This article like everything posted form this site is just terrible by the way... bringing in Dejuan Jones offers "no ceiling raise"... It must be true there's even a citation for it, it's not just this dummy's claim that can easily be dismissed. Just click on through the link to the source to support this statement lol With Arena shifting left back duties often, bringing in Jones seems to offer no ceiling raise. A more accomplished MLS player than any of his competition, he remains in the mold of them. He promises to be a more competent option at the position without any extra potential. More competent without any extra potential, brilliant stuff truly
You say you want a Revolution Well, you know We all wanna change the world You tell me that it's evolution Well, you know We all wanna change the world But when you talk about destruction Don't you know that you can count me out Don't you know it's gonna be alright Alright Alright You say you got a real solution Well, you know We'd all love to see the plan You ask me for a contribution Well, you know We are doing what we can But if you want money for people with minds that hate All I can tell you is brother you have to wait Don't you know it's gonna be alright Alright Alright You say you'll change the constitution Well, you know We all want to change your head You tell me it's the institution Well, you know You'd better free your mind instead But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow Don't you know it's gonna be alright Alright Alright
I found that article interesting in that it didn’t exactly make sense. It would say Jones was better than the average MLS player and then it would say but he doesn’t raise the bar. The unevenness of the writing and my sense that he was making a lot of flowery statements as if to generate a certain word count, made me question who is this author, Anthony Tamagno. Was he an AI bot or something. So I googled him and discovered that he is a software engineer / data scientist and former president of SDSU’s AI club. So I guess he is using AI to write these articles. Haha i agree with Bashkar on something! A poor article!
And then there’s this: “The Buck move adds interesting wrinkles to this squad. Only 20 years old, the former English youth international has featured sporadically in MLS since his debut. This move intrigued most fans because he likely doesn’t start, and it seems strange that the Revolution would trade a player like this.” The fact that he doesn’t start doesn’t make it “strange” that the Revs would trade him. It makes it more likely. :facepalm
I must admit the Quakes impressed me the last week, lots of things could have gone wrong and we came out with two very solid results. Kudos to the Quakes and Arena and staff.
Agreed. Very impressive with injuries to two of their best players, travel, and amount of games. The team is clicking and we are getting contributions across the player pool.
So we're at the halfway point in the season, a roughly even record in terms of wins / losses, 7th place - in a spot to get at least one home playoff game, we have a full B Team that can at least be competitive in games, we've got guys coming back from injury (Arango, Daniel, Hernán, Benji, etc.), so we could be better in the 2nd half (assuming good luck with injuries, knock on wood), we are in position to make some moves this summer - possibly moving some high $$ players who are not contributing much, we've got 3 recent superdraft guys playing well on D, 2 superdraft guys contributing in midfield, Bruce's big forward acquisitions are paying off big (7 / 8 goals a piece I think), we are leading the conference in goals scored (while still struggling on defense), we're in the USOC quarterfinals, etc. I was skeptical, but I think it's safe to say that Bruce was a good hire. I don't know who would have done better. Wilfried Nancy? Jesper Sørensen? My only complaint is that we are not greasing the wheels for the academy guys. Bruce doesn't seem to care about that. He's a college draft guy. We loaned out the guy who is probably best suited to getting regular minutes on the team right now (and will probably never see him on the Quakes again), we have more or less stuffed Niko, and guys like Cruz Medina can't get a sniff. Successful integration of the academy players has been a problem for us and it's gotten worse under Bruce.
I think Niko will at least play once he's back to fitness. The main issue is that Bruce probably doesn't like him as a double pivot and sees him as more of an AM, but like Hernán there are ways to work him in there. Are we actually worse with academy players than than we used to be though? The only material difference I can see is that we used to have Cade.
The problem for Niko (and Hernán) is that we're not playing a CAM anymore, and Niko's minutes came because we were still playing with CAM and Hernán was out. So his prospects for getting a lot of minutes when he comes back from injury are not good - it's a double whammy - 1) Hernán's back and 2) we're not currently playing with a CAM. Even if we ship out Hernán, there's still problem #2. Yes, we're actually worse with academy players than we used to be. Prior to Bruce's arrival, besides Cade being a starter, 1) Niko was a frequent starter 2) Verhoeven was getting starts at the end of last year 3) Emi played some friendlies and was sometimes on the bench for us 4) Cruz Medina was at least playing in preseason games against MLS teams and played in a friendly IOW, we shipped 2 of those guys off, and we've gone backwards on the integration of Niko and Medina into the 1st team.
Oscar Verhoeven is now the starting RB for San Diego after their other guy got injured... after getting 5 minutes in the midfield from Bruce he's now getting close to passing his 2024 minutes already, one more game should do it.
I will say that I would have preferred we let Verhoeven play instead of bringing back Lima, and play Emi instead of Edwards (/Yarbrough/Jackson). But it sounded like Emi wanted to go to Mexico all along and we got a reasonable fee for him. Niko is still hurt afaik. I don't know if bringing in Buck shows lack of confidence in Niko/Cruz or if it was just an opportunistic asset play though.
The team is viewing Niko as a 10, he’s said that himself. Buck is an 8/6 or even a 6. Buck will compete for time with Kaye, Harkes, Beau, and Fernandez, but not Niko so much.
A few ideas...I trust Bruce's opinion and talent assessment. He inherited most of the guys in the academy, so he hasn't had a chance to put his mark on it. I don't think Bruce is exactly anti- academy and totally pro college guys...with Bruce it comes down to whomever he feels can do the job...and we do know Bruce is the college CB whisperer...so it's a bit unbalanced toward college guys now. Imo, Bruce is really high on Leroux up field...to the point that he has Leroux's ability ahead of Niko and Hernan. And I couldn't be happier, because it looks great. Very tough for Niko though...I wouldn't be surprised if he moved on...imo, he wouldn't be happy as a back up mid. he has bigger aspirations and it probably isn't with us. Re Verhoeven...there is no way Bruce's jettisons Verhoeven unless he feels he or his agent is a complete pain in ass to the point that his situation would be a major distraction and toxic to club unity. Bruce runs a tight ship. Verhoeven clearly has talent...But there was something there that caused Bruce to cast him out... something that was a deal breaker... this was not an issue with his playing ability. So if you want the Bruce vibe, you have to roll with who he wants and doesn't want playing on his club. Re: academy dudes. We have a good number of players that are invited to camps and assessed highly, but some of these starlets don't look close to being ready to play at MLS level. If they were, Bruce would have them on the first team...Medina isn't ready. I don't need to wring my hands over the academy players. Bruce has a great eye for which players can help the cause and which are not ready. the best example is Bruce bringing up Leroux and inserting him as an MLS starter...he just has a knack for knowing what he needs in a player to make it all work on the field and in the locker room.
Yeah, Lima has been a disappointment. Although only limited time, I saw nothing in Buck that would play him over Niko or even play him. Not sure how Niko fits in Bruce's systems as you noted. He is not a pivot player and isn't effective on the outside. Is he good enough at AM? Wait and see at this point...
Again, Buck is not a Niko replacement. He's an 8/6 or possibly a pure 6. Niko has been slated for CAM. If Buck was not injured he'd be taking or competing for Nick Fernandez's minutes, not Niko's.
So we're just gonna wave our hands about Verhoeven and speculate that there's some "pain in the ass" thing about him that would make us want to move him? There's no evidence for that. It could simply be that Bruce saw Verhoeven's future as an 8/6 but Buck became available. Verhoeven might be good as an 8/6 but Buck is a somewhat known quantity there and they are close to the same age. So do you want a "maybe" or a "probably"? Also, as Donovan said in a recent podcast the most important thing for a young player is that they're playing, so maybe Bruce figures this is the only way to move Verhoeven's career along. And we either get back a more seasoned player or we lose him to a rival for a price. I just think it's a bummer that we're likely gonna lose the one virtually sure thing HG in the pipeline right now who could have been a good starter for us for many years. To me, it matters that they're local guys / HG's. I don't think Bruce cares about that at all. I think Lima's been fine, but that's an acquisition we really didn't need to make. It took minutes from Verhoeven, but Benji is also playing that spot, and there's also Marie. We just simply did not need him. We'd probably still have Verhoeveon on the roster if it wasn't for the Lima acquisition. I'm not ready to say that Medina is "not ready". I've been watching most of The Town games. He runs the team. He is close to getting to the point where he's dominant. Is he "ready" for MLS? I don't know, haven't seen him get any 1st team minutes since he played a few 1st team minutes in preseason games last year. Well, before that, a 2022(!) friendly against Celta De Vigo! Three years later, virtually no 1st team appearances? This is his 4th year with the Quakes 2nd team. He is on course to going the full Casey Walls route, where we just hold a guy in purgatory for years and years on Quakes 2 and never give him a chance to go to the next level, and then, the axe! We have a reputation for squandering our academy talent. I hope we don't do it again with Cruz.
Once DeJuan became available the writing was on the wall for Oscar in the short term. It would have been nice to get him in the offseason instead of Lima but the price likely would have been higher then. I just wish SD didn't hold a buy option.
I think the Buck acquisition was more of a factor than DJJ. Just before we loaned out Verhoeven, Bruce was saying, "I think he's a 6/8 center mid, he's not a fullback / wingback". And actually the last time Verhoeven played for us before his loan (and probably the last time period), he played CM. He could have been getting the minutes Nick Fernandez or Buck would be getting as a 4th CM.
I'm not anti-verhoeven, the opposite in fact, of all the guys mentioned previously regarding wingback competition, with the exception of Jones, I believe Verhoeven has a higher ceiling than all of them, and i would also say better than Buck. And Verhoeven is playing really well currently with plenty of room to develop further. To me he has the same upside as Leroux, or maybe even higher...he is a very sharp passer and plays really smart and quick for a young player...with a healthy amount of defensive attitude. And he looked great in his cameo in the middle of the field. It is all there...he plays fast and smart. So if I can see that sitting on my couch, Bruce surely knows what he has in Verhoeven...a fringe level nats player...kind of a big deal right, like no brainer big deal....and he's cast out. Situations like this are really rare, so there must be a back story, because he's way too good to get rid of.
It’s also quite possible Bruce made a bad decision. He’s made them before, he can make them again. We also don’t know the transfer amount. Maybe it’s really high / favorable for us, but probably not or SD may not want the deal. They are trying to build for the future and I think they must be pretty serious about keeping Verhoeven. What $ would make it worthwhile for us? $500k, $1M, $2M? I’d rather we never did the loan. *Finally* an HG that could give us good minutes for many years to come…gone. We play SD in August and them again in September, 3rd to last game. It’s possible he starts and shuts down Chicho or whomever plays on that side, which would be the ultimate adding insult to injury.
I don't think Bruce could whiff that bad... Mark my words, the higher Verhoeven goes, the more questions Bruce will have to deal with regarding why he let him get away....hopefully it is not full blown Luna hysteria, but it's coming..
FWIW here’s a SD thread about Verhoeven - fairly recent, from a few days ago. It’s all pretty much positive. Solid if unspectacular, rarely puts a wrong foot forward, 87% pass completion (SD likes to hold the ball - they are 2nd to Columbus in possession). Some say “great”, and the consensus seems to be that he’ll compete for the starting spot when their previous starter comes back. This is all in line with what I would have predicted. https://www.reddit.com/r/SanDiegoFC/s/QEcFKTpK77