The team is 2-1-4 through what may be the softest portion of its league schedule. The roster was thin to begin with and now fixture congestion is settling in. Meanwhile the team's best player is on a leave of absence, dealing with an addiction problem (meaning the club may not get him back until the after the May fixture congestion). Seems to me the Revs need to place their bets right now. They can't field their A team every game this month. Somewhere they have to take their chances with a B team. The most obvious place to take those chances is SuperLiga. No one's going to weep overly much if the team loses those games. It's a showcase tournament that wins you nothing but a little cash. Let the players like Colaluca and Videira get some runs in there. That leaves the league and U.S. Open Cup. I suspect the standard response will be to emphasize the league, but I'd prioritize U.S. Open Cup. My reasons why are because the Revs aren't going to be finishing high in the league table and may not even be all that close to a playoff spot even if they put 100% into the league games. Meanwhile, other MLS teams tend to overlook U.S. Open Cup, resting key members of their starting XI for those games. Perhaps New England could win out by playing its top players in those games. More importantly, the USOC winner gets a CCL spot next year. And hopefully next year the Revs have a stronger squad capable of competing in the CCL. This team only may be able to make a limited splash. Given that, I'd try to maximize the splash it can make next season. Hopefully the team can make the playoffs and get on a run there, but I wouldn't let optimism get in the way of cold calculation at the moment.
Good plan but unfortunately I doubt the powers that be would approach the duration of the season this strategically. They may as well play Videira and Colaluca now (why not? The dross in the current starting 11 isn't working).
I actually fully agree with you, but the memories of every experience we've had in the CCL/CCC still make me cringe.
I couldn't vote as there's nothing on the list I don't want to see them do. Had there been an option of trade Shalrie and rebuild or play all the youngsters to see who makes it, there would have been something for me not to want them to try to do. I'll go off the reservation and choose all of the above.
Well, you can't make everything your top priority, especially if you're in rebuilding mode. Listen, I'd love nothing better than to see the Revs chasing a Supporters Shield and have a deep enough squad to field quality sides for USOC, SuperLiga and the exhibitions too. That isn't something this team can do. It's got to pick its battles or it risks making a run at nothing. That might happen anyway, but the franchise owes itself a best-effort attempt at something.
It does'nt really matter what there priorities are. If they manegment sat down & decided that they were going to put one competion above all others,what does it really matter because fundermentally the team sucks so there not going to succed in making the playoffs if they choose that,winning the US open cup if they chose that,anything they choose will be un succsefull as long as it's totally dependent on on field matter's. Might aswell just try & capture some cassual fans i guess. Basically all im saying is it does'nt really matter what they chose,just because they choose it,the diffrence between choosing something & then actually following thru on it are two very diffrent matter's.
"What should the Revs' priorities be?" I'd like to see them try running the franchise as a first-rate major-professional sports business venture, as opposed to an afterthought. If that's done, I think that competitiveness in the various competitions you've mentioned will take care of itself.
Fill the stadium with FANS of the GAME..who will eventually be Revs fans, if they are respected as knowledgeable FANS and not some boob who could care less about a game and goes just to a drink beer or yell and scream for David Beckham!! Oh..yea. That same knowledgeable fan could care less about stickers, Clyde or the Revs Girls!!...umm..Ok..maybe not the Revs Girls!!!
I'd go after the USOC with the pretty much the best available team, on the theory that if they lose early, (which is certainly possible, even with the current A team), they've only "wasted" players on one or two games and they still have the long MLS season. super Liga would be a distant third (although I did enjoy teh win two summers ago) and the friendlies an even more distant fourth. I usually spent more time trying to figure out what they are likely to do (as opposed to thinking out what I'd do if I were running the club). In this case, I think Nicols' priorities and mine are pretty close: I suspect in the USOC Nicol will rest players with minor injuries and will play a few guys who are pushing for time (Mansally, eg) but I suspect he'll go with pretty close to the best team he has available. I think the run-outs for guys 22-24 (Colaluca, Videira, Boggs) will come in Super Liga and in the friendlies.
Fans have been clamoring forever to make the Open Cup more prestigious. I like the move to give the champion of this domestic cup tournament a CCL berth. I believe that this team will have very little chance of making it to MLS Cup, thus I think the Open Cup should be highest priority. Also we all know how that squeaking into the playoffs isn't the hardest thing to accomplish, and once your in, anything can happen. So why rest players in Open Cup matches, when you could rest player in the league match prior to it, and play your full squad in a now meaningful cup match? The Revs should always aim to be the best club in the world. To be the best club in the world, you have to win World Club Cup. The easiest and quickest path to the WCC is through the USOC.
They won't prioritize USOC because even if you win the USOC and play in the CCL, nobody cares and nobody goes to those games. They probably would lose money on CCL home games, which is why we saw the shameful effort we saw at Gillette against Joe Public a couple years ago (my apologies for speaking of that game). As much as I'd like to say "let's go Revs, go win a trophy!" The Revs priorities will be: 1) Wait for Twellman to come back 2) Hope to squeak into the playoffs 3) Pray for good weather to get better crowds 4) Try to pretend Beckham is going to play in the LA game 5) Charge as much as possible for the friendlies against international teams that people actually will come watch, to minimize revenue loss on the season 6) Get some sort of doubleheader with the USMNT or Brazil to make the average attendance look less pathetic 7) Scout every NCAA game possible to draft our new flock of no-name recruits for next year 8) Recruit next year's Rev Girls
The aren't all that injured at the moment. Shalrie's in rehab. Jankauskas is old. Reis has an injury that everyone knew was going to keep him out for a few months. And Twellman's head hasn't been game-ready in 21 months. Everything in that group is either not an injury or completely foreseeable (not to mention largely unchangeable). The Revs don't have players that are going to healthy soon and some of those players (particularly the big Lit) aren't going to stay healthy after their brief moments of recovery. If that's what your waiting for, you might as well go out to your nearest local airport and wait for Amelia Earhart to land. Meanwhile, is there anything that the Revs actually have control over that you'd like them to prioritize? Or are you in favor of them haplessly watching the season drift away?
I agree with pretty much all of that. I'll add that a good run in the USOC might breed some confidence in the squad, giving it the needed morale boost to contend for a playoff berth. And a nod to the people picking the high-profile friendlies as the top priority. From a business standpoint, that might be the best pick.
It's not about the number of players out--it's more a function of the percentage of your Cap represented by the players who are out (quality instead of quantity). IMO, in MLS when you have three League All Star Level players out your team will struggle. Drop out Osei, Janny and add the disease of "Brain Fart-itis" that got us three Red Cards recently it only makes the player loss problem worse.
I voted chase the playoffs. If it weren't the Revs I was a fan of I'd be inclined to say go for getting the CCL spot out of the US Open Cup, but the Revs would just not even try to do well in the CCL so what's the point?
Sure, but the Revs absolutely knew they wouldn't have two of them available. There's nothing new or surprising about Twellman and Reis being out. I'll give the team credit for trying to correct for Reis, yet it hasn't done nearly enough to correct for Twellman (despite having two offseasons for that correction). It also hasn't begun to replace Dempsey and Ralston. And I certainly hope no one in the front office thought Shalrie was going to play all 30 league games plus cup competitions and exhibitions. He's entering the portion of his career where his playing time needs to be handled a little more judiciously - which brings me back to the topic of the thread, in the world of judicious use of player resources, what should the Revs key on?
Why not? They are an extremely young team (8/11 from last game <24!). They need to go into every game trying to win - building the "habit" of execution. As for who to play, I expect Nicol to take pretty much the same approach in all competitions - to mix players in when necessary because players are injured or tired. He's got a LOT of options to mix/match players, which only seems to be improving with the flexibilities the players (Smith, Boggs, Tierney) are showing. And, I'll toss this out: the fact that Shalrie is missing significant time now might actually work out as a double-bonus for us come playoff time. For one, the young players are learning to play without depending on him and secondly, he potentially could be a LOT fresher at the end of the season (he always seems to be pretty beaten up by the stretch run).
You've diagnosed the problem. What would you suggest for the solution? You're making the bold assumption the aforementioned young lineup will be in pole position to get into the playoffs come September based on the visual evidence of two wins over non-playoff caliber teams and a series of losses both home and away to playoff caliber teams. Also, a team with a penchant for getting red cards. We saw how last year it came down to luck, prayers, and half the MLS losing to get us in. Hopefully this year it's not left to all those variables and we're positioned in shouting distance down the stetch; otherwise a fresh Shalrie or even a miraculous Twellman recovery would be all for naught.
Just as a comparison to last year, the last team to get into the playoffs last year had 40 points. We're currently on target to hit 26. To get to the 40 point mark from where we are, we'll need to average 1.5 points per game the rest of the season.
And on May 5th of last year, Columbus was 0-2-5 (5 pts), tied for last in the East. Who was in first? DC and Toronto were tied (and neither made the playoffs).