I am speaking of his value relative to the other goalies in the league. From your mandate, I say that he contributes a hell of a lot to (A) winning / tying a game. I think that contributes indirectly to (B) putting fans in the seats. For example -- hypothetically -- if a lesser keeper played last night, the scoreline would likely have been worse for the Galaxy. For me, there's value in that. I don't know how to make money losing games 6-0, so I place a high value on Joe Cannon.
OK. Looking at his value relative to other goalies I agree that there aren't any goalies in the league who do significantly more than Joe Cannon as far as contributing to winning/tying the game. Which I agree does contribute to putting fans in the seats (I listed that separately because some previous LA goalies like maybe Campos or Hartman, it might be argued were able to put fans in the seats for reasons other that winning games - and obviously, from an owner's standpoint that might be considered "value". Honestly, I just thought my wife though Hartman was a great keeper.) But back to my mandate (BTW, my "you have to say" = mandate, is brilliant - I mean that seriously), you have to say how much does he cost relative to how much he contributes - I think we agree that Cannon contributes a lot. I think that under the current cap limits however, his cost relative to say a cheaper unproved goalie, like Cannon might make him overpaid. Cronin cost 0$ against the salary cap this year. I contend that we could have taken Cannon's salary and instead put out there Cronin and Xavier and a Chad Marshall and had Ugo has a backup, or put out our same back four but with a Ricardo Clark or a Shalrie Joseph patrolling the midfield. Trades for specific players aside, from a salary standpoint that's what Cannon's $200K could have bought us. Sure, Cronnin would give up some rebounds and give up some more chances, but would it be offset by the improvements in other areas? I don't know, but I think there's enough there to talk about that it might be true that most MLS goalies are grossly overpaid. If it was me, I would have given it a shot because it looks good on paper and on Big Soccer it's all theoretical anyway. And hindsight makes me think - it couldn't have made this season much worse.
I bet you the England Women National Team is way, way, way better than us (LAG). Yes we (LAG) are that pathetic. We can definitely learn a thing or two about precise passing, good first touch, playing with heart (hustling)from those women. WE SUCK.
Yeah, we (LAG) do suck... I'm actally watching the replay of the women's game vs Sweden. Watched it last nite too but was too drunk as passed out so I didn't get to see the whole thing. Wow, Cat Whitehill almost scored the cracker. Ah! Watching WWC is definitely taking away my derby blues.
Yeah, I noticed that Thursday night and I've noticed it in other games as well. I think LD tries to lead but they just don't follow. Prime example: late in the game, (still 1-0) we get a throw-in. LD is motioning for the thrower to throw it in to our fullback; I'm assuming so we can get possession, build the attack. The thrower looks at the fullback, and instead then throws it forward, where all the Chivas players are surrounding our 2 guys (LD was one of them, can't remember who the other was) and the ball is stolen by Chivas, they're off on the counter and Mendoza scores! (I think it was Mendoza - it was the one that put them up 2-0.) I kept saying, why didn't he throw it in where LD was instructing him to throw it? I've noticed similar situations in other games as well. Donovan will direct them to pass in a certain direction, to a certain player, and instead they do the exact opposite, pass into coverage and it results in an immediate turnover, and quite often a goal scored on us. And I keep saying, why didn't you put the ball where you were instructed to put it? They all seem to genuinely like LD, but for some reason they just don't follow him. I don't know what it is. *Edit: Actually, as I think about it, it's probably his easy-going, laid back personality (much like Frank?) which is just not what this team responds to. He's "one of us" type thing; when instead they need an in-your-face kind of guy, which LD will never be.
Yeah, good point. A couple of guys on the riot squad boards were talking about a similar issue - how we were trying to be a possession team with one-touch passing rather than a counterattacking team. If you think back to when we were good (parts of 2005) we basically defended in numbers and then pushed the counterattack with Donovan and Herculez. The problem with this is that teams finally figured us out. They would sit back and wait for us to make a defensive mistake. Since all we could do was play the counteract we had trouble coming from behind. So how does Yallop see us? If he's following the San Jose model, then it's shrink the field and play the one-touch game up the middle. And as you say, we do not have the forwards for this. On the other hand, new forwards are probably harder to find than new midfielders. So maybe we should switch strategies. I don't know. The sad thing is we have so many players out that it's hard to evaluate talent now. I think we all know that Pavon and Gordon are bad at the transition game or possession game. But what I would like to know is how well they would play if they got a number of quality crosses? With Beckham and Albright around next year, I would be willing to play a foward who did nothing but score off long balls into the box.