Well you are in plentiful company. I saw things I liked as well. Better team defense, better offensive movement. But I also repeatedly insisted that there was no way to tell if the team was truly better or anything beyond mediocre given the schedule they had.
It's easy to be good at the start of a season, especially when your schedule is front loaded with home games against relatively mediocre teams. The test is what happens as the season moves along and you get injuries, fatigue, tougher opponents, stretches on the road. How does the team react when they hit a dip in form, etc. I think we have our answer.
Here’s the odd thing - while usually you can use the Gold Cup as an excuse, Honduras went out quick and Cabrera had the Hondurans available at least 2 and maybe 3 games earlier than you would have anticipated. Dynamo have not had a lot of “short” benches this year
elis, manotas, quioto. the front line. you could upgrade on it but you got the team record in goals -- 20+ -- and 2 players capable of double figure goals and assists. i could see them in demand throughout MLS on their own merits. thus ends the list. 3 over infinity is not a good batting average.
that's why i say the gold cup doesn't explain what has persisted up to late july. starting may 25 (parentheses are conference rank): @@@Beasley comes back (5/15) L 0-1 MIN (4W) T 1-1 SKC (10W) ----Memo's last league game (6/1) W 3-2 AUS (USOC) L 2-3 MIN (4W) L 0-4 POR (9W) **** (HON eliminated 6/25 back with us 6/26) ^^^^^ (Cabezas begins to start) L 0-2 SJ (5W) L 1-2 NER (8E) W 4-0 NYRB (4E) L 2-3 CIN (12E) L 1-3 LAFC (1W) L 0-5 ATL (3E) the **** is when Quioto started playing ie the first Honduran back in 2.2 pts x 17 home = 37.1 0.33 pts x 17 away = 5.66 total = 42.76 the away points are abysmal -- not even getting ties now -- but there has been notable erosion in home as well. my two cents, a combination of no Memo and continued idiocy regarding how we handle Quioto and Cabezas (in opposite directions). beasely comes back. use of second tier forwards who can't create and backs who can't stop anyone. may also reflect lack of physical gifts of second tier to execute hustling 442 defense.
actually, having stared a hole in the game logs, i think our issues are very straightforward. in the buildup to GC, and during the tournament, memo got hurt, and yet quioto was still rotated, and beasley and cabezas got reintegrated and their alternatives benched. all you have to do is go back to Quioto Manotas Elis (plus a healthy Memo) Boniek Martinez Vera Lundkvist (who got the job by injury) Struna Figueroa dlG (or maybe the new guy) Willis and watch what happens like magic. i have decided that a lot of this has to do with stubborn bias in favor of certain oft injured veteran players who actually were not part of the early season winning formula. plus whatever snit we remain in with quioto. if we had memo, the snit would be somewhat cushioned. but we don't so we clunk down the roster. for some reason a decision was made, around GC, to throw Beaz and Cabezas back out there. the fact is this season they kind of suck. ditto some others but the others don't get to play unless we rotate. and then rotation is an issue but the deal is even if we weren't, we'd still get a few key ones wrong. which is why we are where we are. just go look at the game logs yourself. look at who starts what nights and whether we win. patterns begin to pop out. who was out when we won. who came back and we started losing. as well as the chronology i put above.