For those who claim Goff is just a shill -- he just ripped Kasper/Olsen/Ashton a new one. When the guys who are paid to cover the team, take a pass on traveling to a game, you know it's bad.
Newsflash from Goff ... United stinks. Good to know. And griffin, he has been a complete shill. He suddenly gets a pass for 1 article? I think not.
LOL. Nice to see Steven saying a few rough things in that article. Wouldnt call it "ripping the FO a new one" since it's stuff thats all pretty obvious. All in all though, any negative articles in the washington post will start pissing people off at DCU and Steve is trying to maintain a balance between reporting and keeping good faith with the front office. So kudos to him
Basically, it just looks like he reads Big Soccer to me. Nothing that wasn't said here starting 2 months ago.
we know he's a journalist i never expected him to completely rip the team to shreds i did, however, expect well-written factual assessments of our club w/o all the normal DCU spin and sugarcoating he didnt sidestep any of the issues in this piece...i have to applaud and thank him for that
i personally wouldnt go so far as to call him a shill but i'd be lying if i wasnt a bit frustrated last year by the WP coverage of the Salihi saga nothing close to this type of article was published during last season (or the offseason/preseason) lol...he definitely saw his other namesake thread I'd wager he's sharp enough to have seen these flaws already (mabye we should make Goff the GM)
Which is why I think it's time we open source player acquisition and management here. We're all about saving money right?
I dunno, I'm not convinced he's got that big a soccer brain, honestly. I think he's a smart guy, I think he knows the game and the business, has a slew of great contacts, and has watched enough soccer to not sound stupid. But as for technical knowledge, or even an inclination to pay close enough attention to see the more subtle points in the game, player evaluations, etc, I'm not so sure. He makes some mention of evaluating player's performance now and then which is usually accurate, but there's almost never mention of any real insight as to cause/effect/dynamic. That may not even really fit into his job description. But I've never talk to the guy personally to have any real idea if he's more knowledgeable than he needs to be to do his job-- he well could be. Basically, I think he just saw "Goff Sucks", took the reason for the criticism to heart, saw the major complaints he saw here elsewhere (and that he saw himself), and put out this blog piece. I would say Yabo gets full credit for this one.
It's very well done and he doesn't hold back at all. Management figured — wrongly – the cash-conscious club could contend for a championship without opening the checkbook
part of me wants to give him the benefit of the doubt that regardless of what WE said on here, the losing streak would have been enough of a catalyst for this post but i still wanna give yabo a high five PS :: the GM bit was a joke...he wouldnt want the job anyway
Or, since the logical universe of doing and don'ting represents the entirety of damnation, we can thus simplify the expression to: Damned.
I've been reading Goff's stuff forever. During both good seasons and bad. I think this piece is in keeping with his old, well-established routine. Normally he covers the team solidly, but with a bit of a light touch. That's not a criticism. It's totally expected for a journalist who needs to preserve a working relationship with the team he covers. That doesn't make him a shill. This is pretty much the way of all journalists. But that's not all he does. Occasionally he comes out with a piece like the one we're talking about here. They don't come out often, but I've certainly seen this sort of piece before. Goff can't go out and wallop the team he covers every week. But he can do so, and should do so when the circumstances are right. I saw this sort of article in 2010 because it just had to be written and it was time for Goff to write it. The time for a piece like this has now come again. This isn't a new thing for Goff. Maybe it's just the first time some people have seen it ... or they just forgot about the last time we saw this kind of piece from him.
I think you're right. IIRC, it was an omen of bad things (namely that he didn't give a shit about his contacts anymore.)
the more i think about it, the more impressed with this piece especially the order the points unlike Olsen and Kasper the last two things Goff mentions are injuries and poor luck w/refs thats how it should be (they are contributing factors to the teams' futility but we have much bigger problems right now) and what i've considered to be the biggest issue is, rightfully, at the top of the list: we didnt fall from such great heights to begin with...
not sure this is entirely on topic but man could united use this guy: http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...gra-likely-move-again-mls-remains-possibility we would have to offload either bmac or jakovic. i don't know too much about the ins and outs of MLS contract issues so i'm not even sure it's possible but it would shore up the d and give ethan white a great learning resource.
DC was third for the Shield last season. We all knew it would be tough to match that but I don't think anybody except for Pantyrooms (spelling?) thought it would be quite this bad. I still can't help but think that losing Najar with only a few days before the start of the season was a bitchslap that this team won't recover from easily. And while I wasn't a huge Boskovic fan, this team desperately needs someone who can spray passes around and allow Kitchen to focus on defense.
I thought it was a terrific article, maybe because I agree with 100% of it. Succinct is a good way to describe it, and I like lists. Great job, imo. Rafael - 'major announcement' my ass, he called that out beautifully. Ruiz - desperation, yes, thank you! I would like to see some real in depth compare/contrast with other clubs when it comes to player acquisition/cap maneuvering. To me, this is what is killing United.
I didn't think we would be dead last and goaless/winless for this long thats mainly because i thought changes would be made before we sunk to these depths and i know you have a different opinion but i stand by my feeling about 2K12: our late season "success" was partially based on luck and not proof of real quality to cite Goff:
It's certainly the kind of thing you can file under the category "you know it's bad when ..." (And that's sort of the point of these articles.)
I think it is funny that he somewhat is calling out the ownership/investors in the article, when a few weeks ago he was criticizing people on his facebook, and twitter for doing the same thing. Not sure what to make of the article, but I am glad it was written, perhaps the FO will read it and pull their heads out of their asses before the end of the year. I also really enjoyed reading the comments. I think the next article should be about how all the season ticket holders are getting proverbially screwed six ways till sunday.
agree - strong article and clearly needed. Goff (for whatever reason) did not offer reason # 11 as a specific call out. 11. The ownership has their head up their arse. he mentions the owners but does not specifically call them out ... hence I did it for him.