t add a few players. It would help tremendously if we had less injuries.
No silencing intended. At all. By season's end, I may end up looking like the biggest Crew honk of all time. Right now, though ... I would absolutely be excited to watch them as a #9 seed in the playoffs and think it's still achievable.
Pretty much agree with all of this. Before Sands injury, I would have had a replacement for left wing higher on the list than a replacement for Farsi. But I do think we're looking at replacing the entire back 5, sans Moriera. Maybe Degenek, but we need to see how he is as more of a complementary piece than a foundational piece. I'm okay with Shulte in goal. Seems a good value player right now and you need value somewhere. That's also where I am on Matan. I know I'm higher on Matan than some to begin with, but he's also a relative value player as he is below the max salary, so no GAM or anything is required to buy him down.
The post you were replying to was wanting to upgrade the defense, but was happy with midfield and forwards. The Crew is currently second in the East in goals scored. So, yes, seems like the numbers can back up his opinion. All depends on how much on the goals against you want to lay at the defense vs midfield. I think we all know the back 3 is the weak point of the team.
Experienced/Vets: Nagbe Degenek Cucho Lucas Room Ramirez Moreira Molino Williams Bush Yaboah Diaz Medranda Some Experience but young: Morris Matan Vallecilla Amundsen Very Little Experience Farsi Sands Arfsten Quinton Zawadski Parente JRR Schulte I mean seems to me on paper we have plenty of experience along with a few young talent to mix in to be better than 10th? Injuries are obviously a factor and force even more young unproven talent to see field. In small doses that's not a bad thing. But when the stars go down for short period and then a few young contributors also get hurt, they we start dipping into our reserves. No team is that deep to win consistently in this league. We need everyone healthy and our stars to shine and we'll win enough games.
I sure miss DEJ he would give us depth at RWB , I think he is better than Farsi everyone on the experienced list is hurt or has been hurt this year
I gotta say that, much as I am loathe to admit it, I agree with you on this. I've been muttering for weeks that this team would be much better with Etienne. I don't know how much he was asking but they should have paid it.
I suspect you're mostly right that the money was the biggest snag to getting a deal done with DEJ. There might be a bit of reluctance to move to wing back from a guy that had a career year as a winger. I
Etienne Jr is making 676.5K this year. That's less than Molino at 735K, and about the same as Yeboah at 663K.
He is better than both , Molino if fully healthy has proven to be better but that was years ago . Looked up and the plays LM (one start at RM)in a 4231 and usually gets subbed out. In 14 games he has 8 starts , 6 subs and 0 goals and 2 asst. That tells me they overpaid a RWB attacker money. So I’m glad we don’t have him at that price point if he only wanted to be an attacking midfielder. But I think he would excel here at RWB
Idk if he would have took a similar pay here, also he thinks he is an attacker and got paid like it but I’m shocked Atlanta paid him so much. If they shop him him I would take him not sure what other top RB/RWB make but I would try to get Atlanta to eat part of his salary. He makes about the same as Moreira and Yeboah.