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Mailbag for Week 11
90 Plays1 year ago
The mailbag was not full of rainbows and unicorns this week, but that didn't stop Jeremiah and Aaron from answering questions to the best of their abilities.
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Transcript
Introduction by Christian Roldan and Jordan Morris
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, this is Christian Roldan. And Jordan Morris from the Seattle Sounders Football Club. And you're listening to NOS Arietes.
Sponsorship by Full Pull Wines
00:00:06
Speaker
This episode of NOS Arietes is sponsored by Full Pull Wines, a Seattle-based wine retailer and proud sponsor of NOS Arietes since 2011. Full Pull was founded in 2009, is based in Seattle, and is owned and operated by longtime Sounders supporters. They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, with special focus on their home, the Pacific Northwest.
00:00:28
Speaker
A.O. Shen! Let's go! What a save by Fry! The Seattle Sounders have done it! MLS Cup win! Here come three years through the middle to crown it the vehicle! And now they truly can't stop the celebrations. It's the Sounders' MLS Cup! Niko Liddo leaves out!
00:01:12
Speaker
Is that what you young people call twerking?
00:01:28
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of NOS Adietes. This is the mailbag episode for, we'll just call it April 23rd. No, week 11. I don't know. I don't know the best way to do this anymore. Aaron, I'm Jeremiah Shan. This is, I'm here with Aaron Campo. We're going to be answering your questions. One of these days I should just like come up with a proper way of categorizing these.
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you could just lean into it and make oscillating on it a bit, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Are we giving people too much of a peek behind the curtain by? I don't think so. By calling that out? People like that, right? Yeah, they like that. Exactly. It gives it a more familial. Familial? Yeah. We're all friends here. Yeah, exactly.
Discord Community Dynamics
00:02:21
Speaker
So we got a lot of questions this week. As a reminder, they come from our Discord. And right now, the Discord is popping. It's gotten very active. Not always pleasant, but it doesn't deserve to be pleasant right now, maybe.
00:02:41
Speaker
Uh, you know, it's been, uh, I deserve it to be pleasant, but yeah, but you know, the, the, the season is not pleasant right now. And, and, uh, but I think, I think there's some okay discourse, some, some good stuff going on there. And anyway, all the questions we, we got are from discord. And if you want to get on our discord, uh, you can, you could do that by becoming a supporter of sounder heart plans, start at $7 a month or $75 a year, uh, to be a comma supporter, that is.
00:03:10
Speaker
And we'd love to have you over there. It's, you know, like I said, a lot of a lot of people, a lot of people with a lot of opinions.
00:03:19
Speaker
But why don't we get started, Aaron? Let's do it. As you said, we do have a lot of questions this week. I want to call out, we usually try to answer all or the vast majority of the questions. We did not have that option this week.
Game Performance and Player Dependency
00:03:33
Speaker
There are just way too many of them. So if your question did not get included, please understand there were a ton of questions this week, which is great. We love getting them. It would be great to have to do a little
00:03:48
Speaker
do a little, uh, I don't want to say calling because that's not the right word, but you know, to have to have to choose because we have so many options. Um, so, um, yeah, but keep, keep them coming, even if you didn't get in this week. Uh, the first one is from Bill Jones, TRPT. Uh, it's the only question we got about the game, which I think is good.
00:04:07
Speaker
insight into the way things are going right now. I thought we were solid defensively until we got Salazar. Probably a decent call though from a neutral's perspective. I felt like it was our link up play from mid to front that is breaking us right now. Are we already over dependent on De La Vega before he's even played Real Minutes? Should we have kept Nico for another year to transition to Pedro, knowing Pedro was coming in recently hurt? How do we compensate for the lack of creativity up front right now?
00:04:31
Speaker
Well, okay, so a couple things here. One, I think it's important to note that when signing, re-signing Nico is still a vague possibility.
00:04:43
Speaker
Pedro de la Vega wasn't hurt. And by the time we got far enough down the road to really get Pedro de la Vega in here, the sort of the, the bridge was already burned for Nico's return. So I, I don't know that that was really a viable, having them both was not really a viable option. And I don't know. I like Ladeo was off to a fine start. I don't, I don't know that they, and the centers might be a little,
00:05:13
Speaker
might have a few more points, I suppose, if, if Nico was here and I don't know, you, if you, if people want to second guess that decision, they can, but like Nico was not the long-term answer. So I think moving on from him was probably the right choice.
00:05:32
Speaker
I guess that was the question, right? Yeah, more or less. I think, yeah, I tend to agree with that. I think it would have been nice if we could have kept Nico, but I think that we talked about this at the time. I think the odds of keeping Nico and keeping him happy in the kind of role he probably is going to have, would have had to accept.
00:05:51
Speaker
I don't think that those
Critique of VAR Decisions
00:05:53
Speaker
two are likely can groom us. I think it would have been difficult. He was pretty obviously and vocally upset last season when he was coming off the bench and I think that
00:06:04
Speaker
it that was always going to be a tough sell. One thing I will say, I don't think I agree that it was a decent call on the Reagan red card. I think that's an awful call. I think that it's highlights really one of the main criticisms that a lot of folks and myself increasingly have with VAR, which is that
00:06:23
Speaker
everything looks bad in slow motion. And I just do not understand how that can be a red card when it's something that probably happens three or four times a game. And I know intent is not necessarily the bar, but I think when you've got a situation like that where things are happening really quickly and it's pretty clear that the Vancouver player just kind of fell into the path of Reagan's leg already coming down. I just, I don't know.
00:06:53
Speaker
I don't think you can call that a decent call personally. I think that the foul on Fry late from white was very similar and I don't think that one even got a yellow. So that's the only thing I would disagree with Bill on, but I do agree that connecting the midfield to the forward line in dangerous areas is really the crux of the issue this team has right now for sure.
00:07:21
Speaker
Well, so I, because of this, I decided to look into how Freddie Montero is. Did you know how, do you know how Freddie Montero is doing in, in Di Portivo Cali?
00:07:32
Speaker
and
00:07:53
Speaker
I think his situation was somewhat similar to Nico in that like the Sounders actually, well, no, it wasn't that similar. The Sounders actually tried to bring him back. He just apparently was not interested in, and we haven't heard from him. The speculation is that he wasn't interested in playing such a diminished role anymore. And the Sounders very much just wanted him to come back and be sort of like Freddie was last year.
00:08:21
Speaker
And good for him, but it would be, it's an interesting, I don't know. It would be interesting
Montero's Career and Sounders' Strategy
00:08:25
Speaker
if he was here. I don't know that, I don't know. I'm not convinced that he would be helping on me there, but it is funny that I'm glad that he's scoring well. Yeah, I am too. I think that MLS is at a higher level than where he's playing right now. Yeah, that's probably true. All right, go ahead.
00:08:47
Speaker
Oh, no, I get to ask this one. This is from, it's all goody. What is the core issue with this team? Hearing pundits talk about the Seattle over the last few years, it appears that smart and non-dual folks think we have a really talented team. I've also heard general rhetoric implying coaches can swing a team to be five to 10% better or worse. With all that said, I'm curious what you think about the core issues or issues with our roster. Are we missing key players? Is our bench too weak? Is the team's talent level plateaued?
00:09:14
Speaker
A lot of things. Is it death by a thousand cuts essentially? What do you think? What's wrong? What's wrong with this team, Aaron? So I do think in large part it is death by a thousand cuts. I think that there were some questionable roster decisions made. There were some difficult calculated risks taken that have turned out poorly. There have been some injuries that have hit really hard and the team hasn't played well. And they've also been
00:09:45
Speaker
There was a discussion in the Discord today about where they should be, according to XG, and I think it's about six points higher. Um, so I think it's all of those things. I think a lot of things had to go wrong for this team to end up where they are right now. And, and I don't know if it's anything, any one thing more than any other thing, uh, other than the obvious, which is that they were never a team that was going to score a ton of goals. And they have, I think, performed about as poorly in the attack as, as, you know,
00:10:13
Speaker
they possibly could have so far. And and as bad as a lot of the most dire predictions of fans, mostly in the in the I didn't think it was interesting. There was there was someone in this in the on the comment section on the main site was basically saying that fans understand the team's struggles,
Roster Decisions and Transfer Market Analysis
00:10:34
Speaker
the team's weak spots better than like pundits or or even us.
00:10:42
Speaker
because there was definitely a group of fans that were predicting that this team would not be good this year. Of course, there's a group of fans every year that predict the team is going to be good. But yeah, I would agree with you that it's a lot of little things. I think you can look at every roster decision they made this last offseason, and almost every single one has played out as bad as it possibly could have.
00:11:10
Speaker
De La Vega getting hurt was, he was obviously the big signing. You know, maybe not. Masovsky, I think has probably been about as advertised. Nathan, maybe Nathan's been roughly as ever. That's 15 seconds that Nathan has played. Right. Like there's, I guess, but like, you know, Rusnak getting hurt and he was clearly a big, like they, they put a lot of expectations and weight on, on him being kind of like the main offensive fulcrum and,
00:11:38
Speaker
He's, you know, I think he's looked okay when he's...
00:11:42
Speaker
when he's played, but he hasn't necessarily got a lot of solid looks. Jau Paulo, they picked up his option. He's been struggling. Maybe the biggest miscalculation, I think, and we saw it come to fruition today when the Sounders traded Javier Arriaga for effectively nothing. They got a 2025 international roster spot, which has some value, so I shouldn't say that. That potentially allows them
00:12:09
Speaker
conservatively, probably $200,000 in Gamm if they decide to trade that. And then potentially $75,000 in Gamm if New England resigns them. But really, it was just a salary dump. They maybe gained, we'll call it a million dollars in salary cap flexibility, but they mostly are just getting his salary off their books. And I don't know, I'm of two minds on this. On one hand,
00:12:40
Speaker
The alternative world I think is they just don't pick up his option and they go into the off season knowing they have that, that salary cap space. And I suppose in that scenario, maybe.
00:12:57
Speaker
over the last few weeks, they would have scrambled and tried to sign someone this window. But I think more realistically, even if they hadn't re-signed Hobby, they probably were going to hold that money for a potential summer signing. Like that's to me, what makes the most sense is you sort of see what you have because I liked on paper, I like this roster.
00:13:22
Speaker
At the beginning of the season, I liked it. Clearly it's not played out well, but I think the team at least liked it. And so in a sense, I think maybe this, you can talk yourself into thinking this was a neutral move. And now that they've been able to get them off the books, it's, it saves it from being a negative move, but I don't know. Am I being too kind to the Javier Arriaga decision?
00:13:48
Speaker
I get your perspective. It's hard for me to disagree too much with it. I think it's pretty clear that for me that ringing him back was a bad move just because
00:14:02
Speaker
I think it's always better to have the flexibility because they were never bringing him back to play. Like the plan was never, they wouldn't have signed Nathan. They wouldn't have signed Bell if they weren't planning to move him. And I think at that point you're sending a signal.
00:14:19
Speaker
that you're planning to move him, right? And I think the other unknown, there was a little smoke. I don't know how much fire there was, but the other unknown is, did they hold off on trading him last year? Because I thought they might be able to get more for him. So there's that unknown as well. But I would just always, if you're not planning on using him,
00:14:38
Speaker
I just are always prefer to have the cap space. And, you know, it's I think that it's probably overblown as a poor decision, but it seems I think for me, the more concerning thing about it is that to me, it signifies that Weibull pretty clearly overplayed his hand because. Yeah, that that part, I think, is fair. It's it's it's. Go ahead.
00:15:05
Speaker
Oh, I was agreeing. Yeah, I think it's illustrative of a bigger issue, which is sort of misidentifying the marketplace. Yep. Or misunderstanding the marketplace. I think that Ariaga does have value, and I think that it's more than what the Sounders got.
00:15:21
Speaker
in a vacuum. I think everybody knew that they had to move him. And so teams just waited. And I think that that's just a bad negotiating position to put yourself in. So that to me is really the biggest concern I have about it. I think you're right that I don't know how much more likely it makes them making an impact signing in this window. I'd probably rather have the flexibility for the summer window as well.
00:15:44
Speaker
Um, but you know, if they had known all along that we're going to have that flexibility, maybe they can get, you know, some potential moves lined up or a little further along. I don't know. But, uh, I, I do think that you're right that you can look at pretty much every other move and at least understand it. Um, I think in hindsight, should they have bought out roll without wherever it was ever an option on the table? Yeah, probably.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to assess blame there too, though, because I'm skeptical that they ever were given the green light to buy them out. I don't know that to be true, and I don't even know if anyone would admit that, but just the way that they've been operating, I've just been skeptical that that was.
00:16:32
Speaker
ever an option because it's a, you know, three and a half million dollar sunk cost that, you know, I think there's people in the organization that still think role can provide some value, even if it's not, you know, top end value, but I don't know, it's, there's a, I think the other problem is that I don't think anyone in the Sounders first saw this bad of a stir.
00:16:57
Speaker
And I think that sort of like, I think their worst case scenario is probably in their mind was probably at least three or four more points than where they actually are. And that's, that makes a big difference in, in terms of the perception and, you know, so maybe it was a failure of imagination. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I think you can go through and find a lot of little decisions that were five to
00:17:24
Speaker
10% worse, and it all adds up to the team being worse than they planned for. And almost none of them have, like there's not a lot of examples of players who have exceeded their expectations, like they haven't overplayed their expectations. You know, like the best, their best players, you know, the players who have done the best relative to the expectations are basically like meeting them.
00:17:54
Speaker
But, you know, like Joe Paulo is below expected. You can go through the whole lineup. I don't, you know, Andrew Thomas might be the player that might be the most exceeding their expectation. And, you know, he's your backup goalkeeper who got two games, three games. Yeah. I mean, I will say the defense has been as good as advertised.
00:18:11
Speaker
which is good because they would have even fewer points if they weren't. And I think in terms of what to fix first, I mean, look, the window's closed, right? So all you can do is fix the team with what you have.
00:18:29
Speaker
They've got to do something different and pretty dramatically different because this isn't, this isn't working anymore. Um, next one is from Twemberly 23. How many points do we need through May? There are eight league games from now through the end of May, and the stretch is going to define the season by the team's own admission. We are going to tweak this question a little bit, right? And go through June 1st, because 17 games played.
00:18:50
Speaker
right that if we go to June 1st that gets the centers to their literal mid-season point which is 17 games it also gets them through this next stretch of games
00:19:00
Speaker
this immediate stretch of games where they're going to be playing effectively every other two games a week. If they win their open cup game, they're going to end up playing 11 matches across all competitions, I believe, in the course of 36 days, which is a lot of matches. And we will 100%
00:19:23
Speaker
have a really good sense of where this team is what's what they're capable of by the end of the stretch so anyway to get them through let's let's call it eight eight league games nine league games put them through the mid point of the season they're currently on six man i'll tell you bare minimum they probably need
00:19:48
Speaker
15 points from those nine games. And that's, and that, that would get them to 24. And at that point you are 15 from where they are now. That puts them in 21, doesn't it? 21. Good point. Yeah. I mean, I think, okay. Bare minimum. Yes. Okay. So that that's, that's a fair, I think that, that puts them at a point where they need to be better in the second half, but it's still like,
00:20:15
Speaker
within like they can, you could see them getting hot and, and getting through there, but they almost have to get hot just to get the phone. They, I guess they have to improve, but I think, yeah, 15 points seems like a reasonable goal, a minimum stand. Like if they're below 15 points, I mean, if they, if they collect less than 15 points to do these nine games, it's hard to see how they dig out of that.
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think that anything can happen is the obvious caveat. I think they would have been in a worse position at a similar stage in 2016. I think that took an unprecedented run to barely sneak into the playoffs.
Need for Points in Upcoming Matches
00:20:57
Speaker
Right. Like realistically, I think you're right. 15 points is the absolute bare minimum. I think 45 to 46 points.
00:21:05
Speaker
is not necessarily guaranteed to get you into the playoffs, but you, you're probably going to be right there. And so they would have to, if they were at 21 points, they would have to, as you said, be a little bit better in the second half to, to feel like they had a, you know, we're in with a chance at getting into the playoffs. And yeah, I mean, I, um, I don't know if I think they can do it or not. I really don't, uh, it's,
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is going to be tough. I mean, I was just saying if I almost feel like getting. Zero points.
00:21:48
Speaker
or three points from these next two games almost has to be like the short term goal because one or two points I feel like is it leaves them in kind of a worst case scenario where they aren't really making up any ground but they're sort of like starting to believe there's this like
00:22:05
Speaker
belief that it's not worth doing anything drastic to fix. And I think they're at the point now where they have to start doing, trying drastic things. They, they, yeah. And that means, you know, benching players that you consider to be automatic starters. I mean, at some point and maybe we're not too far off. I mean, Brian, semester's job is going to be on the line here.
00:22:30
Speaker
Craig Weibel's job might even be on the line. I don't know. I mean, it could get really ugly over these next, you know, these next nine games. Yeah, it's definitely, I think that to prevent, you know, as possible or plausible as like a full-on fan revolt is with this fan base, because
00:22:53
Speaker
You know, the kinds of full on fan revolts we see in other parts of the world. Maybe you're not super likely here, but probably there to prevent like some real ugliness relative to Seattle sounder standards. I think that things can't continue like this for too much longer. And if that knows.
00:23:11
Speaker
If that means Brian goes, that's going to suck and be extremely painful, I think. It's going to be a huge bummer. I think that if your reaction to Brian Schmetzler losing his job is anything but just being sad, that's pretty unfortunate. If it keeps going like this, it's absolutely the right decision, but it will suck. That being said,
00:23:37
Speaker
at least you can move on from that and get excited for a new chapter. Even if the rest of the season sucks, you can say, okay, something new is coming and we're making a clean break and something. If it just logs on, even if it's better than this, but a little better than this and the team finishes in like nine, that's not good. No. No, I think the worst case scenario for this team is probably that they
00:24:06
Speaker
do just well enough to, like basically similar to 2022 where they did just well enough to keep you believing there was a chance they could get in until the last few weeks of the season.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah. And it also, I think, kept them from doing our full rebuild. There were reasons, I think, reasonable reasons that they didn't feel like they needed to fully rebuild them. Maybe those... Whatever. We don't need to get into this. We're off topic.
00:24:49
Speaker
What's the next question here? This is from Bard. Or is this a double? Is this a combined question, Bard and Prentice? No, that's just the screen name. Oh, that's the screen name. All right. At one point does the season feel like 2016 for Schmester? We have played seven matches and have... Okay, this is actually an old question. So we've actually played eight matches and have six points.
00:25:16
Speaker
which is off the pace from 2016. It's the worst start. This is the worst start. If we get to one point per game, which is higher than we currently are,
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah. I guess the question, this is sort of the question. What's the cut? What's the cutoff point at which point Brian's job is on the line? Like Siggy was basically fired for being on 20 points through 20 games.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yes, I think that that is true. I think Ziggy was fired because the team had underperformed, but I think anybody who watched that Kansas City game knows that it was very obvious from that game that a change had to be made right then and there. And I'll know that that's 12 games farther into the season than we are now.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And so I think the big difference between, and this isn't saying that, I'm not saying we can't, the Sounders can't fire Brian Schmetzer because of this. I'm just pointing out the distinction, the difference between the two situations. Sigi got fired when he did because the team had very, very obviously quit on him.
00:26:29
Speaker
They were not trying at all. They put in a piss poor effort. The worst effort I think I've ever seen from a Sounders team. It was not that they were playing poorly. It was that they just clearly did not care to play for Ziggy anymore. They didn't have any faith in him. And I just don't get the sense that that's the case with the Sounders now.
00:26:51
Speaker
I also think that Brian had a longer leash than Ziggy did in the first place because Brian has actually won more trophies, more important trophies. And that buys you some leash. With that being said,
00:27:06
Speaker
I don't know that this Sounders team has been any better results wise than that one, than the 2016 team was. I think that they've been worse to watch in a lot of ways. And these doldrums, I mean, the 2015 Sounders were pretty good. The 2014 Sounders won the supporters shield and the Sounders have not been a fun or exciting team to watch in a while. Even though last year they finished second in the West, the results were pretty good.
00:27:33
Speaker
A lot of the season was a slog. The vibes have been bad for a while. So I think the situations are very different, but there are definitely similarities just in terms of how things feel, I think. But I think we're getting closer to Brian's job, really, truly being on the line. And I think that
00:27:55
Speaker
I personally think that if the sounders keep getting poor results over the next few games, but Brian shows a willingness to make some significant changes and maybe the performances improve or the sounders show a little bit more attacking acumen and we're not seeing the same kind of stuff with the same players, that to me
00:28:18
Speaker
buys him some some leash from my perspective I don't know if it would with the team but my biggest problem with the team so far has been they are doing the same stuff game after game after game with the same players and it's not working in all the same ways and for all the same reasons and at a certain point that's just indefensible and I think we're past that point.
00:28:40
Speaker
So yeah, I don't know. I couldn't tell you when the point is that Adrian and the rest of the ownership group starts thinking about it, but I'm extremely close to my breaking point. Yeah.
Brian Schmetzer's Job Security?
00:28:51
Speaker
I'll just say that if we're into July and they're still at or below one point per game, I don't necessarily think he's going to survive that. So I don't know.
00:29:09
Speaker
I don't know what the, I honestly don't know. I don't know what the breaking point is. I don't know at what point I kind of, I don't know if they, if they go win this on this road, if they lose both these games on the road trip, could that be the end of it? I don't think so. But like, I think you get to the point where you have to start really wondering, like the galaxy game, maybe if you're really wanting to speed things up, you know, I don't know it, but this could get ugly. I,
00:29:36
Speaker
You know, but it's this MLS and things can turn around, but yeah, this could get, this could, this could, I guess my point is this could snowball rather quickly. Yeah. I feel like we've been talking about some variation of this question or sort of talking around this question for a while now, and I think it becomes a little more plausible every, every time. Yeah.
00:29:58
Speaker
Next one is from Sematic. At some point it feels like we went from being, as Brian says, the Seattle freaking Sounders to just being fine with the middle of the table performance. The number of bad teams we got beat by in 2023 was IMO inexcusable and I don't need to harp on how 2024 is going. I'd love to know where the front office sees us relative to the rest of the league in terms of spin, foreign imports versus homegrown and what acceptable performance looks like. Well, I don't have a good sense of
00:30:29
Speaker
Well, let me take that back. The front office will absolutely say that they are not okay with these results. And I don't buy and find that at all hard to believe. I guess what I'm saying is, I guess what would indicate that they're not okay, that they would start firing people, that they would, like,
00:30:54
Speaker
I don't, I don't think anyone in the team is happy with the results. I don't think the players are happy. I don't think the coaches are happy. I don't think the front office is happy. I definitely don't think ownership is happy. I think the question is what to do about it. That's tough. And the Sounders have never been an organization that was keen on firing folks, certainly not quickly. And.
00:31:23
Speaker
You know, I don't have a good answer for this. I think that you say things like we're the Seattle freaking Sounders when you're in the midst of trying to win a CONCACAP Champions League. And then when things are going really badly, you sort of lose that, you lose that mojo, you know? I don't know. I don't have a good answer for this one.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like a lot of, and I don't want to single out somatic here because I'm not necessarily saying that this is an example of that, but I do feel like there is a sense of
00:32:05
Speaker
People are upset and they want their pound of flesh. They want to see some kind of action taken. They want something to happen. Their signal that the team cares is something happens. So coaches get fired or the coach harshly calls out player performances or a signing gets made like they want to see some kind of decisive thing that shows that people care. And I think my question is,
00:32:34
Speaker
why is the assumption that they don't? Why is the lack of action a signal to you that they don't care? Because these aren't easy decisions to make for myriad reasons. And I think it's just, you don't have to give the front office ownership, whoever, Brian, you don't have to give anybody the benefit of the doubt that they're making the right decisions, that their process is right.
00:33:00
Speaker
Um, that they, you know, that they haven't pulled the trigger on things quickly enough. I'm not saying that you have to give them the benefit of the doubt for on those things, but I do think that this club ownership from the top down, the coaches, the players all deserve the benefit of the doubt that they care about the results that they want to get them turned around. And I think it's really disheartening to see.
00:33:24
Speaker
just this assumption, the worst possible assumption about motivations happening. And again, I'm not calling out Sematic or anyone specifically, but I think this question is a good jumping off point to discuss that. I know that Adrian Hanauer cares. I know that the rest of the folks in the club in leadership care about the results and that they're unhappy with them and that they want them to turn around.
00:33:49
Speaker
That doesn't mean that they're doing the right things to do it again. It just means that I think that they deserve that benefit of the doubt. They deserve the belief that they are upset by this as well, because I know that they are. Right.
Sounders' Ownership Commitment
00:34:07
Speaker
They're definitely upset. I think, like you said, you said it well. You can question their decisions
00:34:17
Speaker
I don't know what use there is questioning their desires. So you can, you can accuse the ownership of being cheap. You can, you can accuse the front office of, of, of making poor personnel decisions. You can accuse Brian of making poor tactical choices. All fair. Like all those things deserve to be questioned. But yeah, I do think that there's a,
00:34:45
Speaker
And I think there's truth in it. All of them have made, I do think the centers have cut some corners in terms of spending. They could probably invest more in certain ways. I think Craig and the front office have made some poor signings. We talked about them earlier today. I think Brian has made some poor tactical choices. Talk about that a lot. But yeah.
00:35:10
Speaker
I think if people start losing their jobs, it will probably be deserved on the balance of things, but I'm not going to be happy about any of it. It's going to be a huge bummer.
00:35:23
Speaker
So there's a similar question. This is from Spaceman Spliff. He says, how active are ownership in day to day operations? When Garth left, it was widely assumed Atlanta offered him a role we couldn't do to the role Adrian plays in the organization. Can you help us understand where Adrian ownership steps into the daily operations that Garth was seeking to influence?
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah, I know that the order means that this is a good, this is my question to answer, but I think I'm just gonna pass it to you because you're more well equipped to answer this one, so. Yeah, I mean, like I see Adrian out at training almost every day, or no, not every day, on a regular basis. You know, he's in the office on a regular basis. He's very involved on a day-to-day operation. What is exactly does he do? I don't know, but I think it wasn't
00:36:12
Speaker
It wasn't as simple as Garth had more control in Atlanta. I think he also had a bigger budget in Atlanta. And so it was just an overall more attractive offer. He has more control. He oversees a larger part. He oversees a budget. He's involved in setting that budget. So it's just a different role.
00:36:43
Speaker
I feel like the question is sort of implying Adrian has stepped back and so couldn't Garth do what he was doing here? I think Garth's time just ran out here. I think he had accomplished what he wanted to accomplish. He needed to take on a new challenge.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, that's what he's doing. But yeah, Adrian's very, as far as owners go, he's very involved. You can certainly question how much he's willing to spend, how much he's willing to lose, but he's definitely involved.
00:37:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, to me, it seems like Adrian, it's not that Garth's role is different necessarily. It's that Adrian is involved and Arthur Blank is not that involved. Garth has a lot more decision making power because a lot of decisions are being delegated to him that in Seattle would not have been delegated to him. And so it's not necessary.
00:37:42
Speaker
Oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, no, go ahead. Well, just that it's not necessarily like a, you know, org chart duties and responsibilities include discussion. It's a how that plays out practically discussion. Yeah, exactly.
00:37:58
Speaker
The last one is from Seacon11. It's a good one. It's an interesting one. I've been thinking about this one more or less all day. They say, first, I want to acknowledge and thank you all for providing such in-depth community for us. I shouldn't be reading the thing where they say nice things about us, but that's very nice. Thank you.
00:38:20
Speaker
A portion of the fanbase and commenters on Sounder at Heart have felt the team was playing boring soccer and generally not that good, in contrast with the general impression I got from most Sounder at Heart articles and staff comments over the past 10 months or so.
00:38:32
Speaker
Given how quickly things unraveled and that the Sounder at Heart staff seems to also feel the same bad vibes now judging by the recent articles, do you now personally feel you were too optimistic or generous with your dismissal of those opinions earlier? Where were your blind spots, if any? Personally, I put a lot of faith into Brian to turn things around and haven't given up hope that they can scrape enough points together for playoffs, but I have given up hope this team will consistently play exciting, fun, high score in soccer this season.
00:38:57
Speaker
I also think that giving Ruznak the keys to the number 10 was a mid-tier team to move versus what we aimed for when Ledero joined. Ruznak isn't bad. I still get super frustrated with shooting accuracy and uncanny ability to get his shots blocked, but it was clear to me he'd never be a top tier 10. They also included the things they got wrong, but I'm not going to call him out on that on air. But the question is in the discord if you want to go see what they feel like they got wrong. But yeah.
00:39:23
Speaker
It's an interesting question. It is an interesting question. So I'll parse two things. I think the Senator Hart staff I think has been pretty consistent in agreeing with the idea that the Senators have been playing boring soccer if what we mean by boring is low scoring. I don't think there's really been any question that they've struggled offensively. The question always was,
00:39:54
Speaker
could they be good enough defensively to overcome their offensive struggles? And were their offensive struggles last year indicative of future offensive struggles? And I think I probably overestimated their ability. Like I really thought Rusnak was gonna, like I, my thinking was that if you took the team that finished last season, the last 12 games of last season,
00:40:24
Speaker
and you started with them, that they would be fine offensively. Maybe not gangbusters, but if you then add in Pedro de la Vega, you get some upside there. And I think it's hard to reconcile that belief with the reality that they've not had Pedro de la Vega. And, you know, they did maybe the thing they're maybe most guilty of is putting too much faith in a young player to immediately
00:40:53
Speaker
help the team and that may, you know, and I think you can certainly second guess the decision to bring back Rusnak as the sort of, as the de facto number 10. But again, you know, his injury makes it really hard to assess that. So I don't, I don't know. I think, I think the cop out answer is the injuries really is what I did not see coming. Like the number of injuries they've had.
00:41:21
Speaker
And to which players they've had them to is what I didn't see coming. You know, I didn't necessarily love the idea of bringing back Rusnak as the number 10, and I agree that at the very least it shows a lack of ambition.
00:41:40
Speaker
But they also went out and basically set a record transfer fee for them and signing De La Vega, who I liked a lot, a lot. When I saw his highlights, when I looked at his profile, I thought this was a player that
00:41:56
Speaker
would be great, you know, and maybe you will be. But yeah, I mean, I, I think that I just, I just ultimately think I believed that this team was going to be able to pick up where they left off and they haven't. Yeah.
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that that's fair. I think, too, I'd love to revisit this question at the end of the season because I'd be curious how many things I'm still clinging to as not yet being wrong about, I end up being wrong about, and how many things I...
00:42:36
Speaker
Uh, end up being at least neutral about or, or write about and how many things I feel currently, you know, that I was wrong about that turn out to maybe have been maybe it was right about, I don't know. But I think in addition to the things you mentioned, um, I think that I definitely felt like.
00:42:55
Speaker
Jordan was going to play much better as the nine and this is one of the things that I'm going to hedge on a little bit because I still think he's the best striker on this team. I still think he should be starting at the nine. I understand why they moved him to the left when they did. I think they didn't really have a choice. I'd like to see him back at that position.
00:43:13
Speaker
but he didn't perform at that position when he's had that chance this year. I still don't think Jordan has been bad this year, but the reality is somebody on the team has to score goals and not penalties, and he hasn't done it, and so it's completely fair to criticize him. I think that just generally,
00:43:37
Speaker
I still like the De La Vega signing. I think it's going to be a good signing in the long run. Part of me is starting to wonder if, considering that they did bring back Resnack and they knew they were going to have to replace Raul and they weren't getting great contributions from their strikers, maybe they should have gotten a 9 in this window and not signed De La Vega.
Should Sounders Sign a New Striker?
00:44:06
Speaker
I think that there's a real case to be made for that. And I think that that's pretty counter to what the sounders feel because I think my understanding is that they're most likely to target a six before they target a nine for a DP spot. I don't know if that's changed based on the way things have played out. I mean, I really... They're going to sign a DP this summer. So yeah, I think you're right. In the off-season, they would probably be more likely to sign a... Well, it'll be interesting to see what they do with Joe Bell in the off-season.
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah, but in any rate, I think that there's a, I guess, holistically, the bigger picture thing that I'm starting to reevaluate is during the Garth Lagerwey years, I was so deferential to everything the sounders did.
00:44:54
Speaker
that the thought process was inherently good, that it would probably turn out okay, that there was a bigger picture plan. And I still, I think if there is, you want to apportion blame for the way things are gone, I think a lot more of it falls on the tactical decisions and the budgetary decisions than on anything Weibull has done. I think there are certainly things you can criticize him for. I think that the things that are fair to criticize him for are far less numerous than the things he bears the criticism for.
00:45:26
Speaker
But I do think that that mindset of just assuming that the right decisions were being made for reasons that maybe I didn't have all the insight into, I definitely question that now. I don't think that they deserve that sort of blind faith that I put in them. So I'm trying to be a little more critical of that going forward.
00:45:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would say that the most interesting, the two big decisions they made this offseason were aside from, you know, bringing De La Vega was the decision not to buy out Ruidias and the decision to bring back Roosnack as a DP. And I kind of, I have a hard time believing that they ever had the budget to not do those things.
00:46:18
Speaker
Like, yeah, could they have, could they have gone out and signed a, I mean, I suppose it's possible that if they didn't want to bring back roast snack, they could have found some.
00:46:30
Speaker
free, they could have brought in at $3 million a year. And, and maybe, you know, I don't know if that, I don't know what the market looks like for that type of player, but it's probably not a player you want to build around if they're bringing them on our free. Uh, and similarly, like to find a, a real, really is upgrade.
00:46:51
Speaker
You're probably looking at, you know, both of those are really expensive investments, I guess. What I am worried about, and this is what I think is going to be interesting is how they manage this, is next year presents the biggest opportunity in sounder's history.
Ambition for the Club World Cup
00:47:08
Speaker
the Club World Cup, which could potentially feature games here. If they go into this thing, sort of with the idea that like, hey, it might only be three games. What's the big deal? I think that's a huge mistake because they should go into this with believing they can advance out of their group. Like, and if they don't, then what's the point? What are we doing here? If we're not... Yeah. Why do you care about making the tournament?
00:47:36
Speaker
Right. Why do you care about making the tournament if you're not going to put real resources into making, you know, making a run? No one thinks you're going to win the club World Cup, but you
00:47:48
Speaker
You got to put in a genuine effort. And if they go into this sort of with the idea that it's like, look, what do you want us to do? Maybe it's three. We might not advance out of the group stage. It's like, man, what the F? What do we do? And that'll be really disappointing. And that's going to be, I hope that's not what they do. I'll just say that. I do too. Anyway, that's a great note to end this show on.
00:48:18
Speaker
it's a
00:48:39
Speaker
I haven't been doing the Soundbites episodes the last few weeks, partly because I just feel emotionally drained after each one of these games. I would have done one after the Montreal game, but as you probably know, I wasn't here. Hopefully, I'll get back in the swing of things. I'd love to have something more fun to talk about, though, then.
00:49:03
Speaker
than just bummer, bummer losses. But thanks for all the questions. Hopefully, we did an okay job answering these. These were not the most fun questions, and I don't blame anyone for that. This is not a fun time. So anyway, all that said,
00:49:24
Speaker
Give them one more shout out to the discord. If you, if you want to get in there, just make sure you email us. If you, if you sign up for that tier, don't assume it's going to automatically happen. Email me, email support at senderheart.com. We'll get you all set up. All that said, I'm Jeremiah Shan, signing off for Aaron Campo. This is Nos Adietes and we will catch you next time.
00:50:43
Speaker
We love you. Let's win another one!