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

here's the deal. half the league makes the playoffs. in theory, that should mean, half the time you make the playoffs. if you test it out, it works for teams roughly at the margins. you're like, i've been going to games for a few years and where are the crowds. i guess that's where you get the idea you're the real fan.

how many playoff games have you been to in that period? are we even near average?

we've done this argument before, when they fund it right and make it competitive, we were top handful in attendance, over 20k, and that carried over into some lean years. the bayern game you cite indicates the latent interest potentially to be tapped.

ask yourself why we aren't tapping it. exactly. it's been like 1 playoff year since 2013. and a key aspect is after the antitrust settlement it's too easy to add up salaries and logically chain the poor payroll to the mediocre players to the table position. and it didn't change year after year. the coach hires are cheap. the GM needed to go years ago. and the payroll has been bottom or near bottom for half a decade. in a big city.

to me the part you're struggling with is dorsey never gets this there. alberth elis barely did. that is where the minimum bar is. in the DP era the league evolved and left behind hard cap teams like us. a bunch of low salary ok value for money castoffs never gets it done.

i've seen the list you wanted to protect and that is a below red line foundation. that's what you miss. if this is based around nelson lundkvist hadebe dorsey fafa etc. it's doomed before it starts. the whole point you're missing is that is like some minimum salary hard cap bunch of hustle players or outright suckage. that is precisely why this is where it is.

if the core does not dramatically improve this is a non-starter. the foot dragging does not help get us to minimum competitiveness much less where this once was.

last point, and nigel didn't spell this out, but the 20k+ attendances were a legacy of top end success. the belief this was championship competitive. the incrementalism you suggest would lead to a lag in fan and economic response, at best. at worst, we basically repeat the last several years. part of the reason i am pimping serious change is show the fans you ran off that you care now, symbolically, emphatically. people might be attracted back. you try and squeak it and it will probably be down on STH sales next year and it will take years of consistent playoffs to win anyone back. at that point you could fairly moan the fans ask too much. but right now it's can we act like the old dynamo and field a team with names i recognize and NT players and act like we give a crap, and the fans might then respond. otherwise, have fun tinkering with the rusty wreck in the front yard. i've heard years how next year it will be fixed up. promises, promises. the fans want follow through.

all due respect to the loyalty but i think with how we've been treated and continue to perform there should be a hint of danger, of 1000 fan astros crowds where the bulk were there for the rangers. i think that keeps cheap teams honest. and it's not disloyal. my loyalty is to the idea of the thing. not the organization. the idea of the thing is an ethos. bluntly, a kinnear type ethos where this is a disciplined team that's regularly rewarded with playoffs. or something. lost what the ethos is you are cheering for other than says houston on the jerseys and wears orange for the time being until they mess with that too.

i realize we were spoiled by the championship legacy team but this was still drawing well and maintaining loyalty when it was a playoff regular. but that we had a solid coach, decent team, and the general vibe was we were trying. that disappeared c. 2014 except one blip year. that's a long time to test your fanbase. and it wasn't like we TFC'd it and spent money and sometimes it didn't work. we didn't try at all. even the 2017 year the GM was surprised. what does that tell you?

 

last couple points, coach specific. this is a low GF high GA team that has blown a lot of games late. you seem to be blaming payroll and excusing the coach but the few teams down in our payroll range who are competitive, are all good one side of the ball. specifically, defense. philly barely spends and is 32 GA. van and MN barely spend and are 41 and 37 GA. you seem to be absolving the coach of being good neither side of the ball by saying $. i generally buy $ but not as an excuse for not having even one side of the ball functional. not when other teams with our payroll can win the playoff lottery through, well, better coaching. i generally push $ because few teams our end of the payroll table succeed. the odds go up. but if there are teams that succeed despite similar payrolls, one should be asking why.

we also rank dead last in the league in possession, holding the ball much less than 50% of the time (44%). we as a result rank mid league on shots but near bottom on goals for and goals allowed. the implication, to me, is we squeeze out entertaining attacking risks through aggression, which we cannot convert, at the risk of getting countered, which works too well. we have a poor defense AND concede most of the possession. if juicing your attack ends up with this little result, common sense would suggest your better game plan would be more like MN, try to tighten up the defense, and probably take fewer attacking risks that result in counters. MN is in the playoffs with the same GF but -12 GA relative to us.

you're the one saying keep the coach and a lot of the defense.

 

last last last point, c. 2015 with the new coach jordan basically made a GM level decision we would change the playing style. what has followed is a series, with one exception, of more or less entertaining offensive teams with a swiss cheese defense. the only formulation of this that worked to playoff level was to slam in nearly 60 GF and get the GA down into the 40s. we are dozens of goals away from either end of that.

i have questioned whether a cheap team should be running end to end with the big dogs. i am not sure if even a mid-salary-table pay rise would fix that. you would still be half the time the cheaper team trying to play aggressively, which is bad news over the long run.

setting aside the payroll thing, which i don't disagree with when properly framed, i question the tactical choice we're making, which speaks directly to coaching choice. i don't think a cheap team with trouble scoring anything and a poor defense should be treating possession lightly, high tempo passing, constant giveaways creating counters. then stand in our lines off our men in a defensive zone. i don't think a cheap team should play flag football zone defense where they barely mark anyone. i'm not sure if these concepts scale up to high levels of success with more $ spent. this is not holland. you have to play defense. and if you don't intend to do so, this needs to score like 60-70 goals, like this is holland. fafa and dorsey and co. are about halfway there. i'm not sure elis quioto cubo manotas could do that. otherwise you're creating the 2018 recipe where if we score 50+ we allow 50+ and still miss out because the GA means games routinely "go away" at the end due to late goals. which is what happens when you trend towards 55-60 GA for a season. they score early. they score late. that's how you accumulate the number. that affects results.

personally i think you're falling for jordan's panem et circenses by trying to perpetuate his half baked over-aggressive tactical concepts after we remove his hands from the personnel steering wheel. this change was intended to entertain. what i wonder is was it meant to win. i question that. tactical soundness needs to come back. this is not it.

 

how do you propose that happens? magic? if you look at the payroll table, most of the teams who pay poorly, finish poorly. it demands every coaching or personnel decision be that much more efficient. you have to luck out at GM and coach to escape the implications of your spending.

i've broken this down before over a period of years. few years back. teams up in the top tier of the payroll table almost all made the playoffs, usually decide the title amongst themselves, they had to screw up or have an injury rash to miss the postseason. teams in the middle make it about half the time and it comes down more to coaching and personnel choices. teams at our end of the table rarely make the playoffs, and as such, the odds are stacked against them no matter how hard they try.

the period of time when we were competitive was a hard cap era with no more than 1 "beckham" exception. though the league aims for and has a lot of parity at "making the playoffs," you basically pick your range of outcomes with your spending. at our spending level the top end of the range is maybe 4th in the west if the stars align perfectly. if they don't align, teams like us populate most of the also rans. FCD AFC SJ etc. they try hard, but if you don't try hard you'd probably win 1 game all season in this league. the players score a couple nice goals, but again, otherwise you wouldn't be in MLS anyplace.

to me the call BS test is go to team x above us in the standings and ask yourself would they go with our people or theirs. our coach or theirs. i don't think you'd like that answer.

my deal is if i was building a title contender from MLS parts i can't think of any of our players i would keep that i thought would be future starters in that title contest. some value players might be bench or maybe the last guy in a 3 or 4 man line. but where are the dero, davis, ching, onstad, holden, cameron, etc. type NT players you would play a MLS cup with? and if a guy is making $1m now and wouldn't be in that foundational set i have wasted that $1m. hadebe is a DP. if he doesn't own the field it's a bust. that's how the cap aspect works.

hadebe is making more money than elis did. do you think he's that good? exactly. this is why we are where we are.

 

what you're missing is jordan is the one who said we will play entertaining attacking soccer and then hired a sequence of coaches to do that

INCLUDING YOUR GUY.

i am trying to explain that if you want jordan in his rocker gone from the team in every sense that includes getting this bad tactical choice resolved.

i might be open to get some high level coach in here to play offensive soccer -- i am open to hire a coach and turn the steering wheel over -- part of the problem is the GM was running the team too much -- but i still think the attacking aggression relative to the payroll paid is a big chunk of the problem, particularly if you can't be bothered defending. i don't think we win end to end soccer with lesser offensive personnel. i think you need personnel miracles to have offensive personnel more valuable than their salaries suggest. it is rare you will have alberth elis or manotas sitting around all potential and no stats, ready to make you look genius for a modest price.

if you can be bothered defending then the calculus changes but that's kind of my point. if we're cleansing jordan from the team then maybe toss the "way of playing" stuff down the disposal as well. this was a better team when it was balanced and disciplined. this is a soft tackling, weak finishing mess. i am lost how this is a scalable prototype with more money spent. we are -14 GD. if you don't fix the defense and bring in 14 goals of offense that only gets you to "0." 2018. 58 GF 58 GA 9th place 11 pts off the line.

 

Never trust a Brit with a PK?

 

Hahaha.
Yup, we Dutch donot defend. That's why the best striker in the world didnot manage to score against Ajax, while they true to the Dutch MO score tons of goals in the CL. Actually they should have scored against Haaland 8 goals instead of that lousy 4-0.

 

fwiw i tend to make full season or months-long statistical arguments because they cut the anecdotal crap of "i like how we looked this week," or aesthetics, and get down to brass tacks on how effective ideas are over time. the numbers don't lie. we won x games, lost y games, scored a goals, allowed b goals, etc. that overall picture reduces the warm fuzzies of one night with seattle into 1/34 of the season and what the rest looks like accumulated. fwiw IMO often enough over a season the numbers bear our what i see most nights. you play soft defense night after night -- and i could repeat it over and over to prove i watch -- and you get the big goals allowed number overall. occasionally the schedule gods hand you an opponent with no offense, or no defense, or just a random night. but only a silly person gets stuck on seattle when LAG drubs us the next time out.

basic facts need to be dealt with. we have 6 wins in 30 games. we have no road wins. we average less than a table point a night. we are at barely a goal a game offense. we are at about 1.5 GAA defense. we concede the most possession in the league despite having inefficient forwards and while playing soft defense all the way back. how does any of that sound like something we should perpetuate?

as i was hinting at with the wenger comparison, even on a bad team, someone has to occasionally score. don't overblow the minor characters. if you have had half a season of games and you have 2-3 goals or assists you aren't our secret salvation. you're an upgrade on lassiter who belonged in USL. dorsey is no elis. elis is what playoffs took. readjust your dial to what it actually takes to win in this league.

i'm sorry but the basic conflict here is you seem to think it's (a) ok in fan terms to trot out any old bunch of FO/HC/players, just to meet contractual obligations for selling tickets and field a team basically and (b) worse, seem to have bought into the sales pitch of "maybe next year." this perhaps fooled people in 2015. after a half decade most of us feel (a) cheated as fans and (b) have a solid grasp that what we're trying is uncompetitive for this league's postseason.

the further nostalgic fallacy i see here is hugging hard to the old team to prove loyalty. there is always a new set of players every year. sometimes more than others. i don't see how this bunch is more lovable than any other. you will like the new bunch just as much. you will get favorites among them. you can hug them too.

i don't see where both sides can't be happy where you get to hug players to show your loyalty but you let the more critical sorts sort out which players should stay, go, come so that the rest of us don't feel depressed watching this. cause as far as i am concerned we've been selling some variation on this coaching and payroll incrementalism for most of a decade, just a tweak. it doesn't work. this is not close to good enough.

 

i think the part getting lost in the shuffle here is we have (a) the vast majority of players going out of contract plus (b) an expansion draft. with the exception of some players acquired or extended this year (valentin, hadebe, lundkvist, parker), we only have to bring back the out of contract/option players at our choice. there are also things called trades. why can't we be the ones offloading surplus for a change.

i think it would be nuts to sign a bunch of the players on a 6 win team back. i like the coach, i like the core. really? that is overoptimistic. i just explained sept + oct is still like 10th place pace. we still aren't that good.

i also think it's something we do all the freaking time the last decade, so have at it. "bruin and barnes" getting extended coming off a losing season. lundkvist gets extended for sucking. like we're afraid of change. lost why change is scary when we suck this bad. the present is not paradise.

and then JC the GM just thinks that even if we added some people, if this defense is behind your new offense -- 2018. you could score 58 goals and get even GD, lose more than you win, still miss the playoffs. you can't ship this many and compete. or, if you sign new attackers, but fafa or memo or dorsey has to finish what they start? nope. blow it up. worst part to me would be taking players who were designed to be "rentals," to basically get us through the ownership transition season, and then same ol same ol next year. things have to change and this dude swore he'd do it. swing the freaking wrecking ball. get rid of all the placeholders here to get us through 2021. knock it down.

 

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you're missing the point. it's not "aesthetics" or just who hired who. he was hired for a reason and to play a particular way. i laid out a tactical sports explanation. jordan said we'd play a different way. that different way is entertaining. that different way is not working for us on our budget. i have laid out for you a pile of statistics. i have explained that other teams with similar limitations manage to be good one side of the ball. and to make the playoffs. if you want to spin that as an anti-jordan tantrum have at it. i am saying what your coach does doesn't work. i am saying other coaches in his constraints play more disciplined soccer and have more success.

the part where this ties back to jordan is jordan was the one announcing the general tactical thrust all these years, and is the one who has hired the "type." over and over. coyle, cabrera, ramos. we swap out names on the door then play the same basic way. you're pretending ramos is somehow different. where are your facts for this theory?

to be blunt, he's not the best even of that lackluster bunch. might be one of the worst. his predecessors had bad teams closer to the line. or over it in cabrera's case. that was still not good enough. barrett they were at least defensively sound. they might have looked better under arnaud's interim period. yet you seem to be suggesting run with this guy like he's the best of the lot so far. sorry, but on paper what i am looking at is he 2 years running had the "following year" that got coyle or cabrera fired. and you're waving that around like keep the man. they at least had a first year that went someplace....

the "type" isn't working. it's time to get practical again. what made this team successful was tactical balance, discipline, some offense, some defense. we need to quit following the fashion trends that make fanboys happy, and do what wins games. teams will then imitate us.

 

i mean, where is this faith coming from? the record sucks, even the recent snippet. he doesn't have some lengthy CV as a senior head coach, much less trophies to show it works. he didn't get some english team promoted, win a league, win a cup, something to show he is capable.

his claim to fame is the U20s. he took the U20s to the quarters 3 times in a row. to me this looks less convincing with time. take a step back. you have dest mckenzie richards soto weah konrad ochoa gloster etc......and you lose in the quarters? team before that EPB adams williamson CCV sargent. quarters again. team before that steffen arriola moore acosta CCV miazga rubin EPB delgado. quarters again. ukraine owned us in group rounds, ecuador beat and tied us, we get eliminated by serbia, ecuador, venezuela. (the dynamo sign one of venezuela's prize forwards and he can barely run.)

the implication of your argument is he is under-resourced. you could hand him every U20 in the country, the golden generation, and he couldn't win with it. pfffft. buzz.

this theory should be turned on its head. like cabrera before him, he was basically hired without a senior resume. he was handed his chance. put up or shut up. this is all we have for proof of concept. he's had 2 years, i am done. same thing i say for players like miranda or alex lopez. it can't be years of promise and no delivery. at some point you get a big boy pants evaluation.

last thing, while i believe we have crap payroll and bad players, i don't think we are worse on paper than teams up to about 6th place in the west. i don't think this is a top 5 team, but our payroll is not dramatically different than MN or vancouver, our paper roster is at least as good as RSL or SJ. there are "tiers" in MLS, and we are not particularly successful within our tier. we are better than austin and dallas. whoop de do. i argued when the season started that might be our cynical goal. gut the team for an ownership change, but just enough where we stay ahead of the expansion team. but within his payroll bandwidth? nothing special.. there are better teams on the cheap, and they tend to play a more defensive style. heath can actually coach. vancouver could barely win when the season started, has 3 losses the last 4 months.

 

last last point, the idea that HC and GM should be separate is another "jordan" era theory -- like we need to change how we play -- and any ideas from that era should be treated as suspect rather than gospel. the personnel decisions were not improved by the split. we didn't become a better team. if a coach wants personnel control and has the CV to justify it, i'd save the extra paycheck and consolidate. they can always hire assistants and scouts. but i thought the GM thing was a FO power play at a time when kinnear got weak. the power play elevates GMs within the executive suite. it doesn't make for better soccer. we don't find better players this way, and sometimes it sounds like when the GM should be working on x he is busy with y. the dash, the minor league setup, some other thing a corporate veep should be handling instead. so the personnel person is still busy doing other things than signing players, and the player choices are meh.

i don't think we need a GM at all.

i think if we bothered they should be equal to the coach and work hand in glove with them. they should not be an upward "report," the boss. they should not be signing players the coach doesn't want. particularly on a budget we cannot have inefficiencies, CYA, backstabbing, rat-f*cking. the GM either needs to be the coach themselves, or the HC's buddy executing his wishes so the team is optimized to the tactical scheme.

personally i think the GM org chart reflects absentee landlord ownership. we have a hybrid exec/GM. they handle the soccer side, can finesse it to ownership, they hire and fire, and can CYA by blaming the coach. searching for a GM to then hire a coach is repeating the absentee approach, the empire building, and mistakes. i'd kind of hoped the owner yelling at tab meant this would be more hands on and less intermediated by flunkies who "explain how we are doing" to absentee owners, and can CYA failure onto someone below them. to me this needs to be less hierarchical with failures cushioned by the bodies of subordinates, and more of, this is a soccer unit judged by success or lack of same, and if the soccer product sucks, the unit takes the hit. everyone paddling in the same direction. no more politics and intrigue.

acting like it's personnel and not the coach is precisely the sort of lame distinction i want to escape. we were in enough games ramos blew it's not just the players.

 

We know this. Ramos needs tactical classes at U of H Soccer School 101. But in the mean time, when talking about firing the man, we must recall that who in the hell WANTS to move to our city and take on the task of head coach here? Even in good seasons, our club's FO kept feeding us the old line of, "Houston is a tough sell to big name soccer players from abroad." So often they repeated this to us in the stands that they themselves really took this to heart and it shows even when our club looks to hire a new coach. Now looking to hire a new GM, who knows. The end game is still the same, our FO fires Ramos and then who do they bring in that is A-better and B-really wants to take on the challenge of what this ship needs to be righted on???

 

If you buy that Ramos is part of the problem, what do you have to lose by getting rid of him though? It’s a you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take situation. Not like it particularly matters if they get worse since they’re already bad.

I mean I get it if you think Ramos is the answer and he’ll figure it out in X years. I don’t agree, but I respect the opinion.

I don’t get saying you know, this guy sucks, but the next one night suck more. Not with the position we’re in which is a team that hasn’t sniffed the playoffs since ‘17 and hasn’t strung together consistent successful seasons since 2012-2013.

There’s just not much to be afraid of.

And yes, Houston isn’t a marquee town for a lot of these guys, but there’s still only so many major league positions and you know, money talks. Control of a roster talks. You can incentivize someone coming here any number of ways, starting with opening your wallet.

 

We've been losing. For years now. Missing the playoffs. For season after season now. Correct.
With Ramos, at least we lose and he looks the sharpest dressed head coach in all of MLS. We stay classy while he is on our sideline. Losing is just what we do.
Better beat Austin today though.

 

revisit my comment about making moves like you are serious. if you can't use some combination of talk and money to convince someone worthy to come here and coach i am skeptical you have engaged in the right amount of effort and spending to win fans back. hand in glove. if this remains too cheap to compete and too radioactive to coach then he hasn't provided the resources and change of spirit he said or been the change he sold.

a lot of these arguments sound like what people used to make in favor of ching or bruin, "not sure we can do better so change scares me." we have since set the goals record for the team at least twice from the striker spot. does anyone still think that's as good as we have done?

we suck. this scares me enough. change is at least hope.

i think we are psychologically wounded is why you are getting the pep talk. we like almost don't believe we deserve crap anymore.

also, and this is not just me but others, without some serious degree of change the ticket sales and economics will not change for years. if they try this sort of "cheap fix" or "just a tweak here and there" thought process the fans will generally be skeptical like me. even if it works -- which i doubt -- wounded fans will take years to respond positively. people are not going to respond to a reboot that doesn't feel different than before. people want to feel like we are trying.

part of the problem with moneyball is that trust is earned. if you get a marquee coach and some serious players that in and of itself communicates i am trying. if you try some subtle scouting office sh*t, against this recent history, you're kind of encouraging "wait and see," "trust but verify." the fans will lag some sustained success. and that's taking this at face value when i am rightfully concerned "resouces" is just "go big" PR.

 

short version of one thing i just said -- if he can't convince new coaches and players this is different -- then it's not different. and we have a problem.

 

re ramos, calling bullsh*t on one line of discussion here......

this is his second, not first, year. he and jordan should have been gone last offseason after that stinking pile. they were given THIS second chance. this is what it is. another egg. they got their mulligan already. this would be a THIRD chance. move on.

also, while i am open to "value above payroll" type arguments, no one's really made that added value case. that like this should REALLY suck but is better than it should be. what i am getting here is just he didn't get resources so give him another mulligan. to me that third year would have been earned by some relative success years 1 and 2.

i think as i said the other day the talent is not bottom of the league talent, it's not top 5 talent, it's kind of the range from tail end of playoffs to above austin. given that potential range of outcomes our results are not high end of the range. that doesn't sell me on "needs resources." there is no magic. he fields a team to the level of the talent. you could get him more talent but give me a coach who adds something.

 

last point, i am slightly concerned that the delay in action, which i think was initially his family health emergency, is now naively trying to convince ourselves -- when i explained the blip is still under playoff level -- or the hierarchical idea we hire a GM who makes such decisions. that to me suggests more "absentee landlord." i am skeptical about future resources, payroll, coaching, and successs if the ownership continues to be aloof on even obvious stuff like how bad we suck. i don't want the owner running the soccer side but this is below the level of acceptableness that requires some sort of subtle soccer consideration. an owner who has a plan to fix this and meant they were going to do it should feel in his bones this is bad.