The "Thoughts That Don't Require Their Own Thread" Thread XV

Well, at least it will get him regular playing time at a higher level than R2.

 

I know a lot of us on this board go back with this team a long time and people here seem to have a good sense of what the history of this franchise has been like. I'm curious about the general consensus with the folks here about where this latest low in our history ranks with the rest of the terrible times to follow the Revs. I know recency bias is a real thing, but I'd argue that this is by far the worst state the team has ever been in.

The Pre-Nicol era - far more downs than ups. We didn't sniff a trophy until the 01 Open Cup final, and that team was awful. We had the occasional upswing (the first part of 97 until Zenga got hurt, the 2000 season with Clavijo was OK) but we generally sucked. But still it was the early years of the league, which is in such a different place now than it was in the pre-contraction-into-expansion era.

The Nicol era - By far, the most successful stretch. From 2002-2008, we were in contention for trophies every year and won two. 2009-2011 got progressively worse and the end was terrible, but the good outweighs the bad in this era even though we fell at the final hurdle for the ultimate prize so many times.

The Heaps era - Obviously flawed, but compared to where we are now? This era made an MLS Cup and an Open Cup final. It wasn't good enough, the lack of ambition from the organization remained evident, but I'd gladly take a season like 2013 or 2015 compared to the crap we are seeing right now.

The Friedel era - Terrible. BUT even then, we didn't have the drama we've been treated to recently, and we did have things like drafting Bye, Buchanan and Jones, the signing of Gil, the beginnings of Turner's emergence, that led to the foundation of...

The Arena era - 2019 run from the end of Friedel to the playoffs. The 2020 run to the conference final during Covid. 2021 - greatest regular season in our history even if it came with the playoff choke. It also came with a trophy. 2022 - suffered through the transfers and trying to rebuild the roster and manage injury. That season wasn't good but it was miles better than this. And then in 2023, things looked like they were heading in the right direction until...

The Post-Arena era - The suspension/resignation, the Rat (noble whistleblower or ungrateful turncoat?), the Petrovic transfer drama, key player ACL tears, a lazy approach to fixing the roster and hiring a coach, Porter getting absolutely nothing out of the team he's been given, dissension in the ranks. All the while, the league is bigger than it has ever been by every conceivable metric and the Revs have seen attendance climbing steadily over several years now. And while we may not be the ones out there getting the Messi's of the world, please correct me if I'm wrong, but we have the 10th highest payroll in the league I believe. It's not like we are down at the bottom in terms of salary. And it seems like maybe, JUST MAYBE, a stadium could be in our future. And yet the team is wretched on the field and a dumpster fire off of it.

I thought I'd seen rock bottom with this organization before now. I have to hand it to Kraft, Billelo, Onalfo and Porter. Their combined efforts have sunk this team to a depth I didn't think possible, certainly something I wasn't thinking could happen when I was watching them at this point in last season. As we've seen in the first half of the Arena era, it is possible to turn things around quickly in this league, but I have absolutely zero faith in the above named quartet to figure out how to do it now.

So how'd I do? Is this the worst its ever been, or is another era or year in contention for the worst of the worst? And how much worse will this get (shudder)?

 

Excellent summary. I've been going to games since day 1 and I agree this is the worst. The Friedel era comes close but I think what makes this worse is how quickly the team fell apart (we were in second place less than a year ago) and the sense I have that ownership/management doesn't have what it takes to turn things around any time soon. They absolutely bungled the Bruce debacle and should have cleaned house. While I was optimistic when they hired Porter, it's clear now that was a mistake. He has no idea what he is doing and his publicly calling out players has to lead to dissension among the team. While Porter is the most visible problem, Bilelo and Onalfo are both huge contributors to his mess and I won't feel optimistic about the team until the Krafts recognize this and make the necessary changes at the top. Dark days indeed and it makes it even tougher than usual to be a Revs fan.

 

I think it is a bit too soon to declare it the worst. As others have stated, 10 months ago they were in the running for another Supporters Shield.

But they are fast approaching, and if they botch the summer transfer window, I think worst status could be achieved.

 

If those tweets I saw here yesterday are to be believed, sadly, Porter may be radioactive at this point, in which case I'm looking for an announcement that they will clean house. I would love to hear your take, Monty.

 

True on the money owed to him. I just hope things can be repaired. These things never seem to. Maybe there will be a lot of blood letting in the next transfer window.

 

Yeah. We were worse in the pre-Nicol era, but expectations were far lower and our competition was erratic. I do think the Friedel era was pretty awful, arguably more awful than now, but we didn't have the Arena highs to compare it to. It's the precipitous drop in form that's the killer.

 

Things have been worse, but I'm pretty discouraged because I don't think we've bottomed out as an organization. I think we can and will start getting some results, but I have zero faith in J. Kraft, Billelo or Onalfo.

My only glimmer of hope is that the new acquistion (Kammerman?) will start getting us some better players. But there is so much dysfunction that has just been papered over, hiding the pervasive mold problem in the organization.

 

The Nicol Era: SN was a pretty good coach for the time. But, he was limited in player selections, benefiting greatly from a team collapse draft. I’m not trying to pin it on him but I never found it to be “the best period”. Joe Public comes to mind and reflects SN’s attitude toward non-MLS games in general. Finally, glass half empty: Several of SN’s Cup runs were with teams that were quite pathetic for most of the season but “gelled” at the end and through the playoffs. In short, the ownership is my target, not SN. SN succeeded DESPITE his ownership, but, not unexpectedly, narrowly succeeded. Too much really ugly play during his tenure. And let’s not forget how easy it was, relatively, to make the playoffs back then.

 

I know very few people were excited by the Onalfo signing, especially given the circumstances of how long it took to do, but the media line seemed to be that during Bruce's tenure Onalfo wasnt able to sign guys the way he wanted to.

Fast forward 5 months, Onalfo has:
1) Made Henry Kessler a millionaire
2) signed old Mensah to more than Omar
3) triggered 14 options on players, many on bad contracts who arent even playing
4) signed an MLS average keeper to a long term deal that now looks like the backup

All these things are reminiscent of what we complained about during Bruce's tenure. I'm becoming more convinced that the signings we didnt like werent on Bruce

 

If I recall Nicol was hamstrung by having almost all his eggs in a couple of baskets, mainly Twellman and Joseph. I believe because of the way their contracts were structured it actually hurt the teams ability to add quality players

 

If I were defending SN, I’d say “hamstrung but the owner wasn’t really willing to pay for a DP (which was possible)”. Like I said, I’d put it more on Kraft than SN by a long shot. But at the end, the effect you are talking about REALLY took over. SN had an concussed Twellman on the roster for almost 2 seasons that he couldn’t even really play?

 

Someone else can tell the story of Stevie and the list of 20 Latin American players he wanted to sign, but it pretty much supports the idea that it was Kraft and the FO, not Nicol, who was doing the hamstringing of the Revs.

 

The thing that's most discouraging about the present time is that, going into the season we had pretty high expectations. Talent-wise, most of us thought we were in, say, the top1/3 of the league, with the expectation that we'd be favored in the first round of the playoffs.

In the early years, we were crap, but the expectations were that if we snagged the last playoff spot it would be a "success." When the whole Arena thing happened, we were a legit contender for a championship. Not to say we would have won, but at least we had a decent shot.

I fear that with Onalfo and Bilello running things, this is truly going to be worse than the Mike Burns era. I honestly don't see any hope whatsoever. As someone said, no way Porter gets fired before year end, no matter how bad he loses the team. He was talking about 5 new signings in the summer window, but given the salary constraints, I can't see how a significant addition could be possible, unless we hoodwink another team to take one of our high salaries in a trade.

 

To look at it from another angle:

1.) Krafts are seeing 35K in the seats for a truly crap game versus Philly.

2.) They are seeing 65K+ in the seats for Inter Miami. And Krafts got to rub elbows with all sorts of paparazzi.

3.) No one, absolutely no one, is getting in the Krafts faces about this team. In a sort of bizarro reversal of fortune, the Patriots decline to shitshow-level has pushed Revs so far into the rear view that they’re not even visible anymore.

4.) Key: meanwhile, valuation of their investment share in MLS continues to grow and grow in value.

5.) And, yes, on field performance is awful, but these Kraft guys aren’t really soccer sportsmen, never have been, so that’s not a big concern for them.

So, from a Kraft point of view, it’s pretty smooth sailing right now.

 

Seems like so many parties have a single minded focus on the share of blame attributable to the coach in the lack of success, which unfairly spares all of the other levels of this organization from the appropriate level of scrutiny.

One has to wonder if Onalfo is telling Bilello who is then telling Krafts “it’s all the coach’s fault“, and the Krafts consume that without giving it even a second thought.

if Bob or Jon gave it any serious thought, they’d have to realize that there’s something wrong that transcends just the coach role.

 

To look at it from yet another angle:

1) I pretty correctly bowed out of shipping my money to the Krafts back at the end of the SN era when Bob Kraft showed he’d never be involved enough to address his sinking ship. Gave up my season tickets and have been to maybe 5 games since, at least half on free tickets as an invitee.

2)Caution won when, after Arena’s record points, shield winning season, I decided I should wait at least one more season before I concluded it was safe to buy safe to buy season tickets again.

3) Was still holding off as of last summer but was about to succumb. Revs were in second; the season tickets would “pay for themselves” simply by getting me STH rates on the Messi game. But dithered long enough that

4) Arena got suspended and the true nature of Kraft ownership quickly and emphatically revealed itself.

5) I saved myself STH money, gas money, concessions money and most importantly, my time. I think I truly will never be convinced, ever again, to subscribe to a Bob Kraft owned team.

I guess, overall, you are right. Krafts are “winning”. But no longer at my expense.

 

I think he knows what he is doing or what he wants to do as he has won 2 mls cups. The problem as I see it is the team is not responding to what he envisions. I think that is making him lash out at the players which is causing issues in the locker room

 

I doubt we see an impactful summer transfer window. What player wants to come to this circus?

 

Yeah, the last significant addition was Chancalay, and all the groundwork was done while Arena was still here.

I still don't know how it would even be possible for Porter to make good on his word that we would have 4-5 signings during the summer transfer window. With our cap/DP situation, even if it were possible, we might be too far gone by that point.

Even in the best scenario, it could be like Messi, where he gave them an immediate lift, but they were in such a hole that they still couldn't make the playoffs even when they won almost all of their games since he joined.

 

I would say the lowest was the 1996 season where at one point we were so ahead of Colombus and yet they caught up on the last day. I can even point out the precise moment during the season which was the first home game against Dallas which was lost 4-1. During that game not only did I feel like the whole team was gutted like a hunted deer but for extra emphasis Alvarez motioned slitting his throat after his run down the right side resulted in a goal. We were getting alot of ties and shootout wins up to that point but given how 4 out of 5 teams made the playoffs it seemed like hobbling along like that would have been just fine until the Dallas debacle happened.