Roster 2023

You're not alone, I had to read it twice. The phrasing is somehow both straightforward and awkward at the same time. It's quite a feat, really.

 

sentimentality. he is the local boy but he's just "ok," his history screams he won't be back until he's on the downslope, and he's not the best american abroad out there. if you had all time dibs on any american alive now, it's sargent????? you don't want dibs on reyna or pulisic or weah coming here? good technical player but kind of gawky and soft.

he was not a MLS academy kid, he was scott gallagher -- a good StL traditional club team -- bradenton residency, then off to europe. he'll be back when he's like falling apart or 30.

very little that they have done impresses me. burki was awful at dortmund. taking parker at any price. etc. we won't be finishing last.

 

they had quit really updating the allocation list so it didn't matter much anymore. it became more like rights to returning MLS who previously transferred than a requirement to get the hot new U20 kid endrunning the draft, like it used to be.

the one that really still matters is the discovery claim.

but anyhow StL sucks for not staking a claim to anyone great where they'd either get the player or some big compensation.

 

what "turnover?" same 9, 2/3 of the MF, both backs, keeper. the spine is almost the same. they have churned "wide." if bassi plays CAM then we have 1 new wing to feed sebas who we talked about badly needing service.

you "never imagined" it might be wise to also ditch HH or coco while parker got canned (when he had term left)? you spent the offseason sh*t-talking HH. that's more of a statement about the team's naive optimistic incrementalism or certain people's schizophrenia than me. like our disappearing blogger who used to agree with me that over time 90% of this needed to go but then fight me individually on those 9/10 as they came up. if you think they need to go and IMO believe they stand between us and competitiveness, no time better than the present. do you want to "have a chance" now or later. duh.

a lot of the junk expensive acquisitions are under deals through 24 or 25 if we want to be that conservative. or we will still owe half of parker next year. it's almost like we want to mope and drag this out as long as possible.

 

the "tell" that they don't believe it happens this year, is they don't talk about it like "my mission is to make a strong 2023 playoff team, i like this bunch i am assembling, but we will watch how they play this spring and adjust to make the goal happen, all resources, whatever it takes,"

they just recite some preprogrammed process that could apply to any team in the league. "we're gonna sign an x, a y, and a z. we plan on signing some U22s this summer." if we're good? if we're bad? what if, as as we saw last year, your first x sucks? what if we are "this close" to making it? see how it's just going through the motions? cuz i know what dom would do.

i could understand talking about, "our priorities for now are...." but he sounds like he has the year planned, and i never hear some dictate or unvarnished unhedged endgame. "the owner says we're going to the playoffs and my job is to make that happen." etc.

the difference from a 2006-2013 kinnear team is you would have zero doubt what the endgame was, and you knew that he would see the weak links, and swap them out this summer. there was no maybe next year, neither about the goals or the timeframe.

some of you sound a little like reporters or bloggers, act like you have access to pat, put him on the record. are we making playoffs in 2023. will your personnel program change if either you are happily surprised or think we have a chance or if this is completely junk.

we, some mix of, don't know what it takes, play out a program regardless how the season goes, or don't have the resources or fire in the belly to do it. and the GM does too much of the talking who will play and where and in what formation, before we even begin camp, which means his own self image is bound up in do we keep the players we signed. dom's career and ego were not tied up in his acquisition's success. if you might prevent us making playoffs his pride gave way to practicality. the theory on splitting out the GM job was kinnear was too busy but i at least had no doubt on kinnear's humility, sincerity, or on what timescale kinnear wanted to win. hint: not 2025.

 

Funny. That is a pure PR move to my view. That boy is not coming to MLS anytime soon unless somehow he loses ability to make more money in Europe. I don't see that happening. I guess might as well get PR value out of it because any decision you make is probably not going to produce any other value..

 

I'm interested in how Thorhallsson works out. I mean this guy is native icelander transfering from a team in a city with an average high temperature in July of 58 degrees to Orlando, Florida.

I think he might melt.

 

If Orlando is smart, they'll begin to train him for that. He won't melt, but he won't be 100% right away.

If.

 

i started to think maybe a formation change ("why do you need smith and another international LB?") then checked the official roster and was reminded junqua is the last remaining out of deal player. so wide is escobar smith dorsey. personally i think they need 3 more including reserves remembering hoffmann is gone.

escobar can play central so escobar steres micael hadebe bartlow = 5. i think you need 6 of them on a full roster too. and i don't believe in double accounting so 12 total. guy can't actually play 2 spots at once. sounds like "duh" but periodically GB would have aaronson penciled in as both CAM and LM and then have attrition both places. at a point of attrition where you play,, you can't fill both holes.

that being said, circling back to my parenthetical, smith consumes a slot and is primarily a LB. he makes "steres money" ie $600k. i don't know about having 1 position consume 2 precious slots, although smith quietly can also play LW. but then you need 2 LB. i also don't think it would be bright cap management to have an expensive international LB as backup for an expensive international LB. kind of like steres' salary didn't make sense behind hadebe and parker. that turned out to be a lot of money for a fairly pedestrian central backfield.

the normal response here would be draft a LB or bring in the equivalent of dorsey, a cheaper second LB. unless they don't trust smith is healthy or conceptualize him playing wing, or like i started to think, are considering a 5 back or 352 type alignment. but then 4 "wingbacks" would be underdoing it.

 

a 9 month recovery time -- what DCU said at the time -- from july 22 -- gets you to april 23. is he running on the side field or something? training/weight room? practicing with the team? they feel very short on wingbacks and particularly if smith is not ready. and there should be a fairly factual answer on his status. to me saying you're shopping his position, with a player description that doesn't sound like a reserve ("international LB") hints at something. but i am not at camp to confirm it. is he in the camp photos?

i'm sure people were tuned out when i mentioned ACL, but is he fully rehabbed. can he even play opening day. is he fragile. can he handle work load. is his knee still iffy or painful. the medicine has advanced since my day but it's still a dice roll that they come back full speed pain free moving well and even then it's usually give them the night off in seattle so to speak.

i didn't realize the green card but he's still not cheap. he makes nearly double what adam did. should i really be spending that on an ACL guy who might not be ready opening day and who knows what we get when he does play? is it not an error of decent proportions to spend some serious money on a LB and then a month or so later be back starting LB shopping again? or be paying starter money for a nominal backup because the "starter" can't start?

last point, there seems to be an overcleverness epidemic in houston GM work. they love their moneyball. and they seem to love the idea of taking big risks on injured players. eg davis mills, stingley, mitchie. the theory seems to be that a player whose prior career is marred by injury perhaps could be jiggered to anticipate them being even better than ever when they get healthy. you tell yourself mills might have been awesome at stanford if his knee held up. that stingley would have been the best DB in college ball if he didn't do the lis franc. it's counter-factual. the reality is he got hurt and graded out lower and everything else is optimistic speculation. sauce was only the best DB in the league, veteran or rookie, and he had an excellent spotless college career. like no one could beat him. that is the obvious pick. not sure if it's they are trying to play catchup or what, but they resist the low risk obvious and attempt the riskier cute. to bring it back to topic, you need a functional LB, do you sign a healthy one or do you sign one who literally just did his knee. and then maybe sign another when you realize you were dumb about the rehab math.

i mean the idea is to spend your offseason signing players YOU CAN ACTUALLY USE......







******in terms of how texans' theories have played out, mills is the same mediocre level QB he was in college, metchie was out sick the whole year, and stingley played slightly more than half a season losing the rest to injuries. sauce was first team all pro.

 

"I remain confident in the direction Houston's infrastructure is heading as an organization. However, I'm less sure in how quickly those positive moves from an organizational standpoint will manifest on the field."
-MLS' newsletter's sense of where we are.

i'm going to ask, didn't we announce an analytics department before? did we lay it off? the language was vague where i couldn't tell if we were using this business as a search/consulting firm to inform our hiring of analysts and statisticians, seeking their advice on methods or direction, or going to outsource our analytics entirely.

 

they erred on the side of wait and see last year as well. "we weren't here, we're just settling into the office, and personally hiring every flunky, so we're not sure what to do. we'll keep a bunch" i would think part of what one is expected to do for an interview like this is be informed and conversant in the roster having watched a bunch of games. "oh, with your team i would......." year 2 and we're still on, "need to think about it, watch em play?"

at a point of iterations of this it just comes across as paralysis. paralysis is never justifiable and pointless if you can't make the playoffs. they are hired to do something, to take risks. i'm sick of excuses. and i really don't like the idea of conservative churn that may in fact be a "pillow" they try to land on next time they trip. ie how many seasons do you get to say, well, but we had some holdovers who disappointed. this is one reason i resist this "but it was jordan's/ramos' people" excuse. part of your job is to make them scarce. if they survive the cull i kind of think YOU made a choice, even if it's passive continuity otherwise required by contract. the players you fail to cut because of paralysis shouldn't be your accountability shield next winter.

the difference between kinnear and this is while he might take a half season to act, it wasn't from naive optimism. i don't think he kidded himself what he had, wait and saw a thing. i think he knew exactly where the holes in the team were and would get someone in as soon as possible. also as i have pointed out, there is a significant difference in terms of expectations between "i think i have built up a winner but we're going to see how the season starts and be sure, make further changes if we have to," versus "wait and see." "wait and see" is the far less aspirational or high hopes version, that we will play games and see what happens. everyone waits and sees how the games go. that's how league soccer works. you play games, you get results. "long way to go" conveys the same message. some of you are giving me crap for not being optimistic or nicer to the optimists. but if you think about the language being used, either they are trying to tamp down expectations, or THEY DON'T BELIEVE IT EITHER.

last point, re long way to go, i think you can rebuild a team in a year with the right staff and ownership. but if i started counting heads of how many of the old players are left from before this iteration, it's fewer and fewer, and if it's not fixed, you're no good at your job. MLS has 2-4 year contracts and a salary cap. no rebuild should take longer than a standard contract unless you're f*cking up.

 

related point, re the staff churn excuse, a running theme of recent years is delaying the rebuild process by having the new coach, GM, etc. come in, not trust prior information, and want to do their own review of the roster, keeping far too many prior players. very simple, a good way to ensure your last place team finishes right around there is to keep most of the old team to ensure that you get to control their retention decision after you take charge. as such what little institutional learning we have, evaporates each time clean the place out, as they don't seem to trust the status report when they take office. this is going to be glacial if the new staff don't trust the old staff or their game tapes.

some would argue this supports keeping the brass longer, but we suck. i think it says we should fire GMs faster because when the HC gets fired but the GM saved, the GMs consistently conservatively mis-analyze the roster to hand the next HC.

 

if you watched sebas you watched franco. be real, they revisited that one after freaking at how little service he got. what can we do. he looked good on tape. get one of the guys he played with on that tape. maybe it works. maybe they are perseverating that the tape translates to here.

 

we heard gitau rumors for months. it's also been a month or so since signals of their exit started manifesting. get back to you on that? really?

and the broader narrative is one of the older YNT players went to UCLA not HD2, and then in those 3's absence we have like 1 kid in any camp from U15 up to adult.

this is one reason i think it was dumb to run out gitau without a deal. this is one reason i want to hear less brag board stuff on YNT calls and more HGP signings and minutes. i don't want self-back-pat buzz, i want a functioning academy with first team inclusion and contribution. i don't like their credit-taking and i don't like the snooty attitude. this isn't columbus and you haven't done crap here yet.

to be fair, micael was HD2, but he's an outside loan. ditto raines who is basically trading for a developmental. deric's gone. memo's gone. that leaves valdez and rios, developmentals arguably on the first team for dibs purposes rather than to play anytime soon, and castilla, who has barely ever played.

 

still not defensible. you really need to watch last place for yourself? kind of speaks for itself.

i think it's insincere. i think they spent a lot of the time that needed to be spent on the team, hiring staff. empire building. while they were negotiating that, they kept too many players, perhaps as they knew they would be busy interviewing staff instead.

i also don't buy it because their discussions of how this is going to roll seem to be planned out ahead of time. they didn't seem to react very hard to struggling in the summer. they didn't roll heads that bad this winter. they already have their "2 U22" plan set out, regardless how this goes. the only seeming deviations from plan in 2 years are circling back to get zeca last spring after i assume RB looked like a mess in camp (which didn't work and is being redone yet again this winter) and having to toss pasher overboard to meet slot rules, weeks after bringing quinones in, which didn't come off like that was the plan all along (normal sequencing, to make sure one is not violating some MLS rule, is clear the slot then fill the opening, not sign a "9th guy" then go oh crap and release someone 2 weeks later).

i don't know if "wait and see" is even fully accurate. the churn seems to be annualized. the only people who get cut in between are HD2 types we seem to have soured on. that's not wait and see first team. that's run contracts on first team. that's wait and see on the reserves. the senior team they carried thiago, zeca, valentin, etc. the whole season.

but my point was that the passive, incremental attitude seems at odds with the dumpster fire before them. if they want to call it wait and see, that's not justified.

if you read between the lines on the MLS newsletter comment the other day, "infrastructure" is the building and staff, not the players, on them he's saying he has no idea when will have a competitive team, however. MLS is not that hard. i am sick of excuses.

 

castilla was playing first team under ramos, a tiny bit. castilla was elevated with gitau to first team preseason minutes last year. sorry i don't want to hear how any delay on that is an isolated U20 event. that explains 2 years? like we had 1 functioning AM last year. the whole character of the team would change without DQ.

he sees castilla as playing deep and raines high? can i take away his GM card now?

re "target minutes," that bespeaks my concern about the programmatic mentality around here. i was a "gamer" and believe in games. you don't know sh*t til they play first team games. it concerns me with a team this bad and then you hear them like they know how many further moves they will make, for the balance of the season. here's the modest budget. here's the tools we will use. we will sign this many people. that is not how serious rebuilding teams act.that they will be marginal stuff U22 and not DP type efforts, this good kid will play x many minutes. we will fulfill the schedule and sign 3 more guys. a serious team would be like if i got to churn 1o more this year to compete, you watch me....." if he looks good, he should vault ahead of millionaires. if he doesn't, then a slower approach or we shift eyes elsewhere. a literal program is odd.

and to circle back on the previous post, do you see how that's not quite wait and see? wait and see implies rewarding excellence, culling failure, and an adjustable, flexible personnel approach. for a team that sucks this bad and is claiming to premise its work on "seeing" not enough goes overboard at irregular intervals. it's more like a passive, annual, option-decision-day exercise. the HD2 are the ones who could be in oakland tomorrow.