I stopped having faith in Greg during the '03 season. His tactics alone, drove us to miss the playoffs. There's no doubt in my mind. And, you know what? I didn't attend a match of that unbeaten streak. Well, no that's true. I made it to the last three out of four matches of the season, two were on the road. It was the principle that Greg should NEVER have been the coach in '04. It's pretty easy to place blame on something that should been kicked out of the equation a long time ago..
Total ********ing mirage, dude, and completely apart from Andruils, it makes me sick that people use it to try to prove something. 8 wins, 10 ties, 34 pts. That wouldn't be leading either division today, let alone the league. Last year, DCU got more points its last 15 games (counting playoffs) than Columbus in its 18. And that was the best Columbus could do. That was considered the 'hot streak.' Columbus, in a league plagued by intimidated defensive styles and as a result way too many draws, became the weakest Shield winner of all time, then promptly choked in the playoffs. The former is the aberration, not the latter-- if you can't win games at your best, how the hell are you going to contend for a championship?
Also, the circumstances of his hiring were suspicious to begin with. He was supposed to be a caretaker, did just enough to convince the FO not to bother with an expensive coaching search, sucked ass the next year, and yet was in no job jeopardy. Smacks of 'cheapskatism.' (And isn't that how Fitzgerald had been hired, too?)
I'm happy for Crew fans. I imagine what they feel now is something like what my father felt back in 1989 in Bulgaria, when the Communist government fell.
yes. not sure, but Yeagley was the same way, more in college than MLS.... (camps... sneakers... etc.) I once was told by someone who would know that LA/Metro are around 400K for a coach... (you can see why Bradley would leave Chicago for NY) with middle America teams including HSG are 200 range. So take a guess Clarke is ~200 (or I would believe anything down to about 120 frankly) and you can imagine how a long term college coach would pass on MLS.
You're right -- the former probably was the aberration. I'm not arguing that point. It just pisses me off that everyone's willing to form a line a hundred yards long to spit at his feet over every single thing that went wrong, but no one is ever, ever willing to acknowledge the good things that happened. Greg Andrulis took a team that was in the dumper when Fitz was fired and led them to the playoffs, without losing a home match the rest of the season. Greg Andrulis won an Open Cup. Greg Andrulis won an Eastern Conference Championship. Greg Andrulis won a Supporters Shield. Name me one other Columbus Crew head coach who has done any -- ANY -- of those things. I heard someone say once that the indicator of a strong mind is the ability to keep two opposing points of view in your head at the same time. Try it here: You can agree with the decision to fire a head coach WITHOUT completely ignoring good things he accomplished. That's all.
I'll take "Missing The Point" for $1,200, Alex. You don't have to pretend the good doesn't exist to acknowledge the bad.
Well I am only addressing what you wrote. The lame attempt at cleverness aside you are still implying that since he has performed better than the poor coaches of the past that some level of competence existed. Nor did anyone try to do so. But when people want to try to push the 18 game streak, that even non crew fans gave no respect to, as some sort of accomplishment people can be excused for saying hold on.
Does Brian Bliss have a friend in the MLSnet.com press corps or something? There was an article about his interest in the Colorado job after Hankinson got fired.
Cause our team is that good, we can win desipte whatever competition is out there. It is more in our hands, then whom we play against.
The Russert guy is local KC and writes tons of KC stuff for both MLSnet and Chris Bergin's site. If anything, because of his locale, the Wizards definitely get their share of articles on MLSnet. It's one of the few things in which KC probably gets their 1/12th share of at the MLS table.
I have known Coach Andrulis for many years and from a personal perspective, he is a good person and a good man. He also is a reasonably good soccer coach albeit his style is based upon the old approach of "building from the back" which doesn't result in a very exciting game of soccer. It is easy to jump on the "dump the coach" bandwagon when the team is in the dumpster as we can all see from various comments on this forum board. We saw the same thing earlier this season and most of last season with Dave Sarachan with the Fire and now that the Fire are in first place points-wise, the "Coach Sarachan death-watch" topic has all but disappeared from view. Did Sarachan change his coaching style--probably not, and neither did Andrulis change his because he believed it would work and it had worked previously. It certainly wasn't his fault the Crew lost McBride, Cunningham, West and others. It certainly wasn't his fault that three keepers went down this season. It was his style of play and the lack of an energized attack that was his downfall--not his coaching ability but the inability of the players to work within his system, which, unfortunately was not producing results with the players with which he had to work. Greg will be fine once the furor subsides and I, for one, wish him the best because he deserves the best.
Bull$hit KC and you know it. When Andrulis was first hired a lot of folks weren't disappointed he was named interim coach -- and when we went on one hell of a run everyone was satisfied. It's only when we starting missing the playoffs and playing craptacular soccer that folks wanted him out, don't make crap up to further your cause. There is not a single soul on these boards that wishes nothing but the best for Andrulis now that he is not coach of the Columbus Crew. Personally I hope he finds a nice college head coaching gig and lives out his personal dream as started in an article of his hometown newspaper. He was nothing but nice to me but that doesn't discount the fact I thought he was a poor tactician for the pro game.
Again, Rommul, you are taking ONE tiny element of what he was saying while IGNORING his main point. Again, that's why you annoy the crap out of ppl. You're right: he is saying that some level of competence existed, which is overshadowed by the fact that it was his time to go. That he wasn't a spectacular coach in line to take over Juventus, ManU, Brazilian Nats, etc. In case you missed (what do I mean, "in case")... better stated... BECAUSE you missed his point entirely, here it is: To review: Andrulis accomplished a few good things, yet it was his time to go.
Do you ever get tired of hammering the same point over and over? I am ignoring his main point because I have no problem with it. I do however have a problem with the point made in the exerpt I highlighted. Is that okay with you? Am I allowed to do that or do I have to get permission? BTW there is this thing called the ignore list that you may like to take advantage of. Do us a favor. Think before you post and don't make assumptions based on the person making the post. You sound less monotonous that way.
Nope. I get tired of threads becoming piss matches w/ you b/c you always resort to the same argumentative tactic that reduces complex arguments to one minor component, then blows that minor component into a distorted picture of something that absolutely was not said or even implied. Case in point: Where? Where? Where? When? When did he say this? When did he imply this? At no point!! This might be a lil' to sophistimacated for you, but what he was saying is that Andrulis fell somewhere in between "Absolute worst coach in the history of sports on the planet" (a position taken by many Crew fans) and "A mediocre MLS coach". On a scale of 1-100 (1 being worst coach in the history of mankind; 100 being Bruce Arena in MLS), I would venture that he would place Andrulis somewhere around 30-40 range. Not great, but not the extreme that Crew fans made him out to be, as attested by some modest accomplishments in his tenure. No, you have a problem w/ reading comprehension. Look. I'm just pointing out yet another time when ANOTHER poster has called you on YOUR reading comprehension "skills". So long as you take snipets out of context, distort them and blow them out of proportion to try and trap ppl into admiting that they said something that they did not, yeah, I'll keep calling you on it.
Hmm..it seems this thread was doing fine ntil YOU turned it into a pissing match by choosing to discuss posters instead of the topic at hand. You know what I find most perplexing about people like you who author these predictable responses to me? The fact you tend to take greater exception to what I say than the people I actually address (which goes back to my comment about the author of the post meaning more to you than what was actually said). Allow me to show a little class for the both of us (by not ruining this discussion for the majority of people who are reading this thread) and put an end to this pissing contest that you seem to be so eager to engage in. This is my last response to you. The final word will be yours (no doubt you will take advantage of it). Here hoping someone rescues this thread from the people who have nothing to say about the actual topic. /crosses fingers
Actually, there's a lot of truth to what you're saying, and nine times out of ten I take a basically similar approach. This time, though, you look at 4.5 years, and you say "when they were bad, they were really bad. But when they were good, they weren't really all that great." And yes, style comes in there, especially because I tend to think that Andrulis sabotaged what should have been a fairly talented offensive roster last season and bogged it down with self-satisfied 'not losing' streaks that actually involve mostly ties.
To show you, though, how fans can take irrational attitudes towards the coaches, look at this article: http://www.sltrib.com/sports/ci_2861962 Here you have a supposedly neutral journalist (this wasn't a column) puncing on a coach of a team that's three months old in a process that for the first season anyway was rigged against them. With that talent (especially the lack to depth to cover for guys who are injured, away, or slumping), I can't see how it's Ellinger's fault they're not winning, and I can't really see how it's his fault they don't have more talent. Yet here they're talking about how supposedly surprising it is that he's not the subject of a death watch.