I can state categorically that David Stokes has been as good a player this offseason as any MLS player. He's been money.
Stokes as a D-mid? Carroll's position requires the greatest awareness and soccer IQ on the field, the two departments that make Stokes the liability he is. If David has supreme difficulty with things such as man marking, how is he going to consantly move into passing lanes, intercept passes, and quickly link the ball towards the offense?
Not to mention the supreme difficulty passing to people with black shirts and three white stripes on their shirt. I'd rather see Davie give a run at goal keeper with his size than D-mid if we consider the defense as a failed experiment (I'm holding out one more year).
We haven't gotten around to making the Joey Franchino appreciation thread on the Revs board. Or the Jay Heaps one for that matter. No word on whether RSL is planning a Rusty Pierce one, which is too bad because we really missed the boat on that.
But now we have one white stripe and two sorta stripe curve on the end things, so problem solved. I expect every pass to be dead on. Don't blame the player blame the jersey.
Stokes is going to have to work his tail off to get any first team time this season. He's going to be competiting with at a minimum of 5 guys (Namoff, Erpen, Boz, Prideaux, and Wilson) and then with what will arguably be a hungry group of guys down in the reserves. Although my curiousity is going to be, that if Stokes does REALLY well in camp does he stand a chance of getting significant playing time as a 65 minute sub or dare say a starter?!?! Especially given the fact that Nowak seems to really SEE something in the guy. If there is any room for serious competition for starting positions this season I say our defense is really wide open.
Again, I say Stokes for target forward. He is tall, reasonably good in the air and seems to go down very easily. A threat on balls in the air and may draw some penalties through incidental contact.
And if he has to be on the field, at least this idea puts him as far away from United's goal as possible.