Roster 2023

I don’t think the O’Neil deal is a cost savings move. In the release they said her job was basically driving revenue and improving the player experience. I don’t believe you need two people for that, just one with a decent team under her.

 

It's cost savings in that her salary is a fraction of what Walker's was to begin with and you basically eliminated Walker's position. Separate from that, they let go the Director of Communications - replaced with someone significantly cheaper, the VP of Marketing - replaced with cheaper, head of production, near as I can tell the Chief Revenue Officer is gone and not replaced. That's just top deck, a number of others were let go as well.

 

Well, I'm not privy to the information of how much the people in the front office make, but I also don't care because it's not my money. I don't think any of us could argue that the entire front office needed to go, and I felt like it needed to be dismantled and rebuilt anyway. I don't think Cheaper always means worse. I'd also say that communications and marketing have been vastly improved since Ted took over.

 

i don't take "walker served an important role in navigating the pandemic and the ownership transition," as very complimentary. i think that era was blatantly trying to milk the customer for even more money for an eroding, bad team. i doubt it worked financially and the sports/fan side speaks for itself. abysmal table position, eroded attendance, minimal loan/transfer revenue presumably, sponsors continue to shuffle in and out. there are few long term "DC=VW" type connections. despite being hired for the business side her press release emphasizes soccer and the fans. there is little of the previous executive hiring talk about "sausage factory" stuff, revenues, etc.

they did talk about analytics but it's unclear to me if that's in house or outsourced and i'd swear that's the second effort at that. that's all well and good but for about a decade the whole thing has felt too cute. get back to fundamentals. sound formation, players who can ball. attackers who can create, defenders who can stop someone. not that complicated. personally i think analytics are more useful as opposition scouting, tendencies, formations, etc. i think in house we need more focus on strict soccer smarts and analytics there is a check on subjectivity or partial data. here is what the whole picture seems to show. i dunno, too many of these guys they bring in it's like what could you possibly have seen in him. i assume it's some numbers thing. that to me is backwards of how it should work. instead, see the film on something like this gonzo kid and then maybe double check the numbers like, let me be sure my eyes aren't fooling me. trust the eyes first. some of these signings it's like did you watch this scrub first? van der kunst for example. and that's continuing to this day fwiw. i am sure something like that is the product of mr. stats-type thinking, find some number you adore then abstractly work backwards to tell yourself they must be good. ie to me if your xG is out of whack with your actual G, the message is the opposite of retention. that's screaming we are putting balls in areas and yet nothing is happening. get a better crosser or a better finisher.

i do feel like they are trying to at least sell the idea of shifting emphasis to the fans and the team. i think while apt on being concerned about the heat, i am not sure how much they can do about that. soccer in texas may always involve either having a really good team or experiencing an attendance drought in the summer. i don't like melting and the situation is basically set unless they go back and make a new stadium with the old openings and airflow. so the windowed areas and seats can only go so far.

what to me has to carry this, for ticket sales, merch, transfer and loan fees, is the soccer side. i think they have said some nice words about it. i am not sure if the hirees are up to the task at the level necessary to move the needle and get fans back. we're still looking second- and third-rate. we also put however many million it was into renovations instead of the soccer team. we still don't churn the bad decisions fast enough. we still don't bat good enough of a personnel average. we seem overly wedded to a dumb gimmick formation that hasn't been a benefit in 6 years. it still feels cult to me.

that and signing HH to me feels like blatant pandering at cross-purposes with improving product. they goosed their attendance boost with that. that actually hurt and handcuffed the sports team. so you can say all you want, we're emphasizing sports, but i don't feel the urgency, and this transaction in particular seemed to be thinking this will be a revenue and attendance boost whether it works as soccer or not. ditto the mesh seats. ditto the big talk. so are we really fixing the soccer side or are we flipping fan switches looking for revenue? HH was dumb as soccer. but as attendance and finance HH hides all manner of ills.

i'm reading all these MBA-speak posts, and it's like, ok, fine, whatever, but to me it's like, is the mentality and effectiveness of the soccer side changing. like can they better tell a good soccer player from a bad one. like can they tell when a formation has problems or helps. is that improving? to me the focus is on that and in more objective a sense. talk is cheap. is the product better. does the product feel like it was shaped by a craftsman brighter than me, or do i think i (or others on here) could do a better job. i think o'neill is a signalling hire. she needs soccer people. has she got them. meh.

i personally do not get beginning to intermittently dump more money into the thing -- though not enough and not consistently -- while running that cash through green soccer leadership. you hand them money they go get HH. you hand them a team they continue to run it out in a 433. i don't trust their eyes and judgment. to me the financial effort needs to match up with top notch soccer people. ben was not really one. pat hasn't yet been one. where is the "bradley" or "arena" or "tata" or "tuca" type hire? and not just as symbolism, but also as the people making better decisions who we grab and how we play. and if you do something like that the players start lining up to come here, and before you wave money. it has seemed exceedingly rare in this era to get a figueroa, sanchez, or perhaps DmB willing to play for peanuts. but part of the foundation of the dynasty team was people willing to play here several years at less money than they could have made, to work with kinnear and chase hardware. then get traded to NY/TFC and go chase personal glory and cash. we aren't that team right now which makes every deal cash and carry. so maybe consider that with the right coach or teammates that's when you get figueroa or a supersub playing for reserve money. or it moderates the salary demands all around. is anyone like, i want to play for the dynamo? for ben? exactly. that has its own magnetism. and if we can't convince a good domestic name, hire someone good who's foreign. money is no object this time.

 

These are all changes since the end of last season, so if communications and marketing have vastly improved it would kind of dictate that you'd keep those people.

I obviously have a bit more insight than most having worked closely with the org in the past, and in the present maintain relationships with people that work closely with the org. As I alluded to in the Dash post, the general views of O'Neill are not positive. As in she was a bit out of her depth in the role. Now she's in an even bigger role. I hope she does well, but it is a significant downgrade. Same goes for the other people that have replaced more experienced people that were let go. The ones I know, really nice people but relative to their predecessors it is a big downgrade.

Does it matter? Don't know, guess we'll see over time. Also may be one where Segal is private equity so he's got his own people getting involved being much more hands on in the front office to where he'd want more junior, less expensive and easier to manage/control individuals in place to where they are largely supporting the PE management types he has calling shots from his company. Not sure if that is the case, but if it is I'll hear that pretty quickly as the season gets going.

 

you're still arguing to an MBA in his terms. "expensive," "cheaper." we need soccer minds around. i think the failure of the last 2 years has been that for all the resources talk, those have come intermittently, they do not reflect a sustained playoff drive, even if we have to buy out deals or sell people or lose money on sunk transactions. i think they need to get constant resources with urgency, accountable staff and players, and i think it costs what it costs.

what i get is they have decided the "squeeze" concept doesn't work, and are trying to shift to soccer and fans. you then need soccer people. that may not be cheap. more bluntly, cheap hasn't worked lately. so i don't get coddling the MBA saying, well, maybe we get cost savings. deployed on the soccer side such thinking is half how we got here. so i don't want to be telling the boss i think we can streamline this. i'd be like we need to refocus this on soccer -- which is the big picture message they send -- and then IT COSTS WHAT IT COSTS. coaches and staff are off the cap. i get they have to make an HH decision to spend cap roster money. i have voiced my opinion on that. but coaches, staff, players, blinking red light when i hear cheap anywhere near that. costs what it costs. we have tried the moneyball version. it doesn't work. we are not more clever with less money. nor should we operate under the belief we might be this time if not last time. do we ever learn.

i don't care if the PR and ads are better. i want soccer. quit putting the money into the seats, the club area, the eateries, etc. give me soccer. give me a decent team. then you can market and renovate all you want. right now it's lip stick + pig. some people think a made up pig is hot i guess. make the pig a pretty girl and we'll talk.

and to get blunter, i feel like there is on here like some bubble away from the regular fanbase. the regular fanbase is closer to me. they want a product and players and a coach. marketing, this executive discussion, inside baseball. doesn't win a soccer game and probably convinces a minimum of fans who to care about such things are already probably diehards. mr. average fan could care less if they are marketing harder to try to extract his money. that is something to be wary of. mr. average fan has probably been fooled enough to be minimally touched by shoving walker aside for o'neill. they want the goods. and not we have symbolically hired people we think sell you we are chasing the goods. the actual resulting product. which requires soccer competence and some resources. the symbols are either capable of that or not.

 

I don't know about all that, but I know the Dash were successful, their attendance went up, and I feel they were more visible and talked about than I'd ever seen in my time in Houston. I would say that's an upgrade over what they had before.

 

insinuations, insinuations. "alluded to." "general views." go back to your sources and tell us how she actually supposedly screwed up. she got the team in the playoffs. i would like playoffs too. the part i want to hear is can she make that happen. i don't care if they think she is lazy or delegates or whatnot unless it impacts that part. some MBA types have insane ideas of energy and effort and regardless if people actually make smart decisions. no wonder people on here and who are a certain breed of USMNT fan adore hard working hustle players short on skill. but the work ethic. best forward i ever played with wouldn't chase errant passes into the corners. nope, not worth my time. drove me up a wall -- i was the chase the ball to the line and dive to save it type -- but it taught you to be accurate and deliver the ball he wanted.

give us actual steak and taters with that gravy smell you are trying to waft. did she screw up the coaching extension? what are we talking about?

i mean a different way of reading same presentation is owner is underwhelmed by sports management types' business acumen on business side, as well as their soccer results with either team. shoves out walker who is definitely business side. has his own people double as business side. ok, jessica, it's all soccer now. give me soccer results. we will worry more about the money side.

or, i was right all along to be worried this is some LBO asset flipper thing and the "resources" some get excited about always seem to be sponsors' OPM. so we are stuck for now with most of these parts on these sunk expenses. wait for the next sponsor deal for us to make some decision that actually costs money and could dramatically change this. and then it will matter if they are erring more on the side of pandering or soccer that time, and then if the soccer eyeballs are any good.

the odd part for a flipper is we seem to see no value in transfer fees. i think someone someplace must think this can still work short term somehow as a playoff thing, because otherwise the obvious answer to our problems is start selling and trading everyone, which ironically for a money obsessed team would likely be millions in revenue. HH and Coco would fetch transfer fees if we didn't seemingly believe in 2023. i think they actually do which is frightening. otherwise the odds are against an O-30 player -- whose overall impact already underwhelms, occasional gorgeous quality aside -- being healthier or better next season or the next. they left hadebe off the original itemization of DPs to the press then changed their mind. what is the foundation of the thing. and if you're no good to me now, or in 2-3 years, why haven't asset flippers been flipping players?

and who knows, maybe ben vetoed anything hadebe -- likes his defense - and doesn't want anything done to HH yet. pat's job is then to say you haven't been here enough, save you some time, HH is junk and gone but if you want hadebe i'll cash in one credibility chip of yours and he's your guy.

but anyhow, people want to talk business-as-soccer when i think it's a distraction from more this type conversation, soccer-as-soccer but from the office end of the thing. i care what resources will be used for players. i care why certain players seem protected. unless it blows the thing up i don't care if some MBA doesn't like o'neil is his boss. sometimes the CEO can be an airhead but have the right focus and hire the right people. sports team might do great. revenues will follow. are they the work ethic of a wall street broker? no, but some of them keel over at their desks. so can we stick some meat on the bones where the rest of us can assess whether it really impacts the soccer side? or is that bad for the business side? cause i don't care if the suits liked walker. the soccer team SUCKED.

last point, i'm sure you all are above this but the racist texans owner has hired 3 straight black coaches seemingly trying to prove he's not a racist and shouldn't be sued for how black players were treated (or lose in court at least). far be it from me to suggest maybe one promotes a female when they are potentially atop a dash lawsuit. and if people remember, as of when walker was being shoved out, HH was a glint in our eye at that point, the product sucked, and attendance was down. he was a hire of the previous owner and the fans hadn't responded to his seeming mineral extraction approach. he had guided it through the pandemic but i am sure they bled red. only after the pandering HH showed up did attendance slightly perk up. it probably looked ugly when they sat down and discussed his future. then clarkson bubbles up and the dash are the competitive team not us. is this the decisive, let me hire the best folks, approach i want? no. but i think it was an attempt to patch 2 areas of concern with someone already around.

 

You're describing things that happen naturally when a team is successful. The Clarkson suspension, perversely, helped put them in the news as well.

The fact that they were successful owes a lot to the Clarkson suspension (beyond just putting them in the news). It wasn't a playoff roster, nobody that knows anything about NWSL thought it was anywhere near a playoff roster (awful back line, not much fire power, not much midfield creativity) but sometimes in moments of turmoil (and it the situation came as a shock to the team) teams come together and are greater than the sum of their parts and racked up enough points in the first half or so of the season to where they built a cushion that kept them in the race as their performances fell off.

 

Wait!! Is the Chief Hostage Negotiator no longer with the club? Widders Twitter still shows her as Chief Revenue Officer of the Dynamo but in the website she doesn’t appear on the FO list. So I am confused. But this could be big news in the world of season ticket holders who act like revenue terrorists!!

 

I would contend that it was a playoff roster, because as Bill Parcells once said "You are what your record says you are." They had the third most goals in the NWSL last year. They were one point away from making it the year before. But it's not about that. The Dash were more visible than I'd ever seen last year, especially on social media. I don't think their increased attendance was solely because they were winning, because I don't believe for a second that 99.99999% of people in Houston care if the Dash win or lose. I think it had a lot to do with their presence in the community and online being bigger than ever before, and that's a big part of why Jessica O'Neil was hired. I thought hiring a sports marketing exec to take that job on was a smart move. Hopefully, it works for the Dynamo as well.

As far as Clarkson, I don't blame her for any of it.

 

At the risk of arguing.....

2021 was a much better team. You had Kristie Mewis, in the process of making herself a mainstay of the USWNT, providing creativity and attacking prowess out of the midfield. You had USWNT starting CB Abby Dahlkemper, when she wasn't there you had a very solid second CB in Megan Oyster. Full season of Nichelle Prince. Full season of Rachel Daly, etc.

Third in goals scored sounds really good until you realize that 50% of those goals were scored in 4 games. The rest of the time they struggled to score - take out those 4 games and they averaged 1 goal per game. Basically, when Ebony Salmon didn't score, the Dash rarely did.

The most bizarre thing about the team (though this has been the case every season, just to a very different degree last season) is the inability to win at home. They picked up 23 points on the road, only 13 at home.

Social media - if you think they were more visible on social media my takeaway is you perhaps were not paying attention previously. They've always been viewed as one of the best in the league at social media. It's been one of the very few things they've actually been good at.

And, no, I don't blame her for the Clarkson situation either.

 

I'm just pragmatic. To me, teams are as good as their record says. I don't care who's on the team if they don't perform. I've seen teams in every sport with lots of talent on paper that didn't perform as they were expected, and I've seen teams you ask "how is this team winning?" In the end, it doesn't matter what paper says, results are results.

And while they scored most of their goals in 4 games, they were still third in the league in scoring and ended up 4th in standings. It is what it is.

And you may be right because I wasn't paying attention, but I would offer up that I didn't seek them out at all. They just started popping up everywhere in my feed. Maybe that was because almost all of my Twitter and Instagram is soccer related, and I lived in Houston. Maybe it's because they did a better job. I don't know.

 

Problem with that, to the extent that team management feels the same way - what you or I think doesn't matter, is it is what often leads to complacency. It ignores a whole lot of what is going on around you and it ignores "the law of averages" wherein if a player has a spectacular season teams assume they will have the same type of season rather than assuming they are likely to revert to the norm. I feel like the Dynamo have frequently fallen into that trap (most recently with Fafa Picault where he had a career year in 2021 and they seemed to assume they'd get more of the same last year whereas in reality he reverted to his career norms.

2022 was a bit of a down year for a lot of organizations. Chicago had all of its issues which seemed to take it out of them in the last month or so of the season. North Carolina had an uncharacteristically really slow start then was the hottest team in the league but left it too late. But the way the season was going, had it lasted 2 more weeks then the Dash would have likely finished 6th or 7th. They benefited from Prisock, a player that was basically out of NWSL a year prior, having the best season of her career at CB (though she did start to fade near the end). Salmon scoring way above her career numbers, Viggiano playing way above her history and expectations but maybe most important was Schmidt rolling back the years and having possibly the best season of her career - frankly she was the team MVP and without her performance last year I don't think they get anywhere near the playoffs.

My concern coming into this year is they are buying into how they performed last year and thinking they are close. They haven't done much to upgrade the roster. Ordonez was a good get, especially since she'll be here during the WWC period, but I think it would be unrealistic to expect her to produce the same type of numbers - especially since she won't have the likes of Debinha and Kerolin feeding her. Schmidt is going to be 35 and doing WWC year duties which is inevitably going to wear her down. Can't count on Salmon scoring as much. They didn't upgrade the backline at all so unless Prisock is standing on her head again, that's a problem area. Have to anticipate Viggiano reverting back to the player that was a 4th round draft pick. Meanwhile, the rest of the league has been making moves and (on paper anyway) improving. Gotham is much better, Louisville is much better, Chicago is much better, Orlando is much better, etc, etc.

Anyway, time to go before the season still so maybe they do more and you don't play the games on paper but I fear they bought into last season too much and have been complacent with the roster.

 

I'm a big fan of the Dutch league. There's a lot of MLS quality talent there outside of the big two teams. I hope this kid fits in that category. Look forward to seeing him play.

 

when she was brought in they touted how having a dedicated Dash leadership was warranted and needed, they did hire a GM after Clarkson was suspended, but then they put her over both Dynamo and Dash which sort of negates the original claimed reason she was brought here. BTW, she was on the teams podcast a few times and came across well.

I just really want to know about the team hostage negotiator still being there or not

 

Looking at Twitter it’s a few months since she tweeted anything Dynamo related. Hope she wasn’t taken hostage!! (I know, poor joke but that video was terrible and showed contempt for the customer).

so, are we free of all of the ex-NBA FO folks?

 

i don't think fans bought tickets because the team was accusing the coach of abuse. i think fans showed up because they started winning. i don't believe in all press is good press when you have to buy a ticket. you'd be more likely to have lawyers circling like vultures and fans protesting outside, not ticket sales up.

in both instances it's straightforward. the fans want a winner and the attendance tangibly erodes when it's not competitive. this team used to have 5k more attendance when it was competitive. the women picked up 1-2k when the team was playoff worthy. this is a very easy lesson.

i've even explained before how some spending to help it along would probably pay for itself and then some, in postseason games, in Concacaf games that used to be a regular experience, in playing in the MX tournaments, friendlies, teams interested in the stadium as a neutral site. players and coaches eager to come here, sponsors eager for the association, positive buzz in town. if you want to save a buck you get your 17 dates, give or take preseason and USOC, that's it, and fewer people will want to show up per night.

 

talent is debatable, strained, considering their own press release.

more to the point if we zapped the position completely who is his competition? are we shifting escobar over? i thought smith was still not ready. in which case adam and junqua are gone. there should just be a hole. this would be like the 6th back signed. don't know if micael was ever finalized. so i wouldn't be surprised if it's been like dorsey and escobar wide.

 

guess you missed the video i posted yesterday. hope springs eternal for some folks.

in case people missed the point to the posts yesterday it was this struggling kid will walk into the first team while if they sign gonzo, who actually looked talented, he will likely get a second team deal and be stuck down a year. i know we need a body at LB -- probably 2 -- but considering we signed a LB already and should need all the help we can get, sending the talented one down is just funny.

 

the dash were 3-offense T4-defense in a 4 team league. they were not outstanding in any way but good enough either way. that's a silly argument. that's confusing subjective qualitative with what the numbers say. i think they are sufficiently mediocre as a bubble team there is no assurance they are back, but that's different. they weren't as good as the teams above them but they were team 4 in a 4 team playoff. there were other teams with more goals but sh*t defense, or good defense and no attack, and the teams right around them were even more mediocre. not sure why some pretend they were unworthy. they were precisely worthy enough. precise enough where they better be working on it for next season.

the dynamo recipe isn't complicated. get 5-10 more GF, 10-15 fewer GA. that gets you mid 40s both or high 40s GF and low 40s GA. you do that and most nights you will get at least a tie if not a W. you need enough GF where you don't just tie 1-1 or 0-0 every night -- early ramos and barrett. you will tend to blow results late with high GA. this sounds obvious but win more than you lose, and ideally tie more than you lose. that means the borderlines are breaking your way. but it's harder to do in praxis. the dynamo blew a bunch of games. you make several Ls to Ts and we're not far from RSL really. and we had some leads. and blowing them is the sort of thing that populates a GA column in sum.

you look at RSL and they kept their losses down. 13 of the 14 teams were within 2 wins of what RSL did -- including us. the difference is all those blown results late, or poor defense. we have the same GF as RSL but 11 more GA. as a result we have a weaker home record, fewer ties, dramatically more losses -- but only 2 fewer wins.

i have voiced this before but i thought what we did was just play devil may care offense, goose the offense up slightly, get a few more wins, fewer ties, actually more losses than before. we had more losses than even SJ did -- the most in the west. all that saved us was we won more often. which to me came down to a team with 69 GA -- 13 worse than us -- blows games in chunks of those 13. it's not just numbers, it's an aggregate of f*cked up nights. you figure out how to get to the whistle up 2-1 or tied 1-1 on a tough night and the goal numbers reflect it eventually in aggregate.

personally i want them to make defense the priority because 2018 teaches 58 GF isn't enough if the defense sucks. SJ had a top half offense and was dead last. portland missed out on a fair amount of GF but equal GA. 53 GA to me is a lot of blown games. and they have fewer wins, more ties than RSL, and that's your season right there.

people can resist the numerical stuff but what the numbers say to me is we're not even close and yet only turning the thing half over. i can try to justify it man by man -- and i can -- or i can say that in previous instances of this bad a defense it took a complete overhaul to fix it, 2011 and 2017. this is part of where i feel the numbers are useful in addition to the player analyses. it's not a little bad, it's a lot bad. when people start making excuses for keeping hadebe and steres, perhaps remember that and some of the goal by goal analyses before. it wasn't just parker and zeca. we act like it was.