Andrulis talks to S. Murphy

Its a crap piece in my opinion and Shane should have called him out on it. The fun begins when people start calling out Shane on the matchnight forums.

 

"We can't control the result. We can't control whether we get penalty kicks or offsides called against us. All we can control is our approach to the game. We want to be professional and postive... we want to have a good performance."


How about stop fouling the other team inside our own penalty area? (There seems to be this idea that the call against Denton wasn't warranted but I don't think there's a shred of merit in that argument. It's not like Denton didn't clear the guy out well after the ball had been played.)


"We're a different team than last year," Andrulis said. "Everything is positive. The guys are working hard. We'll turn these good performances we've had in the last couple of games into results."

And SBC values my call and takes customer service seriously. The only way this team is different than last years is that last year we started 2-0-1.


"Look, I'm a realist," he said. "This is a result-oriented business, and we've got to take care of business out on the field. The guys are doing the best that they can. This will get turned around sooner rather than later."

....depending on when I am finally and mercifully fired. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

 

Oh my Lord. I never thought that Murphy loved sucking the rod of the Druler or Jimmy, but that article spanks of administration. It read like an article straight off of Trotsky's typewriter in Communist Russia.

---To listen to anybody closely associated with the team, The Crew has been victims of a myriad of near-misses.---

This sure sounds a whole hell of a lot like the Ukraine in 1986

---Chernobyl is a solid power generating facility. We had a myriad of near-misses, however, the next time try something new, great things will happen...BOOOOM!!!---

Shane, get off your knees and recognize that if a team recognizes that they cannot affect the outcome of a game, something is really f#cked up.

 

as if it matters...andrulis will be gone soon, why kiss his ass anymore?

listen; i appreciate what those guys over at SCN are doing but there really is a need from someone to sit down with jim or greg and ask the tough questions. they obviously are just going to toss out the "lame ass" crap which has been spewing out of their mouths these first few weeks, but someone has to ask them and not settle for the "missing by inches" junk.

i am so sick of this attitude, i cannot wait to sit in the pouring rain tomorrow evening

 

ehehe Shane Murphy...

 

toe the line chief...just don't cross it...i want a "calm" evening

 

How much you wanna bet the higher ups with the team told him to put that part in there about the league's official website putting up a piece like Lalas'. How the hell cares where it was posted? It was first of all, an opinion piece, and second of all it was RIGHT ON! Seems to me like something hit a little too close to home.

Is it wrong of me to kinda want us to lay another egg at home this weekend if it means the chances of Andrulis getting canned rise?

 

i AM the line fid.

 

sad but true, sad but true

 

So Fozie is complaining about the ref's? Thats so damn High School.

 

Well, there's two ways of looking at it. Is he flack'ing for the club, or giving Andrulis the rope to hang himself with? You have to walk a fine line to get interviews at all in this league. After all, it's not like there's huge public and media demand for accountability.

For me, the article is pretty damning. The quotes about being helpless to effect results, the telling comments about the need to stay positive as a team, the president already looking over his shoulder at practice. Even the title of the piece "Can attitude determine Crew's altitude?" has a mocking tone to it. He balances the piece a little by including very reasonable questions about the contradictions of advocating the firing of a league employee on the league's official website. But overall, the message couldn't be described as anything other than negative despite the PR'ish tone.

To me it reads very much like an "Andrulis: the last ten days" story.

 

Not much more than can be said, other than to summarize some points made on Matchnight and here.

Bingo

We are doomed to this technique as long as we have the "need time to gel" excuse.

Clark, and Hejduk (on Itchyhairy)

Are you saying that GA is not a fairy?

 

To give Greg the benefit of the doubt...

He is speaking in the sense that as individual players and coaches, you can only control your own play or coaching. If a teammate makes a bad play, or a ref makes what is perceived to be a bad call against one of your teammates, there is not much you can do about it, individually. If your team gets blown out of the park, there is not much you can (personally) do about. Being professional and positive is probably preferable to being forlorn, hopeless, and down in the mouth. Which is what everyone seems to telling the Crew they should be. As a player or coach, maybe you figure out what went wrong, or maybe you don't. But you continue to prepare yourself to play to the best of your abilities the next time.

I don't think Greg said anything terribly wrong or out-of-line, although the "good performances" quote might be a bit myopic. (I wonder if Murphy was quoting Smith and not Andrulis, since the previous paragraph would indicate so.) But if the coach is throwing in the towel, then it really would be all over for the Crew.

Most of us probably think that it is pretty cool that MLS lets its internet portal display objectivity. I find it difficult to believe that the motivation for the article was either about "promoting the league" or about "beefing up website traffic numbers". I think it was about allowing a semi-insider who knows the sport air his honest opinion for the benefit of fans of the league. Lalas opinions aren't much different from many of those expressed on these boards. If it were Don Garber or a league official that was saying these things, it would be different.

 

Lalas only told the truth. All due respect to Shane Murphy, but he seems to be caught up in the age-old sports dilemma: say what you think (ie. tell the truth) and risk losing access. Tiptoe around the hard cold facts and risk having people see you as a suckup flack.

I can sympathize, but his little hissy fit at the end of the interview was both inappropriate and ill advised. Lalas is paid to write opinion and opinion is what he gives you. Shane has access to Smith and Andrulis specifically because they know he will simply regurgitate their words. It's a legitimate role, not a thing wrong with it, but it's an entirely different role from what Lalas does.

But the bottom line is that Shane apparently feels that dissenting, controversial and/or critical opinions have no place on the league's official website because they create a bad image.

I rather think the opposite: that the sort of stuff Lalas wrote appearing on MLSNet is an indication of how very healthy the league is.

Frankly, Shane's main problem with the piece is that he disagrees with it. He's not really upset with where it appears, but rather that it appears at all. He thinks all the "Fire Andrulis" talk should be limited to the drunken mewlings of trouserless yobbos hanging around message boards, not "official" places.

I couldn't disagree more. For Lalas to relate the obvious - that the Crew is disorganized, in disarray, iplays like high school team, etc. - may piss Shane off, but it's simply what everyone outside of Velma Ave. (and their apologists) have been saying for months.

 

I didn't think Lalas's article was much worse than what's been said on MLS wrap. The league needs good commentators who have some credibility and are noy just MLS PR rewrites. Lalas really didn't say anything new, but I thought the KMart attitude comments were telling. Kmart's LA comments reminded me of the "gee - I ONLY had 2 hours of sleep because I sat on the bench 2 days ago in Poland" High School attitude he's displayed.

How Kmart escapes responsibility for the midfield collapse last year and this year baffles me. Is this kid teflon or what? JW Perez! Where are you?

 

Oh come on, stop beating around the bush. Murphy still has a business relationship with the Crew, (that silly excuse for a message board where that Lee guy and his sock puppets talk to each other) ) and he's just sucking up in order to reinforce it. He was hanging around the front office and people there were likely upset about what Lalas wrote (hardly surprising) and Murphy decided to say what they were saying.

It's about the business. Like it's always been with that crowd. Murphy was once a major independent force, and was widely respected for his integrity but he sold out a long time ago. People still like him because they remember the old days but that Shane Murphy left town.

 

Sock Puppets, you say? Silly.

 

In my experience, asking "tough questions" in MLS will get you coach-speak, front office-speak, or silence.

Jambon is absolutely right - it would be a different matter if we had millions of fans on our side, demanding answers. But we don't. There's no pressure for coaches, players, and GMs to open up, step on toes, expose themselves. So most of them won't, no matter how much you try to drill down. They simply will not go down the path. If you push it past a certain point, the interview is over.

How many of you remember Connoly's Carrieri interview? That was a good read. Nothing shocking or out there, just a cocky kid speaking his mind. That interview has become the standard in certain circles for what not to say in MLS. And it wasn't even that big a deal.

I read, on average, 30 articles a day about MLS and the men's national team. I'm having a hard time thinking of any interviews that were "hard-hitting," where reporter and subject really went at it.

There was Bergin's recent interview with Hankinson - that kinda sorta shed some light on Grimandi and locker room politics from last year. Editorials are one thing - but interviews?

Usually coaches and players will speak candidly with you off the record, if they don't want to kick your teeth in from things you've written previously. The minute the tape recorder goes on, though, you can actually hear their voices change and it becomes the same old same old. Unless you've done this before, you have no idea how frustrating and boring it can be. We all know how bad reading it can be.

As a reporter, you can walk around full of p*ss and vinegar demanding answers to your "tough questions." That usually won't work with coaches or GMs, and it won't work with the players at all. Or you can strike a balance and get people to talk, but it may not be the gem you were hoping for.

Finally - many readers still associate Shane with thecrew.com and may be skeptical of what he has to say. Understandable. I think in time that will lessen. But I can assure you that the honeymoon is over between MatchNight/SCN and the Crew.

The well hasn't been poisoned or anything dramatic like that, but it is laughable to think we're shills for the Crew.

For what it's worth.

 

France. Euro 2004. Game on.

 

Scott;

It doesn't take a lot of imagination or much journalism experience at all to recognize the problems a writer runs into when he dumps all over a team or a coach or a player in the media and then calls the next day for some info or an interview or whatever.

About all that's required is a little common sense.

So while I appreciate the effort, it's really not necessary to spell it out for us. We get it. Really we do.

But there's a subtle difference, I'm sure you'd agree, between passing along a principle's comments on a given subject and drinking the Kool-Aid.

Be that as it may, it is beyond debateable that when TheCrew.com was managed and operated by Shane Murphy and his Matchnight pals that they were, in a very real sense, participating in a joint business venture. And everybody understood that. It was clear reading interviews and even more clear on the "Official" message boards.

Which is why a lot of us preferred BigSoccer in the first place; over here, Plow or Foos can post that Jim SMith eats worms and molests farm animals if they want to. They are beholden to no one and, what's more important, no one on Velma Ave. can remove them from their relationship. They don't have one.

Now you can say, as you do, that "the honeymoon is over" between Matchnight and The Crew. I don't know how business partnership that lasted what, five or six years, can be called a "honeymoon", but I can say for certain that if you click on the numerous prompts you find on the NEW Crew.com urging you to "discuss" the team, you will find yourself on Matchnight.com.

It's simply a fact, Scott. Not saying it's somehow nefarious or wrong, I'm just observing that it's a fact.

In other words, there IS still a relationship there, however limited it might be. And when Shane gets his panties all in a wad, as he did in the last section of that interview, over how MLSNet posted Lalas' comments on the Crew situation and how he feels it was wrong to do so, excuse us if we connect some dots here.

 

I disagree with you, Bill. A lot of people don't get it.

Which I understand completely.

However, the "honeymoon" was not a reference to thecrew.com, but to MatchNight and Soccer Capital News.

I am right in the middle of what's going on. From my perspective, many impressions/opinions from outsiders do not accurately reflect the nature of things as they are right now. I understand why people think the way they do - that's why I have responded here and at MatchNight. In a short span of time, the situation has changed significantly.

Despite one badly placed Part II to an article, as well as a long-term, cozy, inside affiliation with the organization (which is over), we are not fronting for the Crew, and we are not shying away from tough subjects.

 

my question is what in the hell does jim smith contribute by sitting on the bench?

 

Maybe it puts more pressure on Andrulis to hold a real practice session?