Gordon Solie, the Dean of Pro Wrestling. Man, this is awful. At least when we missed the playoffs in years past, we were at least in the hunt for a while. Even when we were bad, we weren't embarassingly bad. We're just an outright laughingstock now.
They say you can't fire all the players so you fire the coach. Merz sounds like he's advocating keeping the coach and firing all the players.
Only problem is, we did that already. Every year we jettison a bunch of guys who aren't "stepping up" and bring in another "bunch of losers" but it never seems to dawn on CBC* that the two constants are a) suckitude and b) Andrulis. Apparently there's no connection between the two, however. *CrewBoy Craig Merz.
I stopped reading at the part where CBC said Andrulis should be given credit for shaking up the offense. Bullsh**... If he had wanted to shake up the offense, he would have benched Buddle's a$$.
And as the season wears on, it's become very obvious exactly why we won that game: LA never comes to play on the road. In fact, only we and the expansion teams are worse.
I don't know if I'm the first to say this, but I'm going to pretend that I am. Right about now, I feel pretty confident that we should have traded Buddle and not Cunningham. Buddle's value has to be shot right about now. A nice run of poor performaces, people quoting his never-ending achilles problems, lathargic and heartless play, etc. etc. Then again, Buddle might be mailing it in until Andrulis gets the boot and then he'll get his game back, but right now, I have to say Cunny would help us more then Buddle.
I think it's a good bet that Cunny, given Buddles' minutes this year, would have scored more than three goals. We run nothing but a counterattack, breakdown offense and then trade away our fastest and best breakdown artist. Simply brilliant. But the truth is we traded Jeffo because he and Coach Idiot had grown to hate each other. It had nothing to do with our style or Cunny's skills.
We should have kept Jeff and Ante based on the numbers BUT under Greg they'd probably be stagnating as well. Ante, since his move to NY, has 3 goals. In the last two games, he scored once, set up the second one (both against RSL), then got the PK call as he was tackled from behind in the box against the Gals, and he slammed a free kick off the crossbar. Jeff, besides the 8 goals, forced the corner kick that led to one of the last two Rapids goals, got fouled just outside the box for a free kick that Luchi converted, slammed one against the post, and is his usual pest up front with Peguero. Buddle awoke from his slumber long enough to hit goals in successive matches before disappearing again in the last two.
Yes, the biggest problem in all of this was Coach Nonuts. Imagine if we had ridded ourselves of Andrulis and still had Cunny, Buddle, and Razov to choose from. Hell, we probably still could have added Glen and then we'd probably have the deepest strike core in the league. I guess it all depends on who would have be the coach and what style they would employ, but we probably could have gone with a true 3-4-3. Now that would be sexy. Man, I should stop dreaming like this.
I still am loathe to yell sack the coach when things go wrong and GA is a really nice guy who is very embattled now and has been for awhile. But when he laid out the lineup in the pregame "meet the coach" session last week I have to say I at last lost all hope. 1) We play a three man back line when this team has sucked with that formation all year. When I asked about that he said that we had done well with the formation last year. Can he not see that the defense this year is, for some reason, just a ghost of our defense last year. We could put 5 guys back there and leak goals like the USS Minnow leaked water. A three man back with this side is a joke. 2) The three forward attack was simply pushing his wingmen up some. And they played that way, what did he expect THEY ARE WING PLAYERS. Really what we had was a replay of Buddle in a lone forward formation. I hate this formation as a rule and Buddle couldn't make it work if he played it from now until the end of time. 3) Then we get the news that Buddle has been playing with the achilles problem. I guess we were supposed to think 'wow good on buddle for gutting it out for the team what a hero'. Bull! if this guy is that hurt all the time sit him down and rest it, that is the only real treatment for tendonitis. Instead we let Razov get pissed to the point where we had to trade him and let Woly, Camerron, Walker, and for awhile Glenn rot on the bench. What is the guy thinking. Meanwhile everyones favorite senambulist continues to wander around the pitch like a junkie on the nod. I can no longer help but think that the time had come awhile ago for a change to be made. Yet here we are still sitting around on Saturday nights watching this fiasco. To steal an analogy from another situation, going and watching the Crew be coached like this is like holding a guys coat while he rapes your daughter. The only upside is that at least we are not having to do it in cold rain anymore.
Well said, Tim. The "wildly grasping at straws" rountine was obvious desperation by a man who had dug a hole too deep to climb out. The futile attempt to play a more attacking style was never in his personality or skill set and all the players knew it.