First roster move for next year ✍️ 𝐑𝐞-𝐒𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐝. @ZarekValentin has signed a new deal to stay with the club through 2022#HoldItDown— Houston Dynamo FC (@HoustonDynamo) November 10, 2020
are you effing kidding me did they not watch their own last game of the season, and he's 29 makes $160k, not a bargain either -- maynor was half that last year this also suggests the coach at least and perhaps GM will return, as Ramos was an assistant on the US U20s when he was there, and Jordan is quoted in the official release what a joke
per transfermarkt my best guess on our contract situation is through 20 Quintero Ramirez Hansen Salazar Fuenmayor Junqua Nelson Lemoine Adams Palomino Figueroa Ceren Boniek Memo Martinez Lassiter Zahibo new for 21 Castilla Rios Hoffman Bajamich 20 with 21 option Cabrera through 21 Bizama Manotas through 22 Valentin (now) Struna ??? Cropper Maric (probably at least one more year) Pena McCue (my guess is 2+1+1 up this year) Lundkvist Vera (my guess is 2+1+1 up this year)
faced with that ability to largely reshape the team your response is the first offseason signing is bringing Valentin back the day after both goals come up his side
I think on the season as a whole - Valentin was good enough and worthy of being re-signed. most of the goals against us came on teams coming in through the middle or from Lundquist. The trio of Struna Cabrera and Fuenmayor lost a lot of points for us Figueroa had a blunder or two but he added more than he gave away
“As the season went on, we found out more about the team and I have a good idea of how to get better. Going younger is by no means throwing in the towel Bc I’m here to win. I don’t want to win 5 yrs from now, 5 yrs from now I won’t have a job.”- @RamosTab on @soccermattersGD— The Surge SG (@TheSurgeSG) November 11, 2020 Small quote from our Head Coach Tab Ramos on last nights Soccer Matters with @GlennDavisSoc. Check out the rest of the Q&A here https://t.co/UvHxYJytau— The Surge SG (@TheSurgeSG) November 11, 2020 Message to @HoustonDynamo Ownership. You hired the right coach, now invest and help Tab out. Houston is not a small market city. Dynamo is not a last place club. Right the ship or sell to someone who will. #HoldItDown #DejaloTodo— The Surge SG (@TheSurgeSG) November 11, 2020
we were on pace to allow 60 goals and far as i am concerned no one was reliable enough the CBs can't keep up with their men, Lundkvist cannot mark, and I can recall Valentin getting exploited plenty too no one on the bench hinted they are superior I like Figueroa on his game but you can't depend on someone who has a half season in his tank the more of that you retain the more of the problems you will as well and to me we have this security blanket problem where it seems to scare people to literally clear house if i had to bet valentin was kept for the crossing which, you know, 3 assists, meh just like lundkvist was probably kept for 4 assists the year before if you look at the stats we had a better GF than any other non playoff team (save chicago) and it was the defense that killed us, like the year before, it costs us the close games, and the close games accumulate to table standing i keep saying this but our status, payroll aside, is in part based on the cumulative settling for trash at various positions, which adds up to settling on almost a whole team, so to me i have to hold the line or we just start accumulating towards being below the red line
i agree with his sentiment in the sense that we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. the youth movement attitude has changed but it's not really benefitting the XI yet. so surely while we begin to stock the bench/ roster/ RGV with better talent they can work on the lineup players as well. otherwise it's basically the astros when they cut everyone but altuve making more than minimum, without proof correa and co. are coming up behind them. also, when like columbus went real young they got in a ton of people around the age including several key youth internationals. we're talking a list of prized U20 YNT, not just hoffman and then a few HGP i have never heard of. and they played. they didn't even bother running out many veterans. to me as long as the veterans play the modest youth effort is for show.
Jordan is a cockroach. Still alive and kicking long after everyone else is dead. Guess he skates by on COVID plus Tab’s first year.
I thought I read on here that Jordan's contract is up this year. Keeping him would then require the logic that he is worth signing a new deal and not moving on when it costs the club nothing. If his contract is really up and they retain him, then he is not going anywhere anytime soon.
fwiw we are dead last in the west -- even behind LAG that fired Schelotto. i don't get why you hold much of that team over at all. you already know what the results will be. i think some of our roster mentality was formed when this was a playoff team or cup winner. yeah, don't fiddle with that too much. and indulge the fan favorites perhaps. i still think having ching instead of someone young and productive cost us in 12 and 13. we needed goals in the finals and we had him instead. (and i say this with a ching jersey in the closet) but when you suck everyone should be one foot on a banana peel. are we trying to win or not? reminds me of the incumbency bias of the USMNT. that too was more justifiable when we were regularly qualifying and usually advancing deep. when you can't qualify and most of the exciting talent is about 20 and maybe not even capped yet, pretending like the status quo must be better is indefensible and actually getting in your own way. i think valentin would be less irksome if he had figueroa's $70k salary from 2019 and was ticketed to be the backup. i think it's instead likely he starts ahead of bizama -- who makes $250k -- which is carrying a lot of salary for getting very little. basically a recipe for disappointment, and you largely foreclose the possibility of some cheap prospect coming in and doing the job right.
yeah, i did read the valentin move like maybe a sign he's going to remain in charge, but who knows. objectively he is awful at his job and we just finished dead last in conference. poor personnel and looked bad on defense. and maybe that move is more trumpian -- like dictator will to power stuff -- where regardless whether your job is up for review/election you act like you're in charge until you're deposed and standing outside the gates with your luggage. i wonder if the SVP role insulates him. i also stick by my theory that with absentee disinterested landlords that the most senior FO might have some protection as the interface to the money men that gets to explain to the clueless owners how the year went and who is responsible.
So assuming the Dynamo are clinging to Jordan for cheapness sake, i.e. don’t want to pay to terminate his contract, does anyone have any confidence that they already have a new GM lined up or do we piss away the transfer window looking for one? Secondary question - Do we even need one with how cheap we are? Which is to say do we even have the internal infrastructure in place that makes it necessary to have a GM?
#1 probably going to piss it away and try to sell it as another re-building year #2 still needed to process all that comes with the transactional nature of international soccer (finances, contracts, work permits, etc.). i mean a 1/2 compotent GM wouldn't have bungled the Manotas non-transfer and the Elis $1M one.
one more thing! i think that was Dom's eventual downfall. MLS 2.0 was too fast-moving and quickly internationalizing itself that a manager/GM combo became an impossible job description. Dom went from possible USMNT fringe candidate to assistant/interim jobs. side note: i would totally take Dom back in Houston. if anyone could get the most out of draft picks, MLS lifers, and cheap internationals...it would be DOM.
1. I think its realistic to believe that if Jordan was going to be canned, they'd have done it already. I assume he is now in off season mode with Ramos deciding on who stays who goes etc. Why would an organization allow a GM they intend to not resign do that? 2. Absolutely. It was part of the "Plausible Deniability" reorganization done a couple of years ago when Canetti left. Ownership created two distinct lines of authority and never the twain shall meet. Team Operations under Jordan reporting directly to Brener Business/Stadium Operations under the NBA reporting directly to Brener. Just about all interaction with the customer (fans) goes through business ops who can anwer complaints about the team and performance with "I'll pass it on to Gabriel" or "we have no say in team operations" - Plausible deniability - Perfect scenario of obfuscation.
that was why i thought valentin mattered is he's right back to doing his job. a team not bringing him back should have him on paid vacation or at least tell him not so fast, we need to sit down and decide/discuss your future before you make any moves affecting the team. to me it implied both ramos and jordan stay because he was ramos' u20. and even if you like valentin more than me, that's more in the nature of a judgment call decision. he is not some star we automatically re-up. and judgment calls you want the 2021 management making. but then we made a lot of personnel decisions for this year seemingly before ramos was bedded in, and particularly on defense they were crippling. i thought the season was lost before they left the gate. but then just about everyone on this roster whose contract is up -- and probably even the ones we could trade or mutually tear up -- should be a judgment decision pointed toward not embarrassing ourselves further.
i don't get how june-august 2019 that got cabrera canned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Houston_Dynamo_season is any different or better than september-november 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Houston_Dynamo_season we won one game after labor day worst franchise season ever, wrong trajectory for growth, losing to expansion teams and that should decide ramos and then jordan should be decided by years of crap teams which extend beyond any particular coaching staff
Yes. Correct. However, how did all this failure effect the club's bottom line? Sure, wouldn't we, us fans n supporters all like to know. But until the bottom line is so off the beaten path, it appears nothing will change. Well, our initial crest that saw us as league champions right off the bat, that will change. But this culture of losing on the road, now losing at HOME as well, certainly not even coming close to playoff contenders and not looking to even touch the topic of letting our club's core fan base rot away in this process. All this is not going to change if our club stays on this same wrong trajectory. I did not think it could get worse than 2019 but this season of 2020 sure has folks.
isn't jordan the walking talking refutation of the idea that if someone's day job was personnel the outcomes are better than kinnear alone? isn't there a counter-argument -- i think i made it at the time -- that you just create a separate power center that can undercut the HC? we aren't quite where Colorado went with this when they blew up the champion, but by season end the HC was not even dressing or at least not playing a ton of the expenditures of his GM. struna (not dressed). martinez (not used). and the routine defensive trades during spring training suggest HCs being shocked by the defense when they finally got to see it in person. oh crap, fix it. and it's really already too far gone but we trade for/sign figueroa or cabrera anyway. i think the superiority of the HC/GM split was a popular consensus wisdom theory at the time but so was "you need a SSS." time has moved forward. with the benefit of factual hindsight, do you think the jordan era works? do you feel like he is on a wavelength with the coach? of the top 4 teams in our conference this season, Portland Seattle Minnesota have the split, but SKC topped the conference with Vermes as HC/GM. i think we were sold a nice story that ensured there was no longer a single "soccer side" power center to rival the front office/ownership. jordan now probably has more power than the coach, as he survives them all. is this a superior practical arrangement? i see no value in allowing a "jordan" to empire build without really earning it. and in ways that seem to cripple the team before it kicks a ball each season. i could buy a good GM who works as hand in glove as they were supposed to, could do something, but then you have to treat the GM as the lowly personnel guy, co-equal to the coach, evaluated on results and what the team looks like. he has basically become part of the executive apparatus that judges the HC but himself is never judged. if you thought Kinnear had too much power, you handed a far worse soccer mind much more power and gave him executive suite control. vermes shows HC/GM remains workable in the right hands. and the 800 pound gorilla in the room is given several years past Kinnear it should be evident by now that his failure was not having too much to handle and not enough time -- and no one ever really pointed out actual stuff he botched because of time -- BUT THE PAYROLL. as his term progressed we moved into the full blown DP era. i don't think it has a thing to do with dual roles. i think it was simply that if you won't pay payroll we can't compete. that is consistent across org chart structures (HC/GM vs two people) and several coaches. if HC/GM separation was some panacea by itself, we wouldn't be where we are. and at minimum if the GM isn't policed for performance with the same rigor as the HC, and shown the door as quickly, then you set yourself up for an even worse scenario than the Busy Coach. way this works you could hire 10 coaches and get 1 playoff season every decade because the GM atop the low payroll cripples the team beyond competitiveness. when the law of averages should dictate that you make the playoffs half the time if you're even trying, in a league where half the team makes the field each year.
how did this year affect the bottom line? pandemic, period. what is attendance like? 0 for many games, not much once they were permitted fans. that can't be good, not for a cheap team like us, and that's before soccer factors in. factoring soccer in, within the capacity they were allowed they couldn't even fill that. since we have a multiple of the allowed capacity in STH that means a ton of people who could have had seats by merely signing off said "nope, next year." some of that might be health, but i'd be curious if any of that was soccer. why should i exhaust my plan to watch "this." punt me to next year. which fwiw hits this and next season. friend gifted me a plan this year. i punted to next when given the choice. which puts them in the awkward spot of having the money this year but owing seats next season. now in theory they could sell this season's seats once many of us punted. but how much does it look like that happened in reality? put differently, the inability to achieve even some tiny percentage limit on allowed crowds suggests they practically couldn't give them away. i am certain they had more season tickets than the limit. what does this tell you.
last thought, if the owners lived here and attended games then they can't be bsed by the FO. they can only be bsed because they are elsewhere and in their absence have left no objective expectations required -- no playoff requirement or points threshold to stay employed -- and as nigel says the FO/GM get to intermediate to the owners how they thought it went and who was responsible. i bring up objectivity in part because if last season was enough to can cabrera how is this season not enough for ramos -- before we get to jordan. we finished last primarily playing veterans and not kids. i could understand retaining ramos if he went young and committed to a long term plan. it took him months to evolve out of cabrera's choices and even at season's end the youth movement is still basically bench guys. i don't get how that doesn't get you evaluated as a coach playing veterans by a playoff-miss standard. to get the youth movement standard you have to make the actual switch. and what happens if harden leaves town.
The leaked image of our new club crest was of him holding a ball with said crest in on of the hexagonal panels. So if he was part of the marketing plan to launch this next week and then next week his agent has him on TV moving to the Knicks, yowza how much egg on the face can the new rebrand launch get in this process!!! Hi, I'm James Harden of our city's Houston Rockets and proud part owner of our city's Houston Dynamo, I am moving away from our great city but before I go, here is this new crest you in Houston are to enjoy as a symbol of a rebranded Houston team with back to back championships. Something that both the Rockets and Dynamo share in common." Best of luck to the Dynamo in the future."
yeah i think we know what the Big Thing next week is (and it's not that big a deal). and harden has been the face of it not just in the leaks but he's the face of the social media buzzing the announcement. and going out an onion layer, the whole buzz around his ownership reeked of borrowed valor -- be more excited about the dynamo because we're associated with a rocket, which flatters them more than us -- and that kind of crumbles in on itself if he moves. mind you i don't think we'd care about minority ownership much if we were any good, but in the broader picture of being screwups it just fits a pattern. if you're in the league semis there is no pattern and sh*t happens. ditto the crest. when the rockets were champions and did what they did, there were some groans about cartoon unis but it's like big whoop we'll win again next season. once they faltered it was like, we're not as good and you messed with The Look. along those lines i anticipate people joining the two on the new crest. as with the rockets or astros you're going to have people like "spend money" and "while we are at it go back to the old crest we liked." i don't think doing this at bottom makes much sense other than as an internal power play unless you give the fans some steak at the same time. otherwise it's like you suck and you can't even leave alone the jersey. i mean if you read the FB posts it's over and over spend money and give me something worth watching. there is little excited buzz and a few people already giving them stick over the change. this is not responding to anything the fans want.