So do we sign anybody (and it doesn't have to be a DP)? Alot of rumors and Frankie has looked at players, but still NOTHING.
We all know that Andrew won't spend "Keane Money", I would love for us just to add a legit striker though.
I'm feeling pretty sure that no DP will be landing in Chicago this season. Mainly because we don't have any foreign spots. Sherjill Macdonald might be our only pick up. Which is rather frustrating for sure.
This is Andy's shot to prove all of us naysayers wrong. This team can compete THIS year but many of the good possibilities within what should be our price range are gone. Sign Riquelme Andy. I don't want a beer with you. I don't want to be your bud. I want a guy who controls the midfield and leads us to a championship Andy. Make it happen and prove me wrong about my opinion of you.
The term "Keane money" is bull$hit .Its a LIE .It is fabricated to fool all the fans. Andy is chap azz and he eats babies with oatmeal
That would be less difficult to believe if this owner/FO didn't have such a history of screwing things up.
This history of screwing things up doesn't exist either. They've gotten more right than wrong since they got rid of CDLC.
It is not bull$hit, it is just that Andy did not mean Robbie Keane, he meant Bil Keane, who drew the Family Circle cartoons. Unfortunately for Andy (but lucky for us), Bil Keane died in November, 2011, so he is no longer available on a free transfer.
You have stated that you have no "inside information" but you claim they "just couldn't find" a player. How do you know they have actually made any offers to any quality players? We have had tons of rumors, but nothing with any substantiation at all. I do hope you are right, by the way.
Well, the rumors are from different sources, and like I've said, there's been at least a half dozen offers. It only takes one rumor being true to prove the "Andrew is cheap" slur is bullshit. The chances of every single rumor being false is small. This is if you choose to ignore the Ljungberg/Nery experiments, which I don't.
Except, in this Internet world, anyone can just make crap up and post it, so even the rumors are not always rumors. Again, let's hope you are right and the Fire have been making approaches to some of the players rumored, 'cause something has to stick. And, hopefully, it won't be another Nery Castillo.
How you know its not? are you on payroll or an insider? There are ample of quality players around and yet they slip by left and right. Where is the money? show me the monkey.Until then it is just an excuse .
And look how well those turned out. Sorry, I know you have a very difficult time criticizing the team but despite a few notable successes like the Quaker deal, the Oduro/Carr trade, etc., since Hauptman took over it's been more miss than hit. To head off the expected straw man, it has not been 100% miss. At the same time, you don't miss the playoffs in MLS two years running by making mostly awesome moves. Anyway, let's hope they surprise us by signing a quality player we actually need to get back on track for at least a playoff spot this year.
In addition, why should we be looking only at the last two years as hit or miss? Andy hired cdlc. Andy RETAINED cdlc after the abortion that was the 2010 season when our coach: a) sucked; and b) had totally lost the team. Instead we hear about what a great job the organization did by winning down the stretch and almost getting into the playoffs. Well, if he would have done the obvious at the end of 2010 and canned that bastard when it was obvious he was done here as a coach, the rebuilding could have/would have started last December instead of July. One of the great misnomers in law is that you can't convict with circumstantial evidence. That is not true. You absolutely can if you can piece together a viable story using circumstances that hold up to the legal standard to convict. Here, we have plenty of evidence that these decisions that contributed to the lowest period in club history were pocket book decisions. I was the most vocal person around saying that cdlc should have been canned, but even then, I speculated that he wouldn't because Andy didn't want to eat the contract and pay two coaches. When it was an unbearable situation, he pulled the trigger and simply moved Frank downstairs instead of hiring a new coach. I would hope that Frank got a little extra coin for becoming coach, but my guess is that that was a big financial move as well. A small bump compared to bringing on a new salary. iron mentions Ljungberg as an example of Andy splashing the cash. Was he? We took on his contract for half a season and then did we really try to retain him, or did we make some cheap lowball offer? It's not fair to the discussion to judge Hauptman on the last two years alone. And even then, we are doing better as a club in signing players, but only to the extent that we are finally getting people that can at least contribute to a team. I'm willing to speculate that that at least is related to cdlc no longer having any voice in the process. But, its not as if this FO is batting a thousand this year either. Robayo and Puppo represent two international spots and a ton of cash, and have added little more than we could have gotten from minimum salary players. The rest of the league is busy with trades and signings. There has been a flurry of activity lately that does not involve the Fire. Oh, sorry. I forgot MacDonald. This is the month when people state their intentions to be contenders or to be cashing it in and looking to add pieces for next year. As IPINCH mentioned earlier, so far we are in the business of subtracting. The FO has put out no indication to us, the fans, that they are trying to add to make a push for a title. Perhaps they are. Perhaps iron81's "rumors" that he in no way gets from the inside is true and we have made offers to a bunch of people who have turned them down. If that is the case, then we have people who are not very good at their jobs. LA and NY (or I should say NJ) have been able to attract world class players. Chicago should be able to as well. Put me on the recruitment committee and give me a budget. I will fly these guys in and show them the town so that they fall in love with the city and WANT to come here. If you can't offer the same as China or the UAE, then you NEED to sell what you can. Perhaps having Javier and Andy in LA with little connection to our great city is part of the problem. How do you sell Chicago if you don't love Chicago. I might expand that to ask how do you sell the Fire if you don't love the Fire, but I honestly still don't have a read on whether any of these guys really do care about our club or if its simply a balance sheet calculation to them. Andy, I'm not giving you a break on this. YOU were responsible for the this club from 2008 on. Blanco preceeded you and if you take him off of that team, you would have absolutely zero to show for your ownership except the honor of hiring the worst coach in our team's history who took us to depths we have never known before. So, this is your chance Andy. A good chunk of this team will be gone next year. You have to win now. You can win now if you sign one or two key guys. Do it. If you don't, and we muddle our way into the playoffs and exit early and then start a rebuilding project again next year, then it will be really hard to maintain enough interest to even buy a Skyway ticket for next year. Show that you actually care about winning and I'll happily eat my words.
Baby steps, Chris, baby steps. Some posters here can't seem to remember farther back than 2010. It doesn't help that many posters here try to turn all Fire shit into gold while a few try to turn all Fire gold into shit. Or that for some posters, all Fire fails since 2010 were exclusively DLC's fault while nobody else in the Fire organization (notably Andrew and the FO) share any blame while for others all Fire fails since 2010 are exclusively the fault of Andy and the FO while the coaches (notably Frank and especially during his time as TD) are completely blameless. Speaking of Frank, nobody seems to be able to criticize him because they spend so much time being happy that he is better than DLC instead of doing the intelligent thing of comparing him with other current MLS coaches. We enjoyed a small good run of results until the turd we laid against LA while all the teams ahead of us except DC and SJ have been stumbling. As you pointed out, now is the time to take advantage of this and try to build some consistency and momentum to save our season. I'm hoping to be pleasantly shocked by a quality signing. Sadly, it WOULD be a shock, though.
It's rather frustrating that we're the third largest market and we can't attract anyone it seems of note. New York gets Thierry Henry and Rafa Marquez and are being mentioned quite a bit to land another DP here before the transfer window closes. LA gets Beckham, Keane and Donovan and apparently have already offered Frank Lampard a deal for next season. I know that it might be a bit tougher to compete with those big markets and LA has that glamourous Hollywood lifestyle. But that doesn't stop Montreal, Houston, New England, Portland etc from getting decent DP's. So why are we never linked to landing anyone? All we get is rumor after rumor. Earlier this year we heard we might land Drogba. Recently we've heard Shevchenko's name. But they're just rumors that usually seem to start with fans or a newspaper journalist. It's incredibly frustrating that we very very rarely hear about the Fire being able to really wow some big name. I know we still got 2 weeks. But i've already prepped myself mentally to not expect any signings of importance. I'll be flat out stunned if we grab someone of note that can really make a big impact both on the field and at the box office. Right now i'm just hoping Grazzini will be back fairly quickly as we're kinda weak on depth and i'm hoping if we do get MacDonald that he'll be able to score some goals for us here and there.
All I know is if we don't sign someone who can put the damn ball in the back of the net CONISTENTLY,we aren't going far in the playoffs,if we even make the playoffs.
How hard have they looked for a player truly worth Keane money? Andy is cheap. While somme can't remember past 2010 (perhaps because that is when they first started folllowing the team), Others have forgvotten how cheap he is with coaches, too. Chris is right when he wrote that Andy didn't bring in an outsider to replace CDLC, in order to save some bucks. See also Hamlett and that assistant coach who publicly mocked Andy's chump change offer. Andy needs to know that not everyone can be bought off with a beer bus to Columbus. As far as screw-ups are concerned, the list is long.