http://unitedmania.mlsfansites.com/story.php?news_ID=200784 Hudson is dropping Prideaux (for reasons unexplained - except for the obvious that he loves McKinely and will play him at the expense of more talented players) and leaving Williams all alone in central midfield against the most dangerous team in MLS.. Hudson even went on to say that the tandem of McKinley and Williams did quite well against San Jose in SJ a few weeks back.. So naturally, Hudson breaks up that combo and puts ITT out wide left where he will 1) expose Convey constantly and will force Bobby to play much too defensively and 2) get himself toasted by a myriad of speedy players on the left wing.. Anybody willing to bet that Donovan, Graziani and Russell will lead jail breaks at ITT's expense? After we lose tomorrow night (and of course I hope we don't), I will be calling for Hudson's head...
You're second in line Chris. I want his head now. I actually like Hudson's initial instincts on players. I think he's quite a good judge of talent. He's also a good motivater. I think he's done a good job with Convey for instance. Where he fails is game strategy: he's miserable. He failed Miami last year and he's failing DC this year. We may win tomorrow's game. Hell, we might get into the playoffs. If we do though it will be in spite of Hudson and his game plans and all the credit should go to the players.
As I mentioned in the Practice Notes Thread for 8-30-02, I think this move is a set up to dump Williams in the offseason. As it is, I would think you would be pretty happy about that Cweedchop, right? See, part of Williams' salary was picked up by the Metros this season. So Williams' high salary will eat at our cap next season, therefore Hudson cannot keep McKinley (at a previously promised higher salary next season) and Williams. So, he has told Williams that he needs to be a good link man, AND stop offensives through the center. If he succeeds (against a very potent offense) then he'll live to fight his cause another day, if he fails, well Hudson has a reason to dump him. I found it ironic that Hudson chose the Quakes game to call Williams out for his lack of offense, because Donovan & Co. are the best defending forwards in MLS. Williams will fail, and Hudosn knows it. Hudson particularly moved McKinley away from Williams to isolate him, thus focusing the white hot spotlight on him and his lack of offense. To get better players you need salary. Williams is probably overpaid and possibly replacable, so he becomes a target. BUT, our defense SUCKED without him last season, and has been light years better with him. As much as we have many good defenders now, I do not think anyone in our midfield can do as good a job as he does defensively. Reyes could make the transition, and Hudson is probably looking at that with El Jocon's move to man-marking-midfielder as an interim move. Make no mistake, Hudson is setting up Williams to fail. Williams has no hidden offensive passing prowess to pull out of his bag of tricks at this age. Don't go crazy Cweedchop, celebrate, you're getting what you wanted ... Hudson's preparing to let Richie go after this season, regardless of whether it's the right move or not. -Tron
There's something about Prideaux, Gansler replaced him with Burns. So this isn't the first time this has happened. Though I can't understand it either. I always thought Brandon was very solid both in KC and with United.
The supposed starting 11 tomorrow night: -------------------- Rimando -------------------- Reyes -------- Pope ------- Nelsen -------- ITT Olsen ----- Williams ------- Etch --------- Convey ------------- Moreno --------- Q2 -------------- Hudson claims he is doing this to get two forwards up top in that we simply can not be menacing with only one forward.. I'd buy that if that was the case for most of the season, but to my recollection, last week against the Mutts was the ONLY time all season we played with 1 forward.. A little panic is setting in with Hudson I believe.. It's pretty obvious that Hudson loves McKinley, but to go so far as to replace Prideaux for him? Let's look at the positives and negatives of McKinley's game.. Positive: Good physical presence very good passer good in the air All of these qualities come shining through when he has played centrally this season.. Negative: slow as molasses gets torched repeatedly when playing out wide left leaves Convey exposed and basically out of our offenes because Bobbito has to track back too often to cover for ITT Reckonizing all this, why on Earth does Hudson make this move? It truly boggles the mind.....
I hope Richie proves Ray Hudson wrong! Would that make Ray Hudson get rid of Ivan? But most importantly what does this move do to Prideaux? Not a good move. Of Course if DC United wins tomorrow, Ray will come out smelling nice. But if he fails, he is alienating a lot of more people. We shall see.
Tron, I agree with you in principle but there still is time to salvage this season.. Granted, we are looking at a pretty steep uphill climb to even get out of the basement of MLS much less the #8 playoff spot.. If Hudson feels this way about Williams, pull him out of the lineup now.. Why jeapordize matches trying to figure out something pretty much everyone knows? Why piss off players who have actually bled and died for the team this season (Prideaux)? I think everyone knows that I would offer to drive Williams to the airport myself but to do this to a player like Prideaux who has been solid this season is a slap in his face for all the hard work he has put in..
What?!?!?!?!? OK that's it. Hudson is a $%^&#*@ moron. He couldn't carry Rongens jock. (OK, maybe the last part was a bit much) I can't take this anymore. I can't believe I have to pay to see Williams and ITT play soccer. This team will hit rock bottom tomorrow, and when it does I hope it's enough to cost Hudson his job. FIRE HUDSON!
If anything, I'd think the Prideaux-Donovan incident a couple weeks ago would bring out the fighter in Hudson- like having Brandon man-mark LD or something like that. I know that we all think we'll be seeing ITT at left back but it's still possible that that we won't. After all the projected starters can fit nicely into a 352 as well: Pope--------Nelsen-----Reyes -------Williams-----ITT if you look at the first SJ game, our defensive weakness was up the middle with only ITT there. Joining him to ABMOD would clog things up. Convey and Olsen, backed up by Pope and Reyes can hold their own on the sides. After all didn't the DCU.com projected lineup for the last game project a four man back line as opposed to Reyes man-marking Diallo? as much as I think Hudson is not good enough, I do think he's not a complete loon and that he's seen the wisdom lately of playing ITT next to ABMOD. After all he's been the one who did move ITT from left back to d-mid, so i still have hope. I hesitate to see the logic of Hudson setting up Williams for a fall. After all what would be the motivation? ABMOD's contract isn't up this offseason right? And you have to think his trade value is pretty low as it is. in this light making Williams fail is only shooting United in the foot as the most we could get for him in trade would be a third round choice AND we'd wind up playing some of his salary next year.
Good point. Do you think maybe he's going to the 3-5-2 to get the backs more involved in the attack? Prideaux doesn't get forward too much, and maybe he wants Reyes and Pope to spread SJ's defense (which I think is still hurting) a bit more. Our earlier experiments with the 3-5-2 with McKinley at left back were done without Nelsen, so perhaps now that Nelsen has emerged as a solid defender Hudson wants to revert back to his preferred formation. Dave
Hudson: “This will be different tomorrow. For me the biggest responsibility comes down to Richie. This is a huge game for Richie for my money. He will be playing in his natural, recognized position – the center defensive holding midfield. And he has to be the glue of this team tomorrow, and we’ll see if he’s up to that.” Diceson: Have you told him that? Hudson: “Yeah . . . I had a word with him yesterday and told him that he’s not going to have anyone along side of him like Ivan to bail him out. And he’s going to be up against Mulrooney and that’s what he was brought in here for. And we’ll see if he’s up to the task tomorrow.” Sounds like Ivan will not be playing dmid alongside Williams in a 3-5-2, or Hudson could be full of ****. In either case, I just wish he would shut the f' up and go back to Florida.
Chris I'm pretty sure we went to 4-5-1 in those 2 away games in Chicago, and possibly another one or two that weren't televised. I could be wrong though. Dreams of seeing Landon tomorrow cloud my mind....
OK, admittedly I don't really understand the caution point system, but Prideaux is on 21 caution points according to the MLS website. Could his omission from the lineup have anything to do with this?
Prideaux only has 20 points, according to MLSNet's stats page(http://www.mlsnet.com/statistics/tmstats.html#dc). The mention on the Warning Summary page means that he's within one card of picking up a suspension. Dave
Which could easily come against Donovan. Maybe he's thinking that BP would get a card against LD, but at least when Ivan gets his regular card of the game, he'll take him the ************ out.
Right you are. I was reading it wrong.... Well how 'bout this: Reyes is also very close to the 21 point mark. Now if Prideaux and Reyes were to play tomorrow, and both picked up yellow cards, that means that about half of our back line would miss the following game. Not a good situation. Perhaps given Prideaux's little battle with Donovan a coupe of weeks ago, Hudson feels that Prideaux might be more likely to pick up a card, and doesn't want to risk losing him to suspension right now, especially if Reyes picks up a card as well. In a way, Hudson might be trying to 'stagger' the (inevitable?) suspensions of either/both of these players so we have a fighting chance in each remaining game?
I like that because it puts weight behind my suggestion a few posts ago, to which I didn't give much thought... Dave
You're giving him waaaay too much credit. Fact is, Ray LOVES ITT. For some reason Ray can only see good in him and not his defensive liabilities. Its like Ray has some sort of blinder system where he can only see the few good passes ITT makes but not the parade of players running past him. ERIF NOSDUH!
You guys are WAY WAY overreacting Using this article as a reason to fire Hudson is ridiculous. Find a better reason. We all said the season's over. w/Williams it's obvious Ray wants to check his value to the team Prideaux isn't going anywhere. He's been doing a great job on the d. Like it or not Ivan's been part of the d too. Read between the lines. Just preparing for next year, finding who's in and out, that's all....so STOP W/THE OVERREACTION
Perhaps after a good nights sleep I was a tad too harsh in my criticism.. I've always been one to let the action happen first before making any kind of analysis and my actions (starting this thread) kinda flies in the face of what I normally do.. I guess it just cheesed me off to see those quotes from Hudson and to see that he is leaving out one of our best players in defense.. After speaking with Diceson, he has allayed my fears some, but not all the way.. Skip may very well be right that this might be a clever ruse on Hudson's part to disguise the fact that we will actually play a 3-5-2 instead of having McKinley play out wide.. Nevertheless, I would rather have Williams benched than Prideaux having to sit out to see if Williams fits in our plans for next season.. I guess my real beef is seeing a hack and crappy player like Williams start over a more deserving and critical player in Prideaux.. I know they play different positions and have different duties for this team, but Williams has shown more than once that in a 4-4-2 he simply can not hack playing d-mid all alone, which he will be with Marco not playing a lick of defense.. Williams is quite tolerable and almost halfway decent in a 3-5-2 setup as his only job is to win the ball and get it to Ivan or Marco, or anyone else who has a clue when the ball is at their feet.. Williams simply doesn't have the accumen or skill to get the ball moving out of defense cleanly AND stop San Jose's (or any other teams) attack at the same time.. Having McKinley playing next to him relieves Bichie of this pressure and frees him up to concentrate on snuffing the SJ attack..
I don't want to see Brandon sit today either, Chris. At least we will have someone besides Lazo and Chino to sub if need be later in the game. I am looking at this as Brandon being in good shape with Hudson for next season, and Richie's the one dangling over the fire. I REALLY can't imagin Ray sacking or trading Brandon, unless there is something very untoward going on we don't know about. I still believe Richie should be moved back, and Reyes moved up to midfield, since he is up there covering for Marco's lack of hussle aand Richie's lack of offense anyway. See you at the game, Mark
Okay, after my night's sleep I still want Hudson fired. I also know that wont happen. Still: -I do believe that Hudson is once again blowing smoke out his arse if we are being lead to the conclusion that ITT is the starting left back today. The whole idea that this game is some sort of trial for Wee One makes sense only in some sort of bizarro world: in this world, Hudson knows exactly what Williams brings to the game already. But look at the convesation between Hudson and Diceson in a broader context. Look at the talk about Williams as using Williams as an example of the 'ring bearer' leadership on the team. Instead of just talking about Williams, add also Etcheverry and Moreno at least into the talk. If I do that, I do think that Hudson is thinking seriously about blowing the team sky high after the season and those thoughts crept into the conversation which was nominally only about Wee One. Hudson is a very global thinker. To him players are iconic. They are forces of nature on the field. His task, as he sees it, is to motivate those forces. Hudson though will regularly lose to a coach who has a better strategic sense. He's the opposite of Rongen in that TR looked at players more as X's and O's- pieces on a chalkboard to be moved around. Rongen was in the opposite way too abstract in that he didn't recognize his player's limitations well enough- he couldn't motivate them. Between Hudson and Rongen, Ray makes the better head coach, but the problem for him is that he needs- absolutely has to have- an assistant who he can communicate with who has Rongen's sense of strategy to be employed in actual games and..he uses that assistant's ideas in games. Last year in Miami if he had such an assistant he didn't use his abilities when it came to crunch time and Hudson's team predictably failed against a superior strategist. Hudson against Yallop last year was like Arena vs. Fitz of the Crew in yonder days. Fitz could get his talented team into an emotional frenzy vs united but Arena could regularly slice him apart since Arena knew game stategy better. Does John Trask fulfill this role as Hudson's strategist? I don't know as I have no feel for DC's assistants. It's been said though that it was Trask who reorganized the defense this year. If so let's all hope he gets assigned to the offense next year. However if this is Trask's role then Hudson needs to give him more power to plan for games than he has so far.
If anyone needs to go it's ITT. Sorry Ivan that's the way I see it. Williams is not as bad a player as some make him out to be. The man gives it 100% EVERY match. He makes mistakes, but who dosn't on this squad. I too don't see why My Man Ray has such a woodrow for Ivan. As for Brandon, this guy has had one hell of a season. he is one of the linchpins that has made our back line so solid this year. He has shutdown countless "star" forwards this year. Ray, put down the Newcastle and look at this with a clear head. Play Brandon and fire Ivan.