Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Going Nowhere?


A lot of big things were promised after Anthony Precourt became operator / investor of the Ohio Major League Soccer team. Not least of which was selling the fan base on the progressive leaning, internationally experienced, Gregg Berhalter. Not only was Berhalter brought in as a manager but also charged with the duties of Sporting Director. Quite a bit to chew on.

Hard to believe but we are a year in a half in now and outside of some progressive thinking in the possession and passing departments (slight over simplification, but...), Crew SC are by and large in the same spot they have been for the past five years (or since I started following the team), if not worse.

In the year and a half since Berhalter took over we've seen the worst 20 game run since 2007, 2nd worse 10 game run and, most recently, tied for the 2nd worst 5 game stretch of form (0.40 PPG). Another couple poor results puts this team in Robert Warzycha just signed a new deal territory back in 2011 (dark days).


My long view graph might be a little over kill but the team under Berhalter has basically gone like this;

- Great Start!
- Worst run in modern Crew history
- Impressive run
- Mediocre
- Not looking good...


[The last act has his highest profile signing complaining on Facebook]

On the competitive side the inconsistency of the results runs contrary to the level headed analytic and metric based approach fans were sold on when Anthony Precourt took over the team. Patience was asked of Crew SC fans last year when they suffered through a one win in sixteen game stretch - while on the marketing side, Columbus fans were sold on a re-brand (of sorts) that was meant to re-energize an aging "blue collar" image the original Hunt Sports Group created.

Is any of this working? Do regular season results like this matter in a league like MLS? Do league rules also cripple the development of young coaches? Or are we too distracted by today's news on kit colors to care.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

We want a team competing for the shield and the cup - dressed in gold jerseys. Consistency needed.