Armas and Thornton? I don't know people Armas and Thornton for Pope and Clark? Is Bradley really going to stick with the absurd 4-4-2 on a team that doesn't have dynamic fullbacks? I'd rather take my chances with players like Gaven adn Brenes on the wings with two d-mids covering for them, than the 4-4-2 we've been running out for three years now (faux-box midfield, four in the back...). Also, Thornton? Come on people. Can anyone realistically think he is an upgrade over a Walker. Seriously now?
No, No, No, No. Ricardo Clark will be a much more valuable player than Chris Armas. If not next year than certainly the year after. Trading him for Armas would be silly. Now, I would not mind having Armas as a Metro. We just have to find some other way to do it.
This would be a baaad trade for you if mgt does it. Hope they don't. Seems like Chicago is really trying to dump Thornton though.
I would like to keep Walker, but if there is just a straight up trade Pope for Thornton then I would do it. Then let Jonny go to Chivas-USA. Chiacgo doesn't need two starting keepers in the net. If Armas wants to come here? Maybe as a coach. Honestly I don't want to let go of Ricardo Clark, he is the future for our boys. I wouldn't mind Zach coming back. But if it doesn't happen. I'm still happy with Walker.
if thorton is makeing alot less than walker (which i dont think he is) i'd go for it.We really dont need a max salary keeper (or close to it) out there, i mean look today, DC won with Nick freaken Ramando in the net. We've had "top" goalkeepers every year of our existance and that has gotten us DICK. Watching the finals today i could only shake my head and laugh at how metro never even made it to the "big dance". If it takes giving up a prospect to improve our team so be it. Im sick of freaken looseing and MLS isnt about dynasties anyway. Bottom level 1st division euro team can just buy up Gaven this summer and afford to keep him on the bench. Lets just win ONE freaken ring and worry about "the future" later.
Wow. Just. I mean it's so lopsided in CHicago's favor that it has to happen, right? So they get the two better players out of the deal? I mean... *speechelss*
This trade proposal, if real, would say a few things: 1) Bradley must not truly believe in Clark. 2) Bradley must believe Pope is nearly done. 3) Walker must be thinking about overseas options, or perhaps Chivas wants him and we'll let him go unprotected. (By the way, Johnny Walker playing for Chivas does have a certain unparalleled pun appeal.) 4) Maybe Armas wants to come play at home. IF #3 is true, then the deal makes some sense. I'd be surprised that #1 is true, but I'll confess that I'm skeptical of Clark's ability to become a good strategic player. Also, it means dealing Pope without getting someone to replace him in the trade, which almost mandates that we use one of our SI slots to partner Parke (going into the season with Arena as a starter is too much of a risk, imo.)
It doesn't seem like a matter of "if", but "when." When does this franchise apply to MLS to change their name to "Mets" or "Rangers"?
I dunno, letting Pope and Walker go is fine by me, but trading Clark feels like a sign of defeat. I'd like to think that someday we will hold on to our #1 draft pick for more than two years...
walker has made more mistakes then spectacular saves. pope was shown up the entire year by parke. he's been a huge disappointment as far as expectations go. clark is getting the short end of the stick. he played well and has great potential. thornton will play better than walker. he doesn't have brain farts like walker. armas is overrated, but if he and amado can work well, it may be a good move. what the hell do i know. we'll do well in the beginning, have great hope and collapse at the end of the year. rewind....play.....
He might still believe in Clark's future, but he also knows that now isn't the time to be patient. In retrospect, I bet he wishes he'd taken the Clark-for-Cannon offer last season. With the 2005 Hex and WC06 to follow, Pope won't be anything close to a full-time MLS player, even in the unlikely case that he stays healthy. The article says Walker for an allocation, presumably a new center back.
This trade is absurd. No way is Thornton better than Walker. That's an illusion. I'd rather have Wells start over him. But Clark and Pope? I bet we can get a much better return on Pope than freaking Thornton. Come on. And Clark? Get rid of Magee. Nobody likes him anyway, and he doesn't come to play, he comes to bitch all day. WTF if this deal goes through, Bradley should be fired, in all seriousness, because it is so dumb. What pisses me off even more is that we are going to stay with the retarded 4-4-2. Anybody with a brain realizes that system doesn't work for us. Also, people are pissed off about Pope. I look at it like this. We are going to get a max of what, 20-22 games out of him this year? He is def. going to play better than he did this year, but he is just not here often enough to justify his salary, even if he plays like he did for us two years (don't forget he was by far our best player two years ago, lets not have short memories). If Armas really wants out of Chicago, lets try to get rid of Magee and somebody else for Armas (Stammler? I don't know, somebody young...). That deal works for me, and it works for them too. I would then try to trade Pope to Real Salt Lake for an allocation, and do the same with Walker to Chivas. I woudl then try to sell SGR, or cut him. Or something, and work from there.
I think it's giving up Clark that are pissing people off. We're not getting enough back for him. If Pope is down the end of the road he can see the back of a #14 Fire Jersey ahead of him. and giving Metro an allocation is basically giving them license to ******** things up even further.
jesus people, does it really friggin matter? x and y traded for x and an allocation...blah blah blah... we've had trades we've all been happy with, some that have sucked. i don't really give a crap who wears the uniform so long as they play together as a team, which hasn't happened in 9 years...especially when it counted. when thornton, arma, razov, etc. played together for chicago, they played great as a TEAM. clarke pope walker don't. do we have to trade all of them? maybe, maybe not. i've seen walker make more dumb mistakes then any GK we've had. i just don't want to lose amado...he's got a great attitude and is probably the best metro player ever....throw gaven in there as far as players i'd never want to trade....cause he's got unbelievable raw talent. the rest of em, i could honestly care less whether they're traded or not.
The public "word" coming from your team at varous award ceremonies (Guevara at the MVP thing for instance) and other post-season comments was basically: "we were young and lacked leadership." If it's Pope/Clark for Armas/Thornton, what you're doing is trading for leadership and organization. Eddie Pope might be the classiest player in MLS. But it's hard to justify paying any defender in MLS (given the cap) the max salary--and I said that when Eddie played for DCU. Walker is, IMO, a better GK than Thornton. But my impression is that Thornton is better at commanding the box and organizing his defense. I think Clark is more my style of D-mid and has a bigger upside. But Armas right now is the better organizer, more vocal, better team leader. And Pope has improved tremendously as an organizer and leader since coming to Metro. But he's still no Fraser when it comes to organizing a defense. This deal (if true) plus the Walker for an allocation deal seems to send the message that Bradley thinks that Metro is fine if you could just get the defense settled. I don't think that's right. You don't have strong wide play (you could, but your team isn't organized for it). Most of all, the last month of the season, the tactic for dealing with your team was to pressure your midfield, try to deny Guevara and Gaven the ball (so they had to go back deeper to get any touches) and play a lot of tactical fouls. While Armas might help with that in some regard, he still doesn't have such a decent first touch. So unless Bradley rethinks how your midfield is structured and what players you've got there to compliment Guevara and Gaven, I don't think reworking the defense is the answer. Which is a shame b/c Metro has got some tremendous talent (especially young talent) across the entire roster.
... then what is it, exactly, that you think Walker does so well? I like the way he cuts down the angles, but he hasn't shown himself to be a particularly good shot-stopper. Let's not confuse national team play with MLS. Armas is the perfect guy to win the ball for the Metros and quickly spring it forward. In 2003, he was amazing in that role for the Fire. The problem is that next year he'll turn 33, and his motor isn't going to run forever. The 2004 MetroStars offense was incredibly young and devastated by injuries, yet they led the league in goals scored. Bradley is absolutely right to think that a re-worked defense would turn them into a championship contender.
As a DC fan, I say, great trade!!! As a sentient human being, I say, WTF??? Unless Pope or Clark has some kind of Rickey Williams plans for the immediate future, this is a weird, weird trade. It doesn't even make sense from the cap angle.
Armas makes $ 250k, so his salary is only $ 30k behind Pope's (against the cap), and, I regret to think (thanks to Bruce) that Armas might be in as many Nats camps as Pope, so we may not even get more games out of him. While we scored goals, we didn't have great forward play. The only way this makes any sense is that Thornton is brought in to be the backup to Wells, and that Bradley thinks that he can get by with Wells and Thronton by committe for a combined $ 150k (or less?) nearly as well than he can with Walker and Wells ($ 250k). He uses that money on a center back and the allocation on a forward, and expects Armas to both be a leader and help push people (Franchino, Olsen, etc) around, the way they push us around. Armas is a local guy, it wouldn't kill me to have him on the team, but he seems a short term solution. Clark was supposed to be the long term solution, which is why we took him at # 2 overall. It could be that Bradley is thinking he might not be here in 2006 if 2005 doesn't go well, so a guy like Armas might be more valuable. I agree that the team needs some leadership, but with the number of 18-22 year olds on our team, I'd rather we look a guys in the 28 year old range, as opposed to those 32 and up with injury problems. Speaking of which, when reading of Reyna's re-injury of the groin, my first thought was whether he would wear Ramos' number 9 when he came to Metro to be our seemingly mandatory aging USMNT midfielder with a foot of gold and a hamstring of tissue paper.
This would be one of the worst trades in league history. Metro's management needs to go for even considering this.