Betting On Yourself

This is exactly what I (and many others) needed to read. It’s a great prism through which to view the trade, and a great attitude to approach the season with.

I think that’s what you’re saying here right? Have faith in Sigi and Chris? I think the better poker analogy is we were holding two pair but went all in on hopes of hitting a flush on the river. I just hope we get our card.

My concern with this trade is that our goal is to add a strike partner for Montero. To me that guy has to be a blue collar work horse who’s going to work like crazy away from the ball to put pressure on the opposing CB’s. We already have a diva (Montero) who only wants to work with the ball at his feet, my fear is we just got a similar player, not sure how well that will work. Hope I’m wrong.

Definitely true that this team won’t fail based on timidity.

Great Piece.

I thought he signed a two year deal when he came. So, he would be free this summer. I don’t really think he has been happy here. Nor do you hear about contract extension talks. Sivaebak doesn’t seem to be the kind of player to sit on the bench all year watching people in front of him. Sigi has always had a short leash on Fernandez and not always been kind to him in the post game conference.

All this says to me, that Fernandez is gone at the summer break.

To tie this back to the EJ trade. Maybe this isn’t as big a gamble as everyone is thinking. If Fucito wasn’t going to be the long term answer, we trade him for a roll of the dice on EJ. If that doesn’t work, summer transfer window opens early and we might have space clearing up.

I just can’t buy the arguement that the Sounders are less deep than they were a week ago. Fucito had all of two goals in MLS last season. Neagle was better, with five, but as a wide midfielder he has a set of skills that are easily replaceable. Sivebaek is at least his equal, if not a better player already. Zakuani will return in the summer. Much of Neagle’s value is a sentimental attachment to the local kid made good. If anything, they are better balanced by making room for young players like Cato, Estrada, Seamon, Rose and possibly even Caskey.

And as a long-time coach, I disagree with what seems to be an accepted fact – that Fucito’s work rate made him a good forward. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen him run out of good positions, drag defenders into spaces that clog other’s runs or passing lanes – lots of running that does nothing to help the team. I think Johnson’s international experience can rectify much of that and serve as a better cohort to Montero, Rosales and Fernandez.

Fucito and Neagle seem likely to outperform anything EJ does this season, however that’s not really the point. If Fucito goes on to have a better career than EJ from this point on, then that’d be losing in the trade.

But the point of the trade was the fact that EJ has had success in the MLS and given he’s 27, he should still be able to come back and do the same assuming he’s still physically just as capable. He’s definitely more of a sure bet to be a scoring machine than either Fucito or Neagle.

As for losing depth… sure we did. But if the depth we have now isn’t that bad of a drop off compared to the gains from improvement at a starting position, then we’ll be just fine. The fact is if Sivebeak, Zakuani, Fernandez, Rosales and Evans are all at least as good as Neagle and healthy all season, then the loss of Neagle shouldn’t hurt as at all.

If EJ can come in and out-perform Fucito, returning to the form he last had in the MLS, then it’s a huge boon for our team.

In all, every trade is a gamble, but this one can work out very well in favor of the Sounders. It’d be a different story if EJ was coming back from a major injury ala Peyton Manning.

I personally didn’t like the trade i thought we gave up too much for him now I saw what he can do maybe it’s a good trade we will never know till the season starts

Someone up the thread made the observation that the further up the table you go the more you pay for marginal wins. That’s a great point.

The 2012 Sounders are built to win it all this year. I doubt anyone would be too surprised if Montero, Flaco, and Alonso were gone before the end of this year. The FO rolled the dice, and maybe overpaid, on the hopes that EJ can put this team over the top. It is a gamble, but definitely a gamble they had to take. We simply didn’t have the room to hope that Fucito and Neagle could become what this team needs: a player like EJ can be at the top of his form.

As for whether or not we actually overpaid, I’m not sure that we did. But even if we did, the Sounders have the luxury of overpaying.

Fucito and Neagle were easy for the Sounders to part with because the FO has proven they can pull guys like them off one scrap heap or another at will. They are talents, for sure. Yet the Sounders’ revenue stream is large enough to enable them to scout far more extensively than nearly every other team in the MLS.

Impacteurs, perhaps?

“They didn’t bet on the odds. The odds state that the cost of this trade versus its reward is a long shot at best.”

“The odds state” doesn’t make any sense. There are no “odds” on this trade. I understand it’s a metaphor, but since it is a metaphor then you’ve created these metaphorical odds to be a long shot. You could have just as easily created those odds in your head to be a sure thing, but you choose to make them long.

So if you’re going to say that you feel the chances of Eddie Johnson equalling the value of Fucito and Neagle is a long shot, then just say it, don’t hide behind a metaphor, stand up and say it and end the article with and if he does succeed well then “I was wrong.” Otherwise you are just going to say “well he beat the odds” but the odds only exist in your mind. So him “beating the odds” is just another way of saying he did better then you thought relative to what the Sounders gave up for him. Which was a below average MLS forward and a upcoming left mid that wasn’t going to get much playing time after Zakuani’s return.

Both were players I loved to root for, but this will better for Neagle, who has been replaced with Sivebaek and Fucito who was replaced with Eddie Johnson.

I think it is obvious to everybody that we played our best, most attractive, winning soccer with Fucito, Montero, Rosales, Fernandez, Friburg, and Alonso on the field. It took Sigi exhausting every other possiblity (Noonan/Montero, Levesque/Montero, Jaqua/Montero, throw Evans in whenever he could, put Carrasco and Alonso on together, etc.) before he finally settled on what was obvious to most of us immediately after Zak and OBW went out injured.

It takes a good coach to adapt like he did, and I believe Sigi is a good coach, but I worry he is a bit set in his ways. I don’t think it is an accident that we played incredibly when we were down a man, I think unique challenges bring out the best in Sigi’s coaching.

I think the challenge of not having a target forward actually made him a better coach. And not having Evans to win headers in the middle forced us to play to the feet. Not having his prefered choices forced Sigi to confront an over reliance on his customary attacking strategy, and our attack became more balanced and consequently we became highest scoring team in MLS.

We now have four questionable target forwards and Montero. The team has gone all in on 1 strategy, and I think the chance that Sigi will reformulate his strategy even if it is not working is now very remote. Hopefully one of those target forwards work out well, or we will be banging our heads against the wall for 2 months before he figures out the next step.

… you could be “Sounder @ Head — 1) Insightful 2) Reasoned 3) Impeccably Formatted”

and think about how much brain matter and blood would have been splattered all over had our heads explosded at the news that EJ was going to make DP money and we had to let go of fernandez.

If you had given me a list of the bottom 3 starters last year, all three of those guys are gone.

We got both Fucito and Neagle for practically nothing and we traded them for a big upside guy.

Plus it looks like it clears up time and roster space for Estrada and possibly Babayele Sodade. Both guys that might have a similar upside to Fucito and Neagle.

Buy low and sell high and our team will always get a little better.