Tab Ramos: No matter which side of the discussion you're on, you're right. A look

While I'm certain no coach would have achieved much better with this squad, his decisions on subs leaves a lot to be desired. I also wonder why we are not playing our younger guys in a season like this. I would like to see how he does with a better roster.

 

On the fence about this one. If we had a competitive roster I would say give him another year. However, are you really going to invest in alot of money in building a squad with players picked by an unproven coach?

It's a two part problem. We need GM's and scouts who can evaluate talent and value in the technical part of the game. We could hire Diego Simeone, Thomas Tuechel, or Jurgeun Klopp but you don't give them the right amount of talent, it's just a pig with lipstck.

A big gamble to keep Tab and spend alot of money on players. If it doesn't work out it will be more time consuming and costlier. Starting over with a new proven coach / system / roster would be slightly more expensive but with less risk.

I am rooting for Tab but it would be a hard decision for me if I was owner unless I was a mega billionaire for which money is a mere trifle.

 

there are two ways to explain why younger players aren’t getting minutes. The first is that Tab is without a doubt coaching for his job and while we see what the roster is there’s still likely more confidence with that group than completely unproven youth players. The other option which is more depressing is that the youth players may just not be that good.

 

Those last 3 would be good examples, Juan Castilla and Danny Rios would also be good to see. Also Lemoine didn’t get close to 900 minutes last year https://fbref.com/en/players/8ccbbaf8/Niccolo-Lemoine

 

sorry but your argument is basically "cubs will get them next year" naive rubbish. literally any coach out there you could say this season he will get better players and be a better team. literally any coach you cherry pick a positive week from an abysmal season, ignore who the opponents were, and optimistically hope it will be better next year. that's not light in the tunnel, that's a train.

sorry but what this team needs is a reboot. serious GM, serious coach, serious players. your hagiography of our poor value coach is unacceptable. i am not betting on some feeling about the coach. this is his only senior job. his results are what they are. objectively he should be gone.

this has been an underresourced franchise for roughly 7 years -- and even before that we were playing over our salary head. literally every coach that has worked here could hide behind the payroll. this particular coach has worse results than any of the others who could have hidden behind the payroll. what makes him immune? hope? lundkvist and dorsey and vera? are you kidding me?

the offense sucks. the defense sucks. the subbing is ineffective. the keeping is merely ok. your idea of an uptick is a 3 game streak. we play a 34 game season. where are the bright rays of sunshine that you are seeing???

the amusing part is the sunshine player list you give includes several crap players and/or reads like a recent (losing) starting lineup. the idea is apparently give another year and "magic."

sorry, dude, the whole problem here is, say, dorsey or fafa. dorsey projects out to memo numbers. memo has been insufficient to get us there. fafa projects out to bruin numbers. you're missing that most of these players, on better teams, were subs, and if we are going to improve, they would need to become that again -- at least the ones we can afford as role players or subs. dorsey should be a sub. pasher should be a sub. fafa should be a 3rd forward or a sub. lundkvist, vera, parker, and hadebe flat suck. your future reads like a recipe for MLS also-ran porridge. get a serious MLS personnel man or woman in, and get me serious players where i don't have to listen to someone tell me bench players are our future. that and spend some money on outright stars who can provide the dozens of goals and assists we are plainly missing.

and while you're at it, a proven coach worthy of the same set of improved players. not the coaching equivalent of talking up lundkvist or dorsey hopefully. someone who has won a trophy before. someone who could see through the crap roster you're actually touting. the equivalent of a bruce arena who where-ever he goes, success follows. not excuses. part of the job is in fact sorting wheat from chaff and IMO he got bulrushed by jordan and added little of his own.

we have won 5 games this season, period. 3 last year. i don't want your optimism. i don't want your historical revisionism of how he's some incredible youth coach because he took a huge fraction of the current NT roster and managed just the quarterfinals with it 2 years ago. i don't want your hope. we have this hope every year. it keeps the coaches employed more than one season. it kept jordan employed most of a decade.

i want a serious GM, a serious coach, and a serious roster. clear out of the way. quit excusing this mess.

 

i mean, your post reads like the people who as the franchise worsened shouted me down that i didn't understand it. they were at least talking about a playoff eliminated team. but i was objectively seeing the slippage.

you're eloquently calling me an idiot for suggesting the coach of a bad team....be treated like the coach of a bad team. that is what the bullet point list is.

particularly at this spot in the table, the onus has shifted to the optimist and off of me.

last, and i in no way buy your theories -- the last 2 seasons are a lengthy objective refutation -- but for the sake of argument, if i accepted emotionalism is somehow rationality, that is not necessarily sufficient for either business or sports. to get the players motivated. to get fans out. we need an energy change. regardless what you think rationally. you're saying bring back many players plus the coach, hire a new GM but don't actually hand him a ton of roster changes to make any impression. i don't see that having sufficient soccer effect. i don't see the fans responding. let's be real, the fans would likely lag even me saying spend $5m more. that $5m would need to be well chosen and not likely be some chicharito name brand that would draw immediately. and you're suggesting the fans want a lot more of the same, and will buy tickets for more of the same, and it will be a field success.......nope. if the fans hear this is going to be ramos back with fafa and urruti and co., they will decide the owner was a liar and stay away in droves. this is his money where his mouth is moment. was he serious?

worth noting that while we dither there are several other MLS openings who will begin grabbing available coaches. we are not that special. we are one of 20-odd teams, many of whom also suck and could use a new coach. if we wait and try to convince ourselves it's not so bad, that we can keep the coach, keep most of the players, the market will be picked clean.

 

hope is free. objectivity would probably cost us money. hope saves on payroll cost.

 

i was here for the very first game, like physically there. where were you? jump in a lake johnny come lately newcomer. you don't tell me sh*t about how long i go or stay. takes some b*lls to talk "go away" when you have eintracht freaking frankfurt on your nameplate instead of dynamo. my name at least predates us even having a team.

you claim to be an analyst, well, dude, this is a USL+ roster, a bunch of castoffs from the rest of MLS, coached by someone who never had a senior first team before. OBJECTIVELY. sorry, dude, when other teams have vela or kamara or gil or ruidiaz, yes, dude, dorsey pasher urruti hadebe lundkvist is freaking chicken feed. they are slightly interesting in a "should be coming off the bench" way. about anyone in the MLS should show occasional spark. they are not starters. you are so parched you are drinking jim jones kool aid.

worst part is making excuses for this trash and trying to keep it intact. you put a bunch of effort into analyses but when they are seemingly intended as a status quo defense that's gross when we are 11 points adrift of the playoffs. this is a faint shadow of what it once was. anyone defending it --or any substantial percent of it -- is a troll until proven otherwise, in my opinion.

do you want this to suck? i mean, you're the self-styled analyst, where I come from 5 wins 12 ties 12 losses is SUCK. i am not interested in some lengthy science experiment where we buy some new players but leave intact a coach with 8 wins in 2 years hoping the coach wasn't part of the problem. blow it all up, start over.

 

let's be crystal clear what's going on here. the new owner promised us competitiveness and more resources. i am going to hold him to that. you can play touch football on this and wave him by cheap if you want to. i want what he promised.

ramos has not objectively done a thing to be kept. done with hope. give me a coach and GM and payroll like we are trying.

 

personally i think i need to defend this team from apologists and charlatans because if they don't do something about the product soon they will be playing to friends and family and then leave town.

i know we had covid attendance rules to begin the year but we long ago shifted to full crowds and the average attendance is 21st of 27 at 11k. attendance last game was 12k.

 

You must be so pissed that we beat the Sounders tonight! We were there by the way, like physically there, and it was awesome. You may go, enjoy your new team. It's LAFC isn't it...

 

Also, at least he capitalizes Dynamo you fake ********ing fan. Learn some punctuation, liberal bitch! Go find some racism to protest.

 

Brian, I was with you right up until you typed this out.
We all know that our city is loaded with passionate soccer fans. Folks that are very soccer savvy and follow the game in several continents. So when the Stadium is not full its not on the local soccer junkies in town. Look, its really more to the very fact that our Dynamo was a relocated franchise who garnered tremendous crowd support right off the bat and that is has its roots in Houston soccer fans going long on loving the players for the very fact they were all new to Houston. There was such a terrific cloud of support around the club, to the point that the soccer ignorant TV media in our town actually went out to cover the team at practice and certainly at home games. More so when playoffs and Cup Finals were achieved.
Yet our previous FO regime found ways to navigate away from this core fan base. The previous FO when getting the downtown stadium built, they went corporate. Which is a tremendous source of revenue for any MLS club in such a business oriented city like Houston. Just do not lose the scope that when the team is not so good or the economy turns downward, the corporate dollars will dry up first so calculate for this effect and do not alienate the core fan base in the process. and even worse blame fans when the team turned into the turkey it has become over the last many seasons. People will always vote with their feet.

 

You must first define what is meant the the term "actual fans".

If you mean people who pay $$ to see the games in person, then you are totally ignoring about 7,000 season ticket holders who dropped their season tickets over disgust in the way the team was being funded and managed.

In 2012, the first year of the new stadium, the Dynamo had around 12,000 season ticket holders. That dropped dramatically by 2019 to less than 6,000.

Many of those drops still watch the Dynamo although they refuse to enable the Dynamo ownership by actually paying to watch a game.

The real reason that attendance declined and continues to decline is the provable fact that ownership failed to invest a significant amount of money over and above the money they get in form of GAM, TAM, WHAMALAMADINGDONG, Add to that the bone stupid move by ownership to place individuals who had no experience in the business side of managing a football team and who alienated many season ticket holders by favoring a "supporter" culture in an attempt to mirror LAFC, Portland etc. And of course the main reason is that the team has sucked as a result of this inept management for the past 8 seasons. The USOC title was a one of that took advantage that all matches were played at home, other MLS teams using their reserve players etc. It is notable that year the Dynamo didn't come close to a playoff spot. The appearance in the Western Conference playoffs in 2015 was also an outlier and if you watched or attended the second leg in Seattle you could see just how badly outclassed the Dynamo were.

I guess we'll find out exactly how much the majority owner changes things soon.

All of this is of course my opinion, and you know the saying.

 

Nothing makes me tune out of a post quicker than “as a true day one fan blah blah blah”

 

context, dude. if he's trying to show me the door i can tell him i was there when the party started. personally i find it absurd to watched deluded people try to escort out the realists. he's basically proposing the sort of faith we've had every year for years, unfulfilled, starting now, before we know if they make good on their promises this offseason. ab-surd. the owner can flip his cards and i'll tell him if it's good enough a hand.

worse, doing this as part of some apparent self aggrandizement blog project where he seems to want to find secret genius in sitting 23rd of 27 teams, 13 points off the postseason pace, on 6 wins, none on the road. there is no objective basis in that for touting the coach as good for us. it does allow him to flex what he thinks he knows about soccer, except that flex verges on self-refuting when he seems to advocate more of the same. an idiot could figure out right now we need critique and not an insane attaboy. the question is how much china to break.

to kick some final dirt over his theory, if we ignore the season as a whole, if we ignore the awful august that preceded recent events, since his golden age of september began we have 3W 2T 4L. a losing record. 11 pts from 9 matches. this is 1.22 ppg. though there are some anecdotal fun days, we have scored 11 goals in 11 games -- 1 G/g. we have shipped 15 goals for the same period, 1.36 GAA. so he's very very optimistically proposing coach retention and building upon a time period when we still lost more than we won, allowed more than we scored, and on the snapshot ppg would still finish 10th if we played the season at the new rate.

i assume this johnny come lately is unaware that we have had other short term coaches recently who managed somewhat closer to the red line before failing. i am disinterested in his seeming notion that maybe if we pray right this is owen coyle.

we have 13 points to make up to get to 7th place, and the season is not over yet in terms of how big that gap will finish. excuse makers are not invited. stability is not what this needs. it needs a cleaned house and shake all the crap out of it.

 

personally i think the blindspot here, as with some of the other fans, is this supporter fanboy thing where, perhaps from blind loyalty, or perhaps because they have been starved so long, they confuse gristle with steak. dorsey seems alright, solid bench type. he projects out to 6G 6A a season playin wing in a 433. he does some neat stuff, but this is pro soccer. most decent players in the league do. the deal is he isn't a pimple on elis or quioto or davis or a list of other wings that have been through here. he's basically andrew wenger. we got our one recent playoff year when we emphatically decided wenger was insufficient and did something about it.

personally i feel like this fanboy thing costs us success. it encourages bringing ching back to do nothing his last several years when much of any goals might have meant a championship instead of 2nd place. but that loyalty could at least be justified as we're a finalist and have the history and perhaps owe him something. at this point we're not even competitive. if we're not competitive then any coach or fan favorite or hustle player you like on the team is not brian ching. you're not producing. you're not putting trophies in the case. you're not even getting us playoffs.

we have a weaker offense and defense -- both -- than any team in the playoffs from the west. you cannot have your cake and eat it too. and i just showed mathematically how recent "form" is not playoff form, still. start breaking eggs to make the omelette. 13 points minimum worth of eggs. more than that if you want a multi-week postseason and not just a round and done.

personally i think we deserve a ferrari but i think it would be silly to upgrade a yaris to a mustang and leave a green driver behind the wheel. i think what needs to go is this mentality that x will be enough and maybe this year we squeak in.

the new owner promised resources to make the playoffs. i take that to mean GM -- since he fired him -- coach, players. after fighting for this for years i am not going to listen to some benighted incrementalist try and make jordan's last several years' worth of offseason speeches. stay the course on the coach. we need depth, etc. what we need is spending some money and some GMs, coaches, players, worthy of the league and worthy of the franchise's history.

 

you don't claim to be an analyst? you write a freaking blog every game and laud the man's tactics. you don't just write about atmospherics. coulda fooled me. don't try and aw shucks your way out of this one. you either want to be taken seriously or not. if so, then maybe take a step back once in a while and look at the field you've farmed. big picture, the corn is wilting. august was horrifying. the whole season is abysmal. even your recent uptick is basically a more pleasant version of below the red line.

we suck. an individual game may be enjoyable -- seattle. but then the next game back to getting whooped. and overall, we suck. the difference between me and some is i am disinterested in getting excited over 6 wins out of 34 scheduled.

personally i am lost what specifically you re rooting "for" when you defend the team being this bad. it's sufficient to just send out a minimal payroll, a rookie coach, an ineffective GM, as long as it's orange. oh, but we changed the logo. maybe next year the name and orange. keep cheering, please. doesn't there need to be some sort of "thing" in the middle you are cheering for?

i don't feel like they are trying hard enough. this is pro soccer, not my alma mater. they charge $ for tickets, and not small change. i can watch games on TV, but at a point it's like are you trying to depress us all and test how long we go before we do something else?

sorry but you sound like the handful of people who kept attending chivas all the way off the LA cliff. and to be clear LA got a better team out of that. i don't want this to go there necessarily, but it becomes like the oilers. jerk your fans around enough, take off. we won't come watch.

this thing is a two way street. i follow the team. they do not provide me complete trash. minimum. right now it's complete trash. i refuse to be like some relegation zone fan excited we beat someone. this is a parity league. we don't spend in parity. we don't hire coaches or GMs in parity.