Forever Blogging the Orange

I don't think you can ever accuse someone else of not making sense. I feel like a need a Juve Rosetta Stone to understand what the hell you are getting at.

 

what i see here is you trying to offer the FO cred instead of your own as a call to authority on what should be an EASILY debatable question given our crap table position and modest effectiveness either side of the ball. which he is a key cog in. like let's pretend he isn't half the reason we're where we are. good and bad. good enough, but only to take us this far.

people don't seem to get, like, if we're struggling, the current starters are why. it's not some other separate team. you have to upgrade this bunch. not HD2.

for example, zeca is an actual fix. clark is another. maybe sebas. face the fact our midfield is pretty meh. please. we're signing HH but apparently because no one disappointed or cost us.

and basically you're trying to avoid offering any facts of your own by calling me an idiot and praising The Leadership that hasn't had to do anything and thus far hasn't done much. self evidence posing as analysis.

 

@juvechelsea what is your problem with Brian dude? He literally offers his OPINION, which is unique to each person. Why do you shit on everything he writes and act like he kicked your dog?

Plus, you act like we are the FO, where our discussions lead to wins and losses and jobs being won or lost. We are a bunch of junkies on the net. Quit taking everything so seriously and respect other people's opinions.

 

Us turbo footy junkies tho!

 

to explain the thread to people who just want to troll, someone said this "I think the key part of the first tweet is the word requirements. I this may be completely out of the club’s hands...."

my posts that follow are me disagreeing. we have choices with consequences. that's different. i explained why under the rules and seeming agreement and our state as a team we might make the choice. period. got called an idiot for it. great. it was not my primary idea where this should go. it was devil's advocacy or second choice. i do wonder when some of you plan on getting him minutes, ever.

plus, i explained how what happened was a little bit shady which also speaks to "completely out of the club's hands." i get the idea either we did something sketchy, or we did something we thought worked but RSL made a fuss, and this is the workaround the league came up with. since it's unusual and cobbled together from the start the suggestion of passivity in the process doesn't feel accurate. at all. we chased someone, we paid whatever price it took, and we're even going to sit him to confirm it. fairly active.

i eventually said i personally would leave it as is, but that this reflected a classic dynamo problem of blocking the paths of their own kids with older players. he lacks a path. this too is not a passive result. we actively put 2 players in his path after signing him. that is a choice with consequences for the team and for him. he may be happy now but disinterested in being here in a year or two if he's a sub or HD2, etc. people seem to think the pedigree youth players have endless patience or no ambitions. they should already know better from the seeming academy exodus of 2017-2019.

get down to it, over time i evolved to my concern is you can ask the kid to wait the year and hold off ourselves but then anyone with half a brain would be using him a lot next year. for our good as recruiters, and for the team's soccer benefit, and to get value from an HGP that becomes an expensive reserve slot. i question how much use we get -- not just this year but beyond -- when we fail to sequence his integration into the meat of the dress roster. the vibe i get is we can wait it out for a year for the abstract roster benefit. but y'all don't seem like you have a year 2 plan where that reverses. or you don't seem to get that the reasons justifying waiting now also suggest sandbagging in the future. not a darned person addressed my point on busio, where they took their time winding him up, got maybe a season and a half starting, and then he was sold. use it or lose it. he doesn't come across to me as a finished player and other than the transfer cash not sure that's the template the dynamo seemed to suggest it is.

 

after jordan i think that's silly. we're seriously pretending within a calendar year of that chunk of a decade that the GM is inherently smarter? i buy smart professionals would be brighter than us. i buy competent ones might be slightly better or similar to fans, but have to deal with real time reality. i think dumb or misguided ones are not smarter than the average bright fan. eg jordan. period. i seriously believe you could have handed a list of people on here the job and it would have been done better than jordan did it. cause some of his mistakes were so bad you could see it the day the ink was drying.

one of the best things my parents taught me is the opposite of what you suggest. you're as good as anyone. i think i proved it in my career and soccer. what you're advocating is a horrible way to approach life. i instead learned to respect and be wary of those reputed to be good, or who show themselves to be quality. i have no fear of those i know to be swiss cheese. you game plan for quality, you don't concede to it. never though i would lose a game. you have to beat me.

now, i trust experts in their fields but when we're hiring green GMs that's a dubious assumption. we're not hiring bruce arena or the guys in seattle to do our team. we're hiring the underlings from columbus. here, you're the boss now. you pretend like there aren't a bunch of "thiago" type mistakes already..

last point, and you seem to get this when you step back but not in a scrum, but judge by results. why am i deferring to last place, or even this low on the table? like they know what they are doing? try when they are first place. dom earned that trust. not this bunch, not yet.

you like seem to get it's an iffy roster and don't expect too much but then shut down when the liminal windows arrive. that's precisely when you need to stick to your own guns. you like shut down and turn back into a fanboy who thinks we should buy more tickets but not expect much. i think the value of the team and me buying tickets turns in part on them having the cajones to make tough decisions when they come up. coco is a weak kneed fan pleaser decision. not that productive offensively. not that great defensively. just kind of ok. we've had too much "ok" for too long. we have to ask more.

HH and coco are fan pleaser efforts, raines should be the future core of the franchise. but if he sits 3 years he will probably ask for trade or transfer and we will get sick of coco and retire HH and clark and quintero and be back in the same rebuilding place in 2 years. marginal team just fighting to make the playoffs and rebuilding but not in any hurry.

y'all do realize while we fart around league tables and titles are decided around us, right? teams win trophies? other teams who were around us last year compete for them this year, and then people tell me we will have choices next year when 90% of them were the same choices we had last winter but punted on.

sorry, it's frustrating being a fan of this and doubly so when i watch people actively defend mediocrity.

 

That's right, he does nobody any good by sitting on the bench at PNC.

 

100% wrong is the worst kind of hyperbole. i would reserve that for "start eric mccue" or i would turn in my objectivity card. i get bored with people who think getting louder or more hyperbolic makes them more correct. i at least give you half credit before i say you flee your own decent ideas. give me that respect back.

you are missing my point on "path." when the year is up we have a pile of veterans who play his spot. some of them were signed or optioned this season eg HH coco. WHERE DOES HE PLAY? it's so obvious it's like the excuse for sandbagging this season for HGP. problem is, i set out the contract years, and we have years on vera coco HH beyond this. y'all have to come up with alternating days schemes just to get them all starts or time, before we even discuss raines. where does raines fit in that?

you fail to acknowledge the degree of inertia and seniority politics we have here when acting like it;s some pure capitalist competition. how long did it take for the OBVIOUS decision to promote zeca happened? we operate on a glacial scale and contrary to your suggestions, we don't play the best immediately, we kind of give the veteran incumbent the benefit of the doubt for months. i wish we did as you suggest but i wouldn't have been on and on about players x and y should start if we did, but we don't.

we had RGV before as a tool. the tools are only as useful as they get players integrated upwards and used. the value is in the identification and development of the next stars. but if they prove themselves YOU HAVE TO MAKE A PATH FOR THEM. if in classic dynamo fashion the young players are always "manana," then HD2's value slides down. you have to actually integrate the success stories. and not in 2025. now.

classic example is i had a mediocre club teammate who was popular and started for the HS. i never thought he did much. another friend of mine and his colleague came up on JV after us and were awesome. ended up all state later on. we saw what they had and begged for them. coach didn't bring them up until end of the regular season my teammate blew his knee. like he was forced to make the change. they had 5 goals in the state playoffs. sorry but you're like basically saying "they need to beat out the senior" when the reality is they can play awesome and the coach has to push the darned button to make the swap. the dynamo, to me, all too often are like my HS coach. seniority favoring, popularity attuned, slow to make changes, even if the new has more talent. some coaches get so hidebound they don't quite get x is good but y is great. they think, i have a good mid. why should i change. meh. if my club team thought this way we would have stalled out in EDDOA. you win state by continuing to upgrade players most teams would be happy with, and developing further what you have. a lot of success is not getting complacent. you even like say this is not enough then get complacent about doing things about it.

you pretend like there are no politics or biases or inertia or stubbornness involved. that's odd from a coach. you never look at other teams and are like, dude, you have it all wrong, why is he sitting, why do you play that way? then don't pretend like sports are some perfect invisible hand sorting machine. there are humans involved, fallible ones, and some flat suck.

 

lied to me? ******** off. you're a creep. whatever my fake rep is on here, i'm a nice person IRL. you're an ass hole who pretends to be the voice of reason here but cuts down other people. and when you have a good idea you get down in the blocks and sprint from it.

 

how does a first year GM have a track record?

i get he played here but that's sentimentality. i get he was second in command on a title winner but that is the argument for caserio on the texans. that's not a track record of doing the head job and making the tough decisions and achieving a level of results. i don't know where second in command fits between getting coffee or being the brains behind the throne.

to be fair, i think he's better than jordan but still making mistakes. higher batting average. i am not sold yet if he has the chops to elevate this back to where it was. i am not content with "this" marginality right now. he has to get better -- more clarks and zecas. the more thiagos and cocos he does the more this is just going to drift and drift noplace.

and a leading concern is i think when not handed money -- which may only be sporadic given this seems to have been fubo cash and not segal's own -- that he starts to turn as passive and inertial as his predecessor. a team without money can still sell or trade. a team with limited money maybe shouldn't spend what it has on perpetuating meh. coco is inertia. coco is also $2m of inertia. you know what the results from that are. they aren't shiny. move on. or do we have any ambitions?

i explained what some other teams got with $2m or less, they decorate the league leader boards. if you're content with fan favorites and 1 goal 1 assist all season, have at it. this team needs both more assists and more team defense and it should have kept looking. or opened up the path for raines in the future.

and i am not an idiot on raines. first subbing, then starting. i just think we have so much piled up in front of him he will be lucky to see the field. at that point you're defeating his value. that's where i start beefing that you have to give your leading prospects a pathway to jump in and contribute. holden and cameron didn't get completely buried and told maybe in 2 years.

sorry but smart teams with limited resources plan their prospects into the future and work on OTHER POSITIONS, not the one their stud plays. the astros didn't draft an endless pile of veteran and rookie SSs to thwart correa. you might call that "competition," i call that blocking and overkill. you have a future 6. you have an existing 6. sign wings. sign backs.

 

Think you're wasting your time Brian. I know you are off today so go play PS5.

 

Damn you’re subtle flexing on Brian’s behalf here

 

LOL, dude is working like 2 days this week.

 

since people want to talk "not so subtle" but perform their uncertainty here. this is how "uncertain" nagamura is:

he was the only HD2 noob out there starting USOC. with several first team starters and some of the bench and as already rating at the same level as his existing bench.

so you can rip on me all you want and go after my credibility but the coach is basically treating him as the most prized prospect of the bunch. that's my credibility underlined, b*tches.

my concern, which is real and not a performance to the crowd to undermine Juve, is that when he does get first team eligible in league play, we've put 3 or more hurdles in his way to get there. the people given the night off are then in play.

he's a good little player and if you're not sure about that, that's to your discredit and not my blindspot. and to get punchy the coach sees it more how i do. or he wouldn't be out there second round with sebas and fafa. my concern is have we sequenced things where he can do much more than this or 20' subs for about 2 more years.

so there.

 

I was referring mostly to the PS5 haha

 

brian, you're deeply confused. you go out and sign a kid this good. you then sign HH who is actually a 6 type for AM. could also play 8, true. and coco, an 8. plus we have vera. you like say 'they made a path" by signing him. that's not a path. that's the keys to the gate to get into the park with the path. the path is are you grooming him to start or not. to me when i start stacking up 6s and 8s, vs his skill set, you are blocking his path.

and before you pretend they didn't block it

raines was signed 2/4
HH was signed 3/2
coco was extended the other day

so, you sign a coveted DM prospect then clutter your DM with veterans for 2-3 years, atop vera and the rest. this is hoarding, not planning.

sorry but my idea of a good coach is someone who recognizes another holden or cameron and reaches down and pulls them up as far as they deserve. you say dynamo fans shouldn't ask more and that's kind of what you follow through on. you then perform we should change -- likely because defending last place is indefensible, and i would make you look silly for it -- but at the moments we could change you balk and favor the old ways. keep ramos. keep cogs in the faulty machine.

i want more stars like holden. i could give a crap about a mediocre bunch sitting 8th place. as i keep pointing out, the fanboys will like the next bunch in orange too, and they might be better than this. which will then get the casual fans showing up and reward the rest of us with an improved product.

you can't have it both ways.

i think a lot of this is you don't see how good he is, and you've been brought up around the dynamo culture where noobs these days are all projects for the future. holden today would be nitpicked and sandbagged. maybe in 2009.

and on coco vs raines i think it's stats heads can try and make soccer into numbers but it's a tools game. raines has tools coco doesn't. he positions well and is just so calm on the ball. you act like coco might magically improve after years of pro ball but raines has stuff you can't teach and is the age when they get even better. like i said, future adams or rico clark. coco once people get sick of how we play will be seen for being merely ok.