Yeah, I'm always skeptical that people can evaluate the quality of rosters outside of the actual, you know, results. I think we have a big enough sample size for the 2024 Quakes to see where we are.
I don't really want arena even though he would probably give us a short term bump he's another guy who is guilty of giving jobs for boys, which has been a continual problem between fioranelli, almeyda, and luchi. Gruezo was decent last year but he was the worst cdm in the league this year and still has a full year left on his contract and now appears to be pulling an almeyda and trying to throw a tantrum in his on field performances to get us to eat his contract and fire him. So sick of these people stealing a paycheck from us.
Did Gruezo throw a tantrum on the field last night? Didn't see anything. If anything I thought he'd been playing a little better, maybe hoping we wouldn't try to transfer him. I would guess that he'd love to stay at least another year. He's making close to $2M a year guaranteed and living in a safe place with great weather.
Literal tantrums no, but last night and the last month or so, he's talking a lot more trash after things don't go his way, he's shaking his head a lot, throwing his arms.
I took that as more like trying to show he cares than trying to get out. I’m sure he’d like to stay here, enjoy the weather and low expectations, and collect that $2M.
Gruezo stopped marking Josef Martinez on his set piece goal after Josef gave him a slight push... just decided let me stand two and a half feet away from this guy so he leaves me alone... and Josef isn't exactly a big dude (although his scowl is intimidating).
bay area GM fired BREAKING: SF Giants fire Farhan Zaidi, name Buster Posey as his replacementRead more here 👇https://t.co/5Xj9wnmJli pic.twitter.com/kkN9X4XJpH— SFGATE (@SFGate) September 30, 2024
San Jose Earthquakes offseason guide: Wooden spoon... now what?🔵 Coaching search/decision crucial. Who will it be?⚪️ Espinoza and Lopez are two good building blocks🔵 What does their flexibility look like? How many new starters do they need?https://t.co/8HHthCivOk— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) September 30, 2024
Not a bad analysis. Humphrey Bogert is a little more "on" than Matt Doyle, usually, when it comes to analyzing our team. He doesn't mention the possibility that CL is not the GM. I guess that's a little upstream from where he is focusing. Anyway, here are a few quibbles: Jeremy Ebobisse (who said the disaster quote) is a starting-level center forward in MLS. I don’t know if he’ll be back. Amahl Pellegrino had a fine debut season, but at 34-years-old on a last-place team... Jebo's been...meh. I've stated many times, like his holdup / buildup play, don't like him with the ball in the box. Always trying to get the ball on his left foot and blowing too many opportunities as a result. And I wouldn't say Pellegrino had a "fine debut season". Pretty good goal production but poor in buildup play and defense. And he's blown way too many chances in front of goal. I wonder if we can transfer him back to Norway. The club interviewed Gregg Berhalter, Bruce Arena, Gio Savarese and Robin Fraser. Any of those four would be excellent hires. I'm not sure that any of those guys would be "excellent", and certainly not all of them. The problem is that what we really need is someone with some new ideas - a Wilfried Nancy type, but we're so worried about getting respectabilty back, no one wants to take a chance, and it's safer to go with a retread.
The club interviewed Gregg Berhalter, Bruce Arena, Gio Savarese and Robin Fraser. Any of those four would be excellent hires. Translation: The Quakes are absolutely terrible so if they hire a coach whose name people have actually hears before that would be an "excellent" hire... the lowest of bars.
12th place finish and then they would say the Quakes are "improving" and "headed in the right direction"...
Chris Leitch vs Will Kuntz The @LAGalaxy became the 10th team in the post-shootout era to record at least 13 home wins during a single MLS regular season with tonight's win over Austin FC. pic.twitter.com/HdHNQYtQHS— MLS Communications (@MLS_PR) October 6, 2024
Apologies for the length of this post. I was really hopeful that CL would be a good GM. What happened? He's been poor, at best. Sure, signing Hernán was good, but came too late. Surely, he could have found a #10 elsewhere who would have been good. Even if not as good as Hernán, better than the no #10 that we had. (I'm a big Jack Skahan fan, but probably Jack should be wearing a Monterey or Sacramento kit.) Signing Jebo was a good move and really helped us quickly, but Jebo has been much less effective. Maybe injury has something to do with that, but also, we just don't have the support pieces to make Jebo's game work. CL signed a bunch of new defenders for us. And on the whole, I think they have been upgrades over the previous players. However, we've been leaking goals like a sieve. I mean, our defense is incredibly shambolic. We've been better since Ian took over, but holy crap we are bad. That's on the coaching, both Luchi and Ian (even though we've been better under Ian). Our players appear to be shell shocked. They clearly have no confidence at all. The least thing that goes wrong causes us to fail dramatically. Which leads me to believe that there is something bad going on behind the scenes. I think the players like each other, and they seem to like Ian and the coaches, so I'm thinking that it's CL or Shawlee or someone else in the org who has said or done something demoralizing. Not signing any new players in the summer transfer window is a sign that leadership has thrown in the towel. This season has been epically bad. I think that we should fire CL and Shawlee at a minimum. Maybe someone will hire Covelo away from us, now that he's been assistant Olympic coach. That has to bolster his resume, right? Maybe we can send him to another club, even if USL. Who the hell is Brett Karleen? If he's in charge of managing the roster budget then what is CL doing? And if Brett is really in charge of managing the roster budget, he needs to be sacked. (This might be unfair, but I want a real house cleaning.) What the hell is Wolyniec doing? @Kaitlyn thinks that he's smart. Maybe he should take over for Leitch? I'm thinking that we go cheap here. RottenFish is a penny pincher, so will he try to do things as cheaply as possible? Who the f#$% is Vassili Cremanzidis, and what does he do? Do we need this guy? Ron Shinault, our director of health and performance needs to go. We've had a zillion injuries, so he's clearly not doing a good job. We have a ton of people on the staff, but I don't see anyone listed as scout. What the hell? Who is scouting players for us? Here's another thought, why do we have so many of these guys? Shouldn't we have a GM and maybe two GM assistants who do as the GM tells them? Who are these other guys? And why are their job descriptions all so similar? Do we have too many cooks spoiling the broth? I am reminded of the period of the Kraftholes where we clearly had too many hands on the steering wheel, which led to an awesome crash. Do we have too many people involved with the overall direction and training and scouting? Our players are not good enough, but I blame the people who hired them more than the players. If you hire substandard guys you're going to get substandard results. It's that simple. I want us to keep Ian, but I doubt that will happen. I also want a general blood letting. We need to fire a bunch of people in Soccer Operations, and a bunch of the players. It has to be clear that failure is not OK. GO Quakesfans!!
So Fioranelli had 4 & 1/2 years in charge and Chris Leitch has 3 & 1/2 under his belt. How much longer will Leitch have a job for?
CL may well be deadman walking right now. He didn't get to sign anyone in the summer transfer window, which suggests that his main job starting then has been resume polishing and job searching. You'd think that he was still in charge he'd have signed someone. Were he still the head honcho, then he should talk to the fans, but that's not his "style." Or maybe Fisher has said: "don't talk to the fans!" Whatever, I'm all but certain that CL is gone. GO Quakesfans!!
Cremanzidis was hired a few months ago to help with roster building / "capologist", etc. His official title is "Head Sporting Strategist". He was involved in scouting and analysis from 2016-2018 for the Quakes (during which time we had some decent but not great intl signings - Flo, Vako, Hyka, Kashia, Urena). Then he went to Montreal for 5 years and did similar things. So that's the thing about CL - he's built up this team of people. If you can him are you going to clean house of all his hires and start over?
I do agree, John Wolyneic is very soccer smart, he understands the small intricate parts in soccer that can build a functioning soccer program. He's a Bruce Arena loyalist. I want Bruce as coach, because I know it'll piss a lot of people off, but I think we'd find some success, the only difference is, don't expect a bunch of international guys, expect a bunch of Bruce Loyalists mixed with European players. We will probably get old man Omar Gonzalez who's followed Bruce everywhere.
If so many guys employed by the Quakes are so smart, how come they're 29th out of 29 teams and setting the all time MLS record for most goals conceded?