Roster 2024

He coaches like he used to play. Easy going, sometimes a hard man, simple but effective. A players' player.

 

the planning/adjustment for this season is so poor we have short term loaned two HD2 kids for opening night. i get HH might be week by week but quinones is done and baird is gone.

 

they have successfully blocked themselves with sebas. he shouldn't have been back. and having him back + hurt complicates '25-minded summer transfers. he is the DP they could have moved to do something this year. i could see this getting ridiculous and sebas has a contract for a few years plus HH has an option year.

 

At this point we should have enough room for a young DP and a U-22 signing.

 

"stays in town?" he was a draft pick....

 

oh so now the people chiding me for saying "do something" -- "but they're locked" -- start noticing the available money in the seatcushions. interesting, that. i guess the organization has redone their accounting and discovered they could move people after all. i did wonder how you could have an offseason of nothing but losing players and somehow net out supposedly no room, which makes no sense unless literally every outgoing player was some sort of full-salary cap trickery.

i think they bet on health -- which is unwise with HH -- and i think they bet on continuity. exactly what the man said in preseason. and seeing where a mix of continuity and bad health luck has gotten them, they are pondering their options.

your analysis, even if mathematically correct, suggests we were snookered or they made a continuity decision they will be whooped for. they signed gregus at a quarter-mill. if a young DP is $150-200k charge, plus $240k gregus, that's $390-440k we had to play, not "locked." we then have plenty of players like aliyu ($425k), smith ($375k), steres ($355k), or tarbell ($250k), whose movement puts you at or near a DP charge (~$680k).

setting aside you coulda woulda shoulda offloaded sebas to open up the other full blooded DP. and now have neither the healthy player nor the cap room. so we are shifting our eyes back over to hadebe's slot and as with gregus looking for quick answers. what is a cheap way of spending a DP to help? a young DP.

step back. you have what should be, perhaps next year when their non-sebas part of the mess better resolves itself, a full blooded DP slot. you have a team that has gone cheap on DPs and generally suffered for it. i liked elis but our history on identifying young talent is spotty. whether i like the HH deal or not what briefly worked was get some actual expensive veteran talent in.

no, sorry, buzz, bullsh*t, the smarter play here was trade useless veteran salary bench players, replace them with cheap supplemental level salaries for a year, and take the marginal difference and turn their cap into the full hadebe DP slot. not some half baked youth slot. a full slot. you get HH healthy you have two stars. you struggle with HH health you at least have an interim focal point to make this playoff competitive.

if not that, you tank this summer while moving cap for next year such that we have "hadebe-plus-plenty." you be a man and you take your lumps on this season. you don't buy a cheap DP to try and cover up this season's mess. you work it to get us a full tilt DP next year where we can compete better long term. or is everything about next week here? i assumed half the point to pat's mistaken short term approach was worst case the red sea parts for the cap next year. only an idiot then starts short-terming his mistake.

they also should have ditched sebas like a year and a half ago when he had value. that is now turning into the value of a crap pile. and the best thing is he has a contract lasting forever. occupying a DP slot. the correct tack there was not "maybe you'll be better this year." it was "you will rot if you stay, here is a mutual contract release, begone."

btw, one good year from HH was nice but 2 unhealthy ones says you don't extend the option. that gets you 2 slots next year plus oodles of cap room even if sebas is an anvil behind this until 2026.

the problem with this team is it's constantly desperately seeking a single playoff qualification and not a young core who could rattle that off for years. and it wants to do cheap when what works is spending.

 

those pretending they have some clear-eyed plan for sebas have zero memory. remember his running buddy darwin quintero? darwin was like benched one season, then the end-of-year savior, then The Guy, then surplus. if that sounds like, you're The Frontline Guy, then you're loaned, then wait you're our 2024 attacking plan, hmmm. does that sound like a team that accurately pegs your value and/or knows its plan for you?

it sounds like a team that, well, makes it up as they go along. and i get with young players they can grow and evaluations should change. but this is, we can't make up our mind on veterans. this is how we rate you, this is the action we are taking based on that. not, we want you gone, no wait, come to camp and start the regular season, no wait, the coach hates you, on loan when you should have been sold, loan goes horribly, no wait, come back, let's try it again , no wait, you're hurt, etc......

 

Who hacked into JC's account? This post is succinct AND correct.

 

Just post this dude. Its a valid point. The rest? I recommend therapy. Don't ask me why I'm reading your posts. I'm obviously procrastinating something.

 

Don Juego made me read your post (actually skim, I don't read your posts because they are long and rambling just like you don't read anyone else's otherwise you'd have found answers to your stuff like how are they cap tight despite off-season exits. There's like 10 posts on that).

A young DP and a U-22 equals $400k of cap space. Quinones on the SEI removes $200k. Gaspar out the door removed $400k. How they have some room isn't rocket science.

Btw, Aliyu is U-22. His cap impact is $200k.

 

Egads. A couple more months without HH? Maybe I will be proved wrong. But I think SKC and the playoffs showed us the reality last season. The whole thing about only having to get hot at the end of the season and all is possible is no more. I think Glenn Davis is wrong on that point. Not with 14 team conferences.

Dynamo’s season could well be over by the time HH is back. Unless they somehow become some sort of epic road warriors when he returns. And I see no precedent for that.

 

I hadn't heard the term "egads" in decades Don.
That's awesome!

 

Bogart at the Athletic has absolutely nothing to add to what has already been reported. This from his roundup report filed yesterday:

 

dude you must have failed history and math because you forgot many of our dropped players and didn't add all their numbers.

outgoing is more like:
achara (second team deal)
auguste
avila
murana
rios
vera
---
thor ($85k)
baird ($550k)
hadebe ($1.1m, though only about $700k is charged)
and only then gasper ($400k)
quinones ($216k)
-----------------------
~$2.2m ($1.8m charged)

i mean, there is a financial effect of doing nothing but dumping players all winter.....

gregus is $240k, basically an even swap for quinones

are you suggesting the ~$1.6m difference was all funny money and raises?

you're then missing my point that a team with a brain and a long term plan would restructure the team to bring in a new veteran star, while offloading sebas. what they are doing now is trying to cheaply squeak back into the playoffs on continuity. that low energy low expense strategy started blowing up before they left preseason.

i believe they wanted to do continuity; they said as much. the math suggests the cap explanation is crap.

additionally, even if i was neglecting some funny money or raises or other eating into the pie, a smart team would go look for their next HH and spend some money, not patch their roster, sign some kid, and hope.

my whole point is we just try and improvise a minimal success rather than build a consistent powerhouse like we used to have.

 

and you're missing my point even with your math. your math if we traded a $300k player we should have a full DP and not a kid slot. they have far more than a young DP should cost and should have had it all winter. they are panicking. they prefer a young DP because it fills the hole cheaper and lower cap hit, and allows them different U22 capacity. they ignore our history on U22s. recent history is this team turns on spending what it takes to get an elis type player. our U22s like quinones are generally either disappointing or produce at supporting player levels when we need some studs.

and this all is setting aside the continued decision to let sebas stick around and hog the other slot. which, that's like, well, i only have one DP and not a ton of money. well, you keep bringing back a mistake. and they need to deal with that mistake because it extends out well beyond HH's contract. to me they are just going to double and double and double down on a big fee for sebas. hence they want to have him around and pray he scores some goals, enough to revive his sale value.

 

since our GM is not familiar with the tools at his disposal, we do have this thing called a buyout available. if i have a scratch and dent DP whose transfer value has taken a hit, who doesn't work with what the coach wants to do, and i get over the fact it's netting out bad as a financial asset, that is the soccer move. but you then have to spend the acquisition costs to replace him.

also re SEI, if HH is battling a knee, and all we got from ditching quinones was gregus playing 20', to me i'd wait and see if HH can come back before burning my SEI on a cheaper player.

 

Last week, Forbes ran a Dynamo op-ed that best I can tell hasn't been posted in BigSoccer. None of the commentary will surprise anyone here, but interesting the Dynamo's lack of reinforcements is being discussed nationally.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianqui...their-lack-of-reinforcements/?sh=664c0c536c08

 

Great find. That analysis is spot on and states better what I have been trying to say. Look around this league and the amount of investment needed to compete has increased.

 

the guy was completely unproductive 2023 -- 0G 1A in ~1100 mins -- and we need goals. no appearances this season in league. this is no more serious than gregus. the fans complain, you sign. how about signing someone any good? this will sound cynical but on the relative scale of dumb ideas taking a U22 on loan makes more sense than this. you go sign a kid there is at least some chance of an elis surprise.

also, he's $400k but remember we were supposedly broke. or that was what we were saying 5 minutes ago to those like me complaining about the team structure -- in preseason. having bought the time team to break from the gates and stumble, if you say the same things and link forbes -- now that we're underway -- genius. we should fix it. ahhh, money in the couch cushions. truth is they wanted a low energy offseason and the team just magically plays the same.

last, they have a tendency to, right on the eve of cap clearance beauty in a year like 2025, to muck it up the preceding year trying desperately to make things happen in 2024. as such, to me, you either go all-in and get a DP-type, or you take your lumps in 2024 and then walk into your cap freedom like a champ next year. this is neither fish nor fowl and doesn't help either year improve that much.

 

So were are taking Fafa Picault (undersized, quick, MLS journeyman) back? While our rivals buy top big strong fast international talent?