He was very poor at the start of the season. He showed better late. He should be given a bit more slack, given (a) his head coach was garbage (b) he's young, and (c) he was put into roles that didn't quite suit him.
I wouldn't mind going through a history of young players who didn't work out for this team and their various defenders on bigsoccer saying the same thing about them. At least with some of them like Blake Brettschneider they had some physical attributes. He's not a Paredes who was talented and young, he looks like we picked him up at the Soccerplex youth tourney.
It's gonna be a 2-3 years to redo the roster.. I am impatient as hell honestly but we're gonna be mid and have some real stinkers for a while.
He's 19. He's got 1000 minutes in MLS. He makes around league minimum. He's played twice as many games with the USYNT as Ku-D. So maybe we give him a few years to develop? He's probably the second coming of Durkin, but that's not horrible.
Develop is fine, giving him serious minutes is a hell ********ing no. Unfortunately he has started before and come on at times when he shouldn't have in the past. Maybe the new coach will just stick him in the development cage.
People seem to be saying that maybe give the kid a chance to see if he is good and not condemn him for being in a shitty situation last season... I hope he develops into a reasonable player because of he does, he could help us out for a long time.
I thought Hopkins looked better when he played more central and didn’t have to beat anyone on the dribble. His lack of pace wasn’t as exposed, kind of like Durkin. But still, he’s Drew Skundrich level. Unless he can show he has goals in him, or his right foot is the second coming of Julian Gressel, the rest of his game isn’t good enough to play anything but sparingly.
Hopkins looked like Paredes in his first 5 games. But Paredes was consistently given lots of playing time.
I think this applies to everyone on the team. If Wazza could take a promotion contender and put them on relegation watch in a matter of weeks, imagine what he was able to do to our players in a year+
Especially young players. Think about how Rooney got a bunch of praise for how he worked with Derby's youth. Then think how it would hit a young player at DC United when Rooney was flailing around and they are thinking "it must be me that is bad". Talk about a blow to a teenager's confidence...
Yeah, I picked up a Perkins GK jersey and an Olsen black ss top, along with Namoff #26 shorts over the (early) years. Still have all three, but they're a bit worse for the wearing during pickup games...
It’s going to take years to turn this thing around. Not just the damage Rooney did, but what decades of Kasper and bad ownership have done. I think it’s reasonable to give Mackay and Lesesne a substantial break on 2024 (no Spoon though), but what they do with the summer window and heading into 2025 will tell us a lot. Right now, I’d say the smart money is on avoiding the Spoon in ‘24-‘25 and maybe challenging for the last playoff spot in ‘26. After that, if they’ve managed to build a team, the ceiling could get higher. But it’ll take time and patience.
Lesesne seems like the guy we hoped Losada would be, in terms of man management but also playing an uptempo style. I don't buy that we're out of funds. I think we're keeping our powder dry for the summer window, and in a rebuilding phase, that's the right move. I'm expecting better results by year's end. At our best last year we were good enough for the playoffs. We did jettison some decent depth. We'll have more hiccups with the young guys than previously, sure, and it'll cost us points. But I'm a little more optimistic about our trajectory. We're building a pretty interesting depth chart.
Typical backed up scramble, sitting there swilling beers on a pace slightly slower than my alcoholic customer at the time. The group in front of us was older, had a woman which should have been an advantage. Anyway, they finally clear from hitting their 2nd shots and I step up, nice and relaxed, loose, not thinking about this being the long drive hole and absolutely lasered one. Just as I finish my swing, the group behind us rolls up while the ball is in the air and someone goes, "nice job putting the long drive out of reach". I look back and there's the sign at the very back of the pro tees that we'd driven right past without noticing. We were 40-50 yds past where the group in front of us hit their 3rd shot from. I don't think I ever hit a ball that far again. They said it was 342 yds in the clubhouse when they announced it. I was usually the long drive guy on a scramble team back then because I was long, but that was obscene. No way I'd have ever been that loose and free swinging had I realized/known it was the long drive hole. I was 32 and its hard to believe that was over 20 years ago. G-D long drive prize was an Odyssey White Hot putter.
We are absolutely not out of funds. We've traded for funds, we have various slots open for players of different pay levels, and we have other obvious ways to get more money if we need it. What we need right now isn't even expensive players, it's serviceable players. These players are in the range of 200,000 a year to 600,000 a year.
Last Saudi match against El Ettifaq was a 0-2 loss. We were down 0-2 at the half and that's how it ended.
Yes, and the end of this year opens up a fortune we’ve been saddled with. Maybe a few more servicable now/this summer. Show potential players we’re at least a little less incompetent than we have been, and get ready to make some moves (that will hopefully be planned/agreed to well in advance) on Jan 1, ‘25.