The abject jokes

Well, we’ve already gotten through the contenders, now how about teams so laughably bad that we wait with baited breath for matches with them just so that we can laugh.

Strengths: Fans, Maurice Edu

Weaknesses: Everything else

Thoughts: Mo Johnston is quickly becoming the Isiah Thomas of MLS and that’s a really, really bad thing. (About all he needs to clinch it is a “truck party“). Their new manager, John Carver, has a grand total of six matches in charge of Newcastle and Luton. He knew nothing of the league when Mo tapped him and now he expected to lead one of the worst assemblages of players ever put together in MLS. It’s not that there is no talent, it’s that the talent is put together without any clue as to how they would play together. Maurice Edu is a great player. Marvell Wynne has the potential to be a good talent. Carl Robinson is a good winger. Jeff Cunningham is a good, decent, not bad, psychotic forward but has been dangerous in the past. Otherwise this team has either raw potential (Julius James, Kevin Harmse) or abject over-the-hill mediocrity (Tyrone Marshall, Danny Dichio). How long will the fans take this crap? There are other good player-personnel types in MLS. The Toronto ownership (the same folks who brought you the 2007 Toronto Maple Leafs Laughing-stocks) cannot allow the energy and excitement in that city die because the team is a joke. But as long as Mo is there and trying to stock the team like an NASL team (João Pinto? Darren Huckerby?), they are utterly, utterly doomed.

Strengths: Joe Cannon, Ronnie O’Brien, Frank Yallop

Weaknesses: Everything else

Thoughts: Look, I like everyone else thin that Frank Yallop is a brilliant coach, Joe Cannon is a great goalkeeper, and Ronnie O’Brien is a great midfielder but, beyond those three, there is nothing else of note, especially in attack. I still cannot believe that Yallop allowed this team to start the season with Kei Kamara and Gavin Clinton as the starting forward tandem with Ned Grabavoy (who wasn’t good enough for Columbus to protect from the expansion draft), as the #10. I challenge any of you to come up with a worse opening day, non-injury/callup induced attacking unit since year one of the league. And trading away the #1 pick for Nick Garcia, my jaw is still being reeled of the floor from that deal. I am confident that Yallop has a plan, I just wish he’d get on with it, because this cannot possibly be it.

Strengths: Three Argentinans that no one has heard of that cannot possibly be as bad the dreck they tossed out there last year.

Weaknesses: Everything else other than Robbie Findlay

Thoughts: This team’s apparant delusion is summed up by this quote from the team’s preview of MLSNet calling Kenny Deuchar the “Newcomer with the Biggest Impact.”

RSL celebrated Deuchar’s signing with great fanfare because he could be the striker that finally solves some of the team’s scoring issues from a year ago.

This was a player in the lower Scottish divisions. Does anyone here know how bad that is? Have any of you ever seen a SPL match not involving the Old Firm. MLS teams would win easily over any non-Old Firm team in the top division. So, suddenly this guy is going to score wads of goals at a level far above he’s ever played? It’s lunacy. Either that means that everyone else they’ve signed is utter crap, or that they have so little idea how to build a team that this is what they legitimately think is a good player. Either way, it’s a bad sign.

Drumroll please as we get to these guys.

Strengths: Landon Donovan and Carlos Ruiz can score goals and David Beckham hits a good dead ball.

Weaknesses: Literally everything else affiliated with this club from the management, to the coaching, the logo, the defense – oh the defense and the inevitable chemistry problems that come with a coach that was thought of as a pompous egomaniac by European pros.

Thoughts: If Ruud Gullit makes it to the end of this season I would be stunned. There is nothing he can do with this ill-designed squad featuring two legitimate stars in Beckham and Dovovan, one former star in Ruiz and utter drivel behind it. The defense is shockingly bad and shockingly old. It’s only because the weakness of other teams in the West that this team even has a modicum of a chance of making the playoffs. As everyone knows, this team won’t be able to do anything without dumping one of the massive salaries (probably Ruiz) to free up the cap space to upgrade the rest of the talent. Poor Steve Cronin. He’s going to be bombarded with more shots than Tony Montana at the end of Scarface. Too bad Cronin won’t have a gattling gun though, he’ll need one.