What is the status of Rooney? I know he was injured for a while and NE went on a winning streak so he couldn't get back into the starting 11. However, last night was the perfect opportunity to put him in for DH and Nicols doesn't. I think I would be in agreement that there is no contest that Rooney is the better choice between him and Cloutier. Nicols should have been putting Rooney in as a sub instead of Cloutier all along so that he would be game ready if DH was suspended or injured. I think this is bad coaching. I am not going to mock a coach that has put us 1 game away from the final but, how do you go from being captain, playing every minute to not even being considered? Again, I think this shows bad coaching. You know Nichols never thought much of Chacon since he has never seen much playing time with Nichols in charge. But Rooney was his choice of captain and now this? Does anyone know the inside scoop on this issue?
I don't have any scoop, but Rooney was looking pretty awful before the injury and I doubt it's an accident that the winning streak happened to start a game after he went out. Rooney should end his Rev career on the bench. KF
If you don't want to mock him, then don't call it bad coaching. While Rooney's fall from grace was dramatic, it was in direct relation to that fall that the Revs really started winning. Not saying Rooney was THE reason, but I think you would have to say that replacing him was one of the reasons we started to win.
Sorry but I don't agree about Cloutier vs. Rooney. Stevei Nix is all about positional play and movement off of the ball, neither of which are Rooney's strengths. Rooney has neither the wheels nor defensive mindset to be one of Nichols' worker bees, nor the talent to be one of his offensive go-to guys.
Surely if the Nicol era has taught us anything, it's that molding a group of players into a team is not done by making a series of independent, isolated player decisions. A player is measured by what happens to the team when you add them to it, and I think we've seen abundant evidence that Hernandez, Cullen, Cloutier and Pierce are all more effective midfield participants in Nicol's scheme than Rooney, just like we've seen that Harris is a much better fit at forward in it than Chacon, and even that Fuller is preferable to Chacon in some circumstances.
Cloutier is much better than Rooney at this point and I personally feel it is great coaching. also not putting in Downing that poor excuse for a defender when we went to 10 men.
How do you go from being team captain to being unloaded by your team and then have them talk about how they swindled the team that took you? I'm sure that Daniel Hernandez would like to know the answer to that one. Jim Rooney started the year playing well but he was getting steadily worse as the year went on. Cloutier looked terrific in his first few games before he was injured and is also much more versatile than Rooney. Again, the fact that the team has played much better since Nicol took Rooney out of the lineup tells you whether or not it was bad coaching. Should Nicol dump Adin Brown and play Jurgen Summer? He was a captain this year also.
He nearly took out a ball boy - the ball never made it into play. Probably just a fluke, but it really seemed to exemplify the Revs faults and frustrations at that point (i.e., failure to focus and execute during important spells of the game...).
Exactly! And, Stevie Nicks has taken a less than stellar cast of MLS misfits and formed them into a defensive, stonewalling team. I thought that the key had been kante, but, in light of recent games with the injuries and red cards, it's the system. Unfortunately, some players are not destined to play in this system. I have never been big Heaps, Kamler or Cullen fans, but, all 3 have been awesome of late under this sytem. Rooney & APC are just 2 that come to mind that don't seem to "get it."