Roster 2023

Bingo
also-you also always have the option to not have an opinion. not everything said needs a response

 

whatever. i don't need the lecture. my kiss my tookus riposte still had more soccer in it than their ad hominems. i am amused by the insincerity of it all. you are blocked because you say bollocks but i may repeat exactly what you say in 2 months when the reality of our struggle dawns on me, and act like i am brilliant, or i may at any time pretend that i flicked the switch that day to see your stuff, lob a brick, then go hide again.

i assume they are constantly flicking the secret x ray switch as no one else had responded to my posts to trigger any interest around a block. he was the first on the scene. no one had quoted me to know to look. so i guess i have a regular reader after all.

anyhow, f*ck all that, and i am slightly annoyed with you for indulging it yet more like i am the problem. talk soccer. i know the window is over, but what do you think of duk? rumor was c'ship teams were sniffing around but being told no sale right now. in which case he might be available in the winter. to me he fits the speed striker mold the current tactics use.

i mean you act like you want to talk about soccer then talk about me. be part of the change.

 

i don't need the lectures. i am not interested in playing politics with people who pretend to block me but have. a response up next post in line 5 hours later. as in, are obviously looking for my stuff when they posture to not be. i am going to point it out because it's bullsh*t. just like i feel free to respond to westie acting like vasco was sebas' only possible destination and on their terms. or sebas' agent's terms.

talk soccer.

personally i think the fanbase is kind of unhealthy. i made some points about the team and how it operates and instead of stirring discussion it got crazy juve and even a chuckle from the now self styled peacemaker before he then tried to pivot to playing mediator after i vented. nothing i said or the amount of posts i said it in is crazy. this is a long time loser still sitting in awkward territory who did strange things this summer for a team borderline to do anything.

the people who profess to want me to talk soccer didn't respond to the soccer posts for days and still haven't. i call bs on that angle too.

the pattern i see is people on here pull their punches towards the team, hoping we do a "50 pointer" this season, every year, and only jump on my bandwagon after the math is clinched, at which point there isn't a thing to do about it. i feel like i see continued struggle coming, that we will fight until the last game or 2. not enough offense, didn't replace the sold 9, didn't fix the backline. i do a topical roster post, no one bites except the troll who doesn't read me.

as i said over on the messi thread, which is treated like another planet, these are trade off choices we/the teamhave made. you shout me down over HH, oh, he's good enough at 8/10, then miami signs a guy who does in a month what HH does in a year. there should be gnashing of teeth but isn't. i get sh*t for pointing it out before the acceptable period when it's already over. but not unlike devotees of a certain politician, within a week or two as postseason begins we're back to rotely supporting their choices. which no one admits frame the next season we then complain about, at the time in that season when it is socially acceptable.

 

to bring in another thread that speaks to the roster, the portland game thread, as well as some of the discussions about leagues cup strategy before it. that a fair amount of discussion went into how many chips to put down on what speaks to the stack isn't big enough, forcing a choice between wasting your chips across every hand ineffectively, or only being aggressive in certain hands and not others. the dynasty team would just run out the reserves and see what happens. they downplayed USOC but were too busy winning other stuff to care.

so if over there it's we don't have enough chips and need to play it smart, how is there no chips discussion here.

and yet a fair amount of passivity about the roster choices, defenses of vasco's point of view on sebas, little angst about whether coco is still in the shop window, etc. to me you make your season in these windows. we used to be the team that fixed our problems. in them.

 

Juve, I've been talking soccer with our people on our Houston board for 23 years now.
It's what I do maing.


Chill homie.

 

Please practice what you preach & don't be a hypocrite. You posit that you don't need lectures. Why are you special? Why presume YOU don't need them but WE do? You hyperbolically label a one or two sentence response as a lecture yet you shovel out paragraphs of retort & some how seem to define that type of response as needed, or even worse, wanted. If you assert your right pontificate manifestos then so do we. If you want to not read lectures then take the first step in your own actions. I have all the confidence in the world that reading this will only cause ouchie feelings for you but it is meant with good intentions.

So to steal a quote from a frequent poster on this board--

"I don't need the lectures"

 

The most accurate quote from JuvieChelsey would be:

"I won't listen to, or learn from, any lectures or any thoughts from others."

 

A big part of the reason I blocked him was so I didn't waste time clicking on a notification just to have his manifesto be the post. He thinks he's right, he's the smartest, the best etc. Remember when he was an expert on Covid, he knew it all. I'm telling you, block him and this board becomes a lot better. Let him rant to himself.

 

Are you Talking about DonJuego or DynamoManiac? Can’t tell who you are describing

 

ok mr. "has me 'blocked' but then responds five seconds after i post." ok mr. "i am trying to keep things civil by sneaking out from my blocking to insult people and call them crazy" when in reality part of the reason the few posts stand out is the thread is dead.

have any of you read the USMNT game threads? 100s of posts in days. it's a function of how dead the board is, really.

it's amusing to watch someone try to turn around how they responded to topical posts intended to have discussion and start nothing with an ad hominem insult, into an opportunity to push politics of "block juve." that's f*cking rich. if i have gone to lengths to respond it's the dishonesty and insincerity and dirty politics of it all. spare me the john stockton routine. i already know what many of you think of me and my posts, this is ritual at this point. people can think what they want. what the light needs to shine on is the bullsh*t lying ways they go about it.

imagine you posted a couple times of sincere feeling and what you got back was some fake who claims to have you blocked insulting you 5 hours later as crazy, then using what he stirs up to campaign for blocking and attack you personally some more. you wouldn't be happily skipping down the lane after and you'd find it gross too.

 

i posted something about an aberdeen player who championship teams have interest in who i see as a potential next elis. any thoughts?

i posted something where i noticed where we have tons of loans and like 1 sale all year. which is interesting context for sebas. any thoughts?

i posted something where i questioned whether coco could remain shop windowed given the tepid summer -- despite the fact new sebas could be seen as his replacement. any thoughts?

these thoughts are now nutshelled for people who can't stand reading prose on a prose posting board. these thoughts are pertinent to the thread.

or even post your own "thoughts about the roster" on the roster page. please. i even think that was the basic thrust of my response -- beneath the self defense -- was if i make 3 topical posts spare me the insults for mine and post your own topical stuff. anyone have anything topical?

 

re messi, i never said we had to get messi. i said we went 6/8 when they went 9/10 and that has tradeoffs. i think based on our table standing these 2 years those tradeoffs are more than debatable -- even our fairly average standing now. i then said we shipped out our DP 9 so where is our 9/10? this is neither inconsistent nor bad personnel thinking. i also noted that for a team that has a CB and 6/8 DPs it's odd we let the defense overall stay fairly shoddy. if i have hadebe and HH this is going to be, i dunno, nashville. i see our issue as some talk him up like a serious 10 which messi exposes as funny, and then it's a mediocre defense. i am sorry but unless we're just trying to make excuses, messi is reality. keep up or become roadburger. we don't have messi money but that's not an excuse or shield against fixing what needs to be fixed.

short version, no messi doesn't mean do jack sh*t.

last point, i think i said a few years back it was bad for this team when the fans -- probably including me in recent years -- began accepting team fiscal choices like inevitable reality. i am fighting myself a little here because i know pretty well we're not signing messi but in a league where those deals are starting to happen, that we're not in that league is "settling." when i say the fanbase is sick, i think we "settle" too easy, i think we lag results with criticism when the future is predictable. the common thread there is just kind of putting up with what we get. to be real, even i am proposing "duk" and not "haaland" but i think it's corrosive for this that we no longer expect or demand much. "no messi" isn't an excuse or shield against making our own lower rent efforts. i think it's either cheap or ineffective to have not signed a key central attacker and worked on the defense. period. you can lob around "gold plated juve" but we're not even signing "duk." whole thing is we didn't even swap out the 9 we just shipped away. even a little much less attempted something even 75% messi.

even as basic roster management how do you loan a 9 then not even bring up a HD2 9?

 

this is kinda where I'm at as well. I keep getting told to just be happy we are making changes but these said changes are small and barely move the needle. There is proof of concept in this league that big positive changes can be made over night yet we are stuck with a club that believes in incrementalism at a torturous level

 

No doubt in my mind that Miami's one-transfer window complete overhaul from worst to clear contender changes perceptions on what is possible. I do think a detailed analysis has to be done but I don't know what the result of that analysis would be. It very well could support the conclusion that big change is possible. Or Miami had a unique opportunity they planned for. I don't know the answer.

 

to me there are 2 layers. layer 1 i think there is like some residue from the kinnear years where people just think magic happens even in years like 20-22 where that was just silly. like the roster by itself made me question how is this happening. "this isn't enough." this year is only x% better than then. i don't believe in magic but i think delicateness comes in a lot closer to winning MLS Cup than where we are now, which just kind of sounds timid.

layer 2 when you start to get competitive you have to resist the urge to take your foot off the gas. even right now this is not "1st," it's "6th." we struggled into the break. we were knocked out of LC only winning on kicks. we got a favorable period of a couple home games. i think coco back helps as would hadebe but people fail to acknowledge that if players A and B matter that much it's saying something about C and D. and to me kinnear would have fixed C and D.

i think a lot of it is i believe soccer is primarily about talent and secondarily about coaching, and i think the people defending incrementalism have too much faith in coaching alone. like we can't touch this because the HC has it in the playoffs. yeah, you mean a game under .500. my experience says load the f*cker up with stars. put it beyond question. also, i feel like the discussion gets on-off switch-y. we had sebas sitting around. we have a chunk of the regular players who aren't that great or are stuck on the bench. like this doesn't have to be a thing about coco or HH or some of the others just yet. for now it would have sufficed to sell sebas, replace him, and swap out some of the backs seeing time. like a dimmer switch. i think it's framed right now as don't mess with it this might make the playoffs but people used to resist touching ale, ching, cerritos, grey, etc. to me it's contradictory because if it's that delicate it ain't that awesome. which is what the table says if people are honest. better than recent years -- credit for that -- but still losing more than it wins, scoring only as many as we allow. most people wouldn't see that as an endgame.

 

i don't tend to like UCL fanboys talking about roster competition in the abstract, like where a player can sign someplace dumb and overambitious in europe and we act like he's showing up his first day of HS soccer or select, "just go out there and compete." and magic will happen and some invisible hand will make them better than everyone at their big club. this is not reality. like when adams was being talked up as a CFC target when they have enzo and were chasing caicedo. yes, he could try hard, try to be the starter, but that's just a tough ladder to climb. it strikes me as naive stuff.

anyways, we feel like the opposite. like was sebas let go (and castilla) because "they're not playing so it's harmless?" but then we don't bring in a bunch to replace the 2 departures as that might cause turmoil somehow. if the lineup is average in the table you need to fix the lineup and not the bench. it feels a little foreign. every year in college in august the new recruits would show up and if you're not looking over your shoulder a little, the recruiting isn't good enough.

to me the check on team chemistry is you sign people ben likes or that fit his mentality. eg new sebas has played some defender and will chase like we want. i half think it's a critique of the GM or PTSD if people are scared who we might sign. but as i said with the dimmer switch point i think we could have tinkered without touching 80% of the lineup. one CB, one 9/10 type. little more leakproof, little more ammo. shouldn't be scary. load er up.

 

if you look at the big picture they have gone out and gotten not just messi this year but josef, messi, busquets, and alba. they are older and may have limited shelf life -- not unlike our 2017 team on steroids -- but that is a huge amount of ammo, half a team. at that point my concern of whether this is beckham's first year with LAG and the 10 dwarves goes away because they have brought in half a team around him. now, we still have to see how they handle a MLS regular season, and they have to make up a 14 point deficit in 10 games. but they have one cup bagged already and after a double. he has lived up to hopes enough so far where worst case scenario this is zlatan and a highlight reel is left behind. stands are full -- in miami, etc.

i think their efforts may be a bit short termist but we work so slow elis and manotas leave, and coco is shop windowed. so what is our time horizon, is it too far the other extreme? few of the people we sign seem to be bonieks content to set up shop permanently here. so i don't get the tepid work speed. we are racing the age of clark and HH, as well as the career ambitions of coco and hadebe. so maybe act like it needs to happen this year, latest next. we should know better from 2015-19 and how this went from bad to competitive and right back down, no time flat. and i think 2016-17 was our own little baby Miami boom.

MIA also seem to have figured out something we haven't, and loaded up one end of the field. so they can try to beat you 5-4 if their defense still sucks that day. we're going about this more ad hoc and all over the field and so what has happened is this has gone from bad both ends to average ish both. that may be enough for the table but is not much of a playoff or cup recipe. and then MIA will likely tinker with the defense next winter and try to get that thing Full Nasty.

i still think some of this is about money, that we are reticent to do things of net expense without a sponsor to effectively buy it for us. shipping out sebas on loan gets a loan fee plus saved salary, even when swapped for new sebas' new salary, who likely earns less and cost no fee, where a full blown 9/10 would have likely cost a fee, and netted out as similar salary and added expense. which would have made this summer net cost as opposed to profitable offloading. but is this soccer or is this accounting. to me a soccer team sees itself ascending the table and tries to vault it ever higher. and then as accounting exercise the enthusiasm of the fans rises, they can sell tickets for a playoff run, people want ST for next year. to me the cheap expense way is also the clipped revenue way. the fans will remain skeptical.

 

He's not a DP though........he's just a glue guy......he's overpaid......BLAHAHAHAHA

 

that's some arrogant sh*t to post for anyone who endured last season

 

I'm not sure what funnier, Juve calling someone arrogant or his view that because we "endured" last season doesn't mean a lot of childish fruminess went into a lot of people being completely wrong about HH and should be happy he's here.

 

HH was not very good last year. He was not worth the salary last year. He needed to play like a DP and he has this year but he did not last year. And there is still a decent amount of the season to go.

 

False. HH was plenty good last year, and has been worth the salary we've paid him since the second he got here. The team was trash last year, which is exactly why we should have gone out and gotten a guy like HH. If you only base his worth in goals and assists, you're missing the entire point.