The Fullback Files: November 2011

Hello Chaff, Any Wheat In There?

The list for the Re-Entry Draft is out. Any interesting targets for United?

Ante Jazic: To old (36 before 2012 season starts) and too expensive ($115k salary), but plays a position of need. This would be an extreme reach, even at a reduced salary in Stage 2.

Bobby Boswell: Way too expensive ($210k salary) and we’re probably set with McDonald and Jakovic in the middle of defense, but … Jakovic struggles to stay healthy and will be doing qualifier duty for Canada next year if healthy. White proved himself capable as a rookie and Russell can fill in if needed, so again, a stretch1.

Hunter Freeman: I know we just acquired Russell and both are natural right backs, but both can play on the left as well where the likely departure of Burch2 leaves us with only the mediocre-at-best Woolard. That said, doesn’t seem like a “Benny” kinda guy. And $150k? Bit steep.

Adam Cristman: Hahahahaha! Just seeing if you’re paying attention.

Kheli Dube: Not really that interesting, but $90k when we’re jettisoning half of our current crop of forwards is. Would smack a bit of desperation despite that.

Pat Phelan: $60k for backup/cover for Kitchen at d-mid? Maybe. How’s he doing with the concussions?

Carlos Mendes: Direct from the enemy, but a solid veteran presence who can play across the entire back line. $100k salary.

Jean Alexandre: Still raw after three years in the league and a brute to boot, but a solid physical presence, cheap ($42k?) and can slot in at a number of positions.

Nelson Gonzalez: Interesting player and cheap ($42k). Wonder what the sticking point with RSL is? And isn’t he on loan from Quilmes?

Bobby Convey: Huge ($300k+) salary is a major roadblock and didn’t leave on the best of terms, but could be an interesting left back option at a (much) lower salary.

Nate Jaqua: See Dube, Kheli … though a bit less of a stretch. $140k is too much.

Jonathan Leathers: Cheap ($42k) back line depth. Less appealing with Russell in the fold.

Keep in mind that the salary figures listed here are for 2011, so any Stage 1 draftees will likely be above, if not well above, the listed figures. Remember Ngwenya was listed at something like $77k last year, and we ended up paying him more than double that.

With all of that said, I’m not seeing any names, even in that reduced short list, that are hugely tempting.

You?

Unless, of course, you factor in that we were willing to snap up another Houston reject, Ngwenya, last year and pay him over $150k. Sigh. ↩
Finally. ↩

Oh Dear...

Train. Wreck.

Absolute train wreck. 30% off at the team store? I'm afraid you'll need to be paying me to wear such an abomination. Which, I suppose, is how they got those gentlemen above to don them. Ignoring for a moment the awfulness of the red away collars and those apparently bloody sleeves...What's the deal with the little red patches on the shorts?

Ugh.

The Extended Sigh Continues

I can understand protecting Charlie Davies if you’ve got a rumor of trade interest that you think might enable you to significantly improve the team1. I can even plunge past the mystifying decision to protect a well-past-it Simms if a pay-cut or trade are on the horizon.

But Korb and Woolard?

This is the core you’re building around? Fullbacks who are maybe within spitting distance of the wrong side of adequate?

Sigh…

On the bright side, it looks like the pickings available from other rosters might be much more exciting to L’Impact…oh wait. There’s a reason for that, isn’t there? Certainly is. The reason is that the FO’s vision of our “core” team going forward contains Korb and Woolard manning the defensive flanks. It’s no wonder that even the needlessly-exposed bits of our roster are significantly less tempting targets.

I’m sure there’s a plan in place for the off-season, and that the FO is convinced that they’re building a better mousetrap. But if this is the first step in that plan, I’m preparing to be appalled by what manner of wheezing, chunking, clap-trap assemblage of has-beens, cast-offs, and never-will-be’s gets defecated on the training fields at RFK2 come pre-season.

(PS: Landru beat me to the punch saying essentially the same things with a tad more invective.)

Note that nowhere in this supposition do I entertain any demand on my part for his return for 2012. I believe I’ve already detailed the reasons why. ↩
Or wherever. ↩

Sacrifice Three Lions and Call Me In the Morning

Very Strong

Grant Wahl interviews the Don...

SI.com: What are the chances of D.C. United playing in Washington D.C. in 2012?

Garber: Very strong. Very strong. I think my comments were misconstrued as if we're trying to move the team. That couldn't be further from the truth. We need to find a stadium solution there, and the folks we're trying to work with don't seem to understand how unfair it is for D.C. United's ownership and their fans and players to be playing in a substandard stadium with a ridiculous deal that doesn't even provide them with in my opinion the basics that teams and players and fans deserve. That said, Kevin Payne and Will Chang are working hard to try and find some solutions, whether they're a better deal with RFK Stadium or a stadium project in D.C. or a stadium project somewhere in the area.

But something needs to happen there. I'd like to see fans come together there like they did in Philly and Portland and almost any market across this country and really bang their fists and start screaming loudly at their political leaders that their team and this league in this sport deserves better. How about Occupy RFK?

Comparing Lists

Goff’s version of the protected list is out, so I thought I’d stir from my hibernation1 to do some comparisons. (Revisit my list in four parts by hitting the links highlighted in the sidebar.)

On both lists: Willis, Jakovic, De Rosario, Kitchen, McDonald, Pontius, Quaranta, Wolff
Goff also protects: Korb, Woolard, King
I also protect: Boskovic, Brettschneider, da Luz

We’re in alignment on a number of points beyond the obvious (De Rosario, Kitchen, Pontius). Simms is too expensive and doesn’t fit tactically, Jakovic is a flawed but vital part of the back line, Woff likewise up top, and having a backup netminder you can depend upon, particularly with Hamid likely to be missing games for national duty next year, may seem frivolous, but is potentially key.

We differ on two major areas: Boskovic and which group of scrubs to go with.

I’ll concede that given his injury and contract situations, Boskovic seems an unlikely pick for Montreal, but I think you put him on the list for two reasons. First, Korb, Woolard, and King are the type of players you can replace easily. Sure, we may not have depth in those positions at the moment, but all have flaws for their preferred position (Korb’s aerial deficiencies, Woolard’s being 75% of a top-flight player, King’s inability to finish despite getting in great spots coming from deep) and the type of journeyman player you can find a ready replacement for. Maybe you don’t take that risk if you’re the FO, but I still think it’s easier to dig up another Woolard than another Boskovic.

The second reason is more nuanced and possibly reeks too much of pop psychology, but I think putting Boskovic on the protected list sends a signal to the team and the player that he’s a vital cog in the machine going forward. Maybe I’m putting too much stock in that. Maybe Boskovic doesn’t even know there’s an expansion draft going on. Whatever. My default position is always going to be to protect the players that are harder to replace (assuming they’re key to your plans moving forward).

Which brings me to the scrubs, where I really don’t have that much to say. You can take your pick of any two of Woolard, Korb, Brettschneider, da Luz, and King and make a fairly decent argument for their inclusion. If you project either Woolard or Korb as a starter in 2012, I guess you’d have to give them one of those spots2. Of that group though, I’d still lean towards Brettschneider and da Luz as potentially having the most long-term value, but then, I only play the home game3…

I tried to do a reaction post to the two latest USMNT friendlies, really I did. But who needs to hear more complaints about Beckerman's inadequacies and Klinsmann proving little better than a media-friendly, Euro-fied Bradley (when it comes to tactics/player selection). Sigh. So jaded. ↩
Of course, if you’re sane, you’re furiously searching for better options at both spots and/or praying that Zayner finds a miracle cure for all that ails him. ↩
Football Manager, of course. I’ll have something coming regarding that in the near future. Probably. ↩

Steamed

I’ll begin with a caveat. I’m not a gamer. Not anymore, at least. My one remaining vice in the genre is the Football Manager (née Championship Manager) series, which I shuffle up to the till to purchase every year, a process that has grown increasingly frictionless. Given such a limited gaming habit and the fact that I’m on a Mac, I’ve never had any use for Steam and have always bought a physical copy of the game.

Initially, my buying process involved ordering the Mac version of the game from a company in the UK (with all the added shipping costs that entails). That progressed to the short-lived experiment of having the game sold here under the name World Wide Soccer Manager and got easier when the game was published as a combined PC/Mac disk. Of late, I’ve been able to order the standard flavor of FM through Amazon in the US. Cheaper, easier, faster.

But this year, Sports Interactive and Sega (developer and publisher of FM respectively) decided to require Steam to play the game though they would continue selling the physical disk. Even though it was slightly more expensive to buy direct through Steam1, I figured not having to find and insert the disk every time I wanted to play carried some value. Since I was going to need to install and run Steam in order to play anyway, why not take the plunge and go 100% Steam?

I plunged.

The first few weeks were fine even if I wasn’t a huge fan of the somewhat obtuse (to these non-gamer’s eyes anyway) Steam software. Patches were pushed automatically in the background, the downloads were relatively quick, and even if it required a little extra digging to find the editor2 or if there was a slight delay while Steam connected (prohibiting the launching of the game until it did so), the experience was generally a good one.

Then came last night.

With KC cruising to an easy second-leg victory in the MLS Cup playoffs, I decided to pop into FM while I waited for the start of the RSL-Seattle tilt. I launched FM using the application shortcut, which caused Steam to launch in turn(verification of credentials, remember). Sadly, Steam proceeded to beachball during the “connecting” phase. I watched a little of the by-now-decided playoff game while I gave Steam a chance to churn, then Force Quit the Steam app when it persisted in an unresponsive state for over 10 minutes.

I tried the same process again and, despite a long delay in connecting to Steam, managed to get to my game library. FM said it was ready to play so I clicked it. A little dialogue box popped up for a moment saying FM was launching, but nothing happened. Tried again. Same result. Tried to quit Steam, but it said I had to quit FM first.

What the hell?

I launched Activity Monitor (Applications>Utilities), verified that there was no FM process running, then Force Quit the Steam app. When I relaunched (again with the delay in connecting), Steam said it needed to update itself and proceeded to do so. I finally got back to my game library, clicked FM to launch it, and…

Nada.

Same little dialogue box. Same big bag of hurtful nothing. A little forum-diving had me attempting to verify the integrity of the game’s cache3. That didn’t help me launch the game, but it did shift the game’s state from “Ready to Play” to “Download Paused.”

Hmmm. Apparently, FM had tried to update itself at some point and failed. I tried to resume the download, but that had no effect. More verifying of the cache and more forum-diving later, I was deleting or renaming files in my ~/Library/Application Support/Steam folder. All of which resulted in…

“Download is Starting.”

Ah-ha! Progress of a sort. Except it never went beyond that point. By this time, RSL-Seattle is on, so I let it sit in that state for while and watch the game. I come back at halftime and it’s still stuck.

Ugh.

I’ve given up on playing the game at this point, but I’ve got the bug: I need to fix this. Unfortunately, the forum-diving all ends up pointing to “delete and reinstall.” Not ideal, but what the hell. Thankfully I’m not bandwidth constrained or capped. I figure I’ll uninstall and get the reinstall started before I go to bed. I right-click FM in the Steam library, tell it to delete local files, and it does so.

Or at least, it says it does. Nothing’s in my trash and on relaunch, FM still shows up as installed in the game library. Huh? I fire up the Finder and see that the game files still appear to be present. Nice. Delete must mean different things to Steam and to me. So I trash the app from ~/Applications and trash the FM files in ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common (forum suggestion from technical support).

This time, the relaunch sees the connection handshake with Steam take a fraction of the time it’s been taking and FM finally shows as uninstalled in the Library. I start the reinstall download and head for bed…

This morning I woke to find FM sitting in the library “Ready to Play.” I fire it up and…success! FM launches, my saves appear to be intact, and all is right with the world. Given the horror stories of folks on the Steam and SI forums having to purge every last element of FM and Steam on their systems before reinstalls would take, I consider myself quite lucky. Still, the experience left me pretty disgusted with the system as a whole. If there were an option to play the game sans Steam, I’d take it in an instant at this point.

My best guess as to what happened is that I interrupted Steam while it was trying to do something during that initial suspended state it entered into. Or perhaps there was a download conflict caused by my launching FM directly rather than launching Steam first and then FM? Maybe if I had just launched Steam directly and had it do its update dance, then launched FM and had it download the patch, all of this nonsense and frustration would have been avoided.

In any case, if you’re running into this problem, I hope this helps you work through it. As I said, I haven’t had any problems with Steam to this point, things seem to be back to normal now, and I’m hoping this is an isolated incident. I certainly won’t be trying to launch FM directly in the future, and, if SI/Sega give me the choice, will have to think long and hard about using Steam in the future.

Your mileage, as always, may vary…

At the time of the game’s release, there was no option on Amazon to buy the physical disk. Still isn’t, though download purchases have since been made available. ↩
In your Steam library, click on the drop-down next to the search box (default choice is “All Games,” I believe) and select “Tools.” Find Football Manager 2012 Editor in the list and double-click to install. ↩
Right- or control-click the game in the library, chose “Properties,” navigate to the “Local Files” tab, and click “Verify Integrity of Game Cache…” Seems to be a potent fix for some ills. ↩

The Fullback Files