joey greco

Yea, ,the idea that the team needs to survive the play of a qb they've invested three consecutive first round picks on is really hyperbolic. Really? That's the best case scenario for guys defending this brain trust and ridiculous qb.

No the ridiculous homerism is what's tiresome. Name a memorable throw that shows that the guy has a first round arm, that shows he can go out and win a team a game. That's a ridiculously low bar for a first rounder with ten starts.

The best fix for the offensive line would be a credible threat at qb, or at least someone with the ability to read a defense well. What this team needs is a mediocre qb and the rest of the offense would look much better, including the line.

This is exactly why they need to go. They have spent 3 consecutive first round picks on the passing game (including next year's #1 here) and yet are left hoping that playing an antiquated run first offense and literally running out the clock from the first snap will allow them to be competitive. Seeing Manuel for over a year and not bringing in a credible qb with the talent on the rest of the roster is criminally negligent. He has not made a single "wow" throw in more than a year of competitive play. We hope to "survive" the horrible play of the "franchise" qb. It's a joke.

800 yards 60% completions 4 td 9 ints Then the coaching staff actually allows Kouandijo onto the field in the hopes of a concussion so all the ridiculous homers blame the injury rather than Manuel's complete lack of talent for his demise, shifting the blame for the people that allowed this team to go into the season with no option other than this train wreck at qb.

This garbage is what makes any qb discussion on this board unproductive and has since I found Scott's forum in 1999. Dickheads flaming reasonable posts with love it or leave it nonsense, shitting up what had been a pretty reasonable discussion up until this douchebaggery.

There was no reason to cut Fitzpatrick. It was just a money saving gambit for a team that had room under the cap. They could have had EJ serve as understudy and Fitz caretaker the position for a couple years. It would have better served Manuel's development. And the team would have had a better shot at the playoffs this year than they do with EJ as starter.

Jesus Christ. What is with this posting style? costanza dot jaypeg It's so annoying to read I would think it was a gimmick. But a 12 year old shiny clean troll account? No it can' t be. Please use punctuation and breaks for para graphs instead of in the middle of sentences. It's very annoying to read.

Kouandjio looks awful. Does he even lift?

The problem with Jozy is bigger than confidence, although that is playing a role in his struggle right now. He has never excelled against quality competition. He has feasted against the most inferior CONCACAF opponents and against the laughable defense in the Eredivisie and disappeared against quality in every instance. He's just never been as good as the hype. Sunday was one of the best games I've ever seen him play and it wasn't even close to good enough to be considered an untouchable starter for the national team. He put in a 90 minute effort, was fed relentlessly by his teammates at Klinsmann's instruction, and had defenders he could physcially dominate-in short everything was in his favor, and he still failed every single time in the final third. The offside play is a great example. He has a break away and a simple finish. He tries to bend to shape the shot and falls over. Unfortunately he has more problems keeping his feet than Eric Staal and this has been a career long issue. The cross he sent to Diskerud is another. There was no excuse for that to be a difficult chest high feed. His agility and ball skills are very weak and have shown very minimal improvement over the course of his career, I doubt they will ever improve much. As far as Bradley goes, it is clear that the diamond needs to go in favor of a flat 4 or that Beckerman needs to be the holding player. Bradley doesn't trust Jones (for very good reason, Jones consistently lost his positioning Sunday) and the team is suffering for it. Bradley continues to look awful and turn the ball over far too easily to play the central role. He did play a nice chip, but the credit goes to Johnson for a brilliant run and great volley. Any professional should be able to play a still chip accurately that distance. He would still also benefit from having a player like Diskerud out there to threaten the wings with speed to open up the middle more.

Yes it was a friendly, and yes, they have been training hard, but that was still a very troubling performance. Azerbaijan is a good defensive team and they parked the bus, but lots of question marks after that game. 1. Tactics. Klinsmann wants to play a diamond, but doesn't have the players to do it. Bradley would be fantastic in the holding role, far better than Jones. No one else can play the CAM though, with Donovan out. Zusi and Bedoya don't provide enough to make it work with the offense running through Bradley, and certainly not without Dempsey. Jones is a terrible choice for the holding/link player with the back 4. See comments on Bradley below. This team does not have enough talent to force one of its few world class players (and Bradley certainly is that as a defensive midfielder) into a second choice role. 2. Creativity. Just not a lot going on. Very little useful movement off the ball, content to just launch crosses and hope for set pieces. 3. Speed. Maybe this is where the training affected the team, but there seemed to be a distinct lack of speed from the US side. 4. Lack of presence/finish in the final third. These guys are who they are. LIttle hope that this gets better before the WC. Unless 2011 Dempsey appears this team will struggle to score. Players: The Good: 1. Diskerud provided speed and energy of the bench and was in the right place to get the goal. 2. Johansson did not fail to put away a wide open header. 3. Fabian Johnson was quite good on the wing. Made most/all of the good runs the team had in the first half. 4. Beasley was ok. Pushed play where the opportunity presented itself and didn't get out of position. The Meh: 1. Howard. Didn't have much to do, but did it. 2. Cameron. See above. 3. Gonzalez. Not pressured enough to have his typical brainfart. Made a nice play the only time he was called on. 4. Zusi. Couple of nice free kicks. Ok in open play. 5. Altidore. Two nice plays. In 90 minutes. Never threatened to score or create a goal against a team who could mark no one on set pieces. This from a guy who is supposed to be leading this team. At least three god-awful, schoolyard level plays. Jozy is not a world class player. 6. Bedoya. The definition of meh. The Bad: 1. Besler, unfortunately, was Besler. Called on to do next to nothing, and created Azerbaijan's best chance of the night. A goal waiting to happen (this is bad for a defender). 2. Jermaine Jones is not a holding midfielder. Known for getting himself out of position, although he didn't last night. Terrible touch on passes, although wind probably didn't help. He is not the guy the team should be relying on to distribute from the back, provide cover for the back 4 and link them to the midfield. Stupid. Klinsmann's fascination with this never was is hilarious. 3. Wondolowski. A garbageman who missed two open headers. Provides nothing except for his knack of having the ball fall to his feet in front of the goal, and even failed at that. Send home now. 4. Bradley. Unbelievably bad. A turnover machine. Is a world class holding midfielder but Klinsmann's inane personnel decisions have forced him into playing CAM. Could be adequate (but not world class) as a CAM, but needs lots of speed and threat on the wings that the team doesn't have in order to create the space he requires to succeed in that role. Talent wasted. The Ugly: 1. Chandler. What an unfortunate looking man.

Brazil is lacking offense. I don't think they'll win it. Germany's forwards are old (Klose) and not quite good enough (Schuerrle). I still like Spain. Their lineup is still filled with all stars and they won't have to play Torres up top. Their second team would be competitive in the tournament. Great call, I liked them a lot more before Benteke got hurt, though. Lukaku might be enough to get them a knockout stage win or two. I think the top four would be Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Italy Predictions: 1. Spain wins world cup 2. Germany and Portugal advance from US group 3. Suarez plays and carries Uruguay to a win over England thanks to a ridiculous dive and equally ridiculously good free kick goal. Suarez becomes the most hated player in England outside of Liverpool. 4. US earns 0 points. 5. Jozy Altidore plays like the lazy, fat-headed, lumbering oaf that he is. US soccer fans will continue to deny the obvious and continue to tout him as a great player.

Like hell it's performance based. Jozy Altidore has been an embarassment all year. !@#$ing Chris Wondolowski is a joke. This is a zero point, zero goal joke of a team that was guaranteed by Klinsy's lack of balls and guaranteed contract. !@#$ him, !@#$ fat slob no talent Jozy, get Ghana every World Cup and die. If nothing else this should show these morons that putting good talent into the MLS is idiotic.

This stupid !@#$ing post should be deleted unless you're making posts for every other player who got drafted. Nobody cares except the people who are using it to out-tolerance their e-rivals. This is the worst type of LAMP.

This pick has set the franchise back 5 years at least, great

Michael Bradley was wonderful in the first half. The team looked great when they were allowed to funnel everything between the boxes to him. Mexico took that away in the second half and you saw the results. It's too bad that the rest of the team is so lacking in what will physically be his prime world cup year. No other player can influence the game as well as he can in the box-to-box role. If Klinsmann plays him as a defensive midfielder he should be fired. He's obviously better than Jones in the offensive role and Beckerman looked fine as the holding midfielder. Other players I thought were decent were Beckerman, Rimando and Yedlin. That's really about it. Wondo was ok I guess, got in the right position for the goal but didn't really impact the game outside of that play. Dempsey made a couple of nice plays but was clearly affected by the physicality brought by Mexico in the second half and was invisible for long stretches. Really the whole team was thrown when Mexico got physical, which was sad and a bad sign for the world cup. Green was what you'd expect from a kid in his position-but I hope he got chewed out for his responsibity on the second Mexico goal. Parkhurst, Beltran, Gonzales were ****. Belser, meh-not bad I guess. I don't know if they get a point in the World Cup. The backline is a horror show even taking into account the likely starters and I don't think Klinsmann's narrow setup helps them. They will require top-form versions of Dempsey and Donovan to have a chance, as they will have to outscore teams, and outside of Bradley those two are the only world-class offensive talents in the player pool. Klinsy's static offensive tactics also don't play to their strengths. The strikers are also complete garbage-EJ's goal should have counted, but he's second-rate. Wondo isn't even that. Altidore, unfortunately, is Altidore: a hold-up player who can't get possession because he's out of shape and has the first touch of a cinderblock wall. Johannson may be ok...but I think it's gonna be ugly.

No, we do know what he is at this juncture, and that is an extremely poor NFL quarterback. What we don't know, and can hold opinions on, is what he might be in the future.

What evidence is there of that? That was just short of the typical game he has played all year.

Game over, season over holy lol pasted by the terrible steelers.

pathetic

up the middle, up the middle, low % pass. great playcalling.

good thing g. smith sucks. only way they're getting off the field today.

Yea, I get it. It's just irritating that the FO alienated a quality player who should have happily been a lifetime Bill while they're drowning cap space. They shot themselves in the foot unnecessarily and it's annoying to see it defended so blindly.

No, I'm sorry, but you don't understand. If he can't catch and doesn't make a lot of interceptions he's a bad CB. We should not even bother with him, he's not good. Tackling and coverage is way overrated, and is probably something people only notice in preseason. We should just wait and draft a CB, probably early. A fourth round draft pick next year is obviously better than anyone you can get this year.

Winfield? He can't even catch. If he won't play for the vet minimum screw him!