I picked up the latest issue of Soccer America, with Boca and Donovan on the cover. Inside I found an article titled "Clavijo sticks to guns". In short Clavijo states he is not panicking about the not so imporved season. Clavijo tells that Chung requested to be traded and at Hendersons age he it was time to trade and build for the future. The trades enabling money for players like Coner Casey or Jose Cancela. They listed these stats YEAR GOALS PER GAME 1996 1.38 1997 1.56 1998 1.94 1999 1.19 2000 1.34 2001 1.38 2002 1.54 2003 1.33 2004 0.97 2005 0.92 the date at the bottom of the page listed June 27, 2005. Cunningham and Petke are improvements, but a game with no goals makes for a poor product on the field.
No goals on the field is always trouble. However, I cannot fault Clavijo for trading Henderson or Chung. It was good to get some value still for Henderson and if they play it right the allocation they got for Chung could turn out to be very valuable.
For what's it's worth, the average is now 1.06. (18 goals in 17 games) On June 27, the Rapids had played 15 games and scored 16 goals so I'm not sure where the .97 comes from. The league average is 1.4 and the Rapids average is only ahead of RSL (.76) and the Crew (.81) - Chivas roared ahead with their 5-1 whooping of RSL. Stats from mlsnet.com
And the Crew & CD Chivas both fired their coaches this year! On an intellectual level I understand the "rebuilding" rap Clavijo's giving us, but, damn, I get tired of losing!!
I understand the "re" part, we've done it often enough, but I will reserve judgement to see if we are really "building" something here. We have been stiffed too many times. If Fernando really does what we see happening with the Nuggets, then I will be thrilled, but the first year KiKi dismantled the few of our decent players, I couldn't tell if he was going anywhere. Now, he looks to have done a very good job. If these two new players FC is theoretically looking to sign, come in and make a difference, then I will be thrilled. I am hoping we don't continue the revolving door on foreign players, that we actually get some that stay, make a difference, and don't spend 2/3rds of their time here in the training room.
Are we rebuilding around Nkong? Cooke? Good Additions: Cunningham - first round draft pick. Gonzalez Freeman Petke for Henderson Allocation for Chung Bad additions; Melamed Harris Denton Cullen Nkong Cooke You can say we're rebuilding ... but the above to me doesn't point out wonderful rebuilding moves. I'm not saying it's not going to work ... maybe there are all the right moves. I'm just saying, right now I'm not putting my faith into FC ... Where's OneFast to defend his father?
I pretty much agree with your "good" list. Regarding the "bad" Denton, Cullen & Harris - My guess is they were quick/cheap additions to backfill some of those let go early on. Not intended as long term additions. Nkong - I'm still undecided. Up until 2 or 3 games ago he was in the "bad" column for me. Then he had a couple of decent games and I started to waver. Lost game put him back in the bad column. Cooke - My guess is FC thought he would be part of the rebuilding effort. He has shown more good then bad to me but I'm unsure if he really long term material. Melamed - An FC gamble/hunch? Might make a decent center back, but FC has decided he should be a midfielder and (IMHO) he's not an MLS midfielder. Since I believe he's using an SI slot, I believe you've got him in the right column.
If Clavio really wants to rebuild I would suggest he get rid of every one except Cannon. Heck, why not just hire the entire Boulder Reserve team and fire his. They certainly couldn't do worst than what he has now.
Chivas bringing in 3 players: Chivas USA's prized signing, Juan Pablo "Loquito" Garcia, as well as trialists Hector "Pirata" Castro and Sergio Garcia "Matute" began training with Chivas USA on Tuesday. What are the Rapids going to do? Sadly I don't think they are going to do a thing!
"Maybe the secret to success is players with nicknames..." That and no limit on SIs or YIs if you are a reverse discrimination sort of team?
"Zuniga is retiring, and I assume they'll cut Loera again if they need another SI slot." Thanks, I did put a question mark and I think I'm just in a real cynical mode with last nights performance w/o Pablo and tonight's malicious injury to him leading the charge in that direction.
I suspect Chivas is playing by the rules (MLS rules may be an oxymoron though). The difference with them is they have a pipleline they can tap which, in theory allows them to know the player they are getting. Theory mind you.