Signing The Status Quo

Pat Noonan and Joey Franchino resigned with the Revs today. Although Joey brings leadership and toughness to the team, he would have been easily replaced if lost. With the way MLS works, the only way we could have lost his rights is if he went to another league. Seeing that there was little chance in that happening, I'm not throwing any parties.

The real news here is Pat Noonan. Coming off of a year of injuries, it was unlikely he could have signed with a club in a better league. However, he could have hired an agent to shop him around the scandanavian leagues which would have netted him more cash than what he makes in MLS. With the turnover in the national team, Pat probably wanted stay closer to home so he could attend MLS-only US camps. The league usually doesn't release contract specifics, but I'm hoping he's obligated to the Revs for quite some time.

Noonan brings some touch and class to our front line. Twellman works well with him. Hopefully, this leads to Taylor signing an extension. I would also like to see if Noonan can be converted to a midfielder. I cringe at the thought of Hernandez, Franchino, and Larentowicz all playing in the same midfield. The offense sputtered through much of last year. Losing Dempsey, Cancela, and possibly Joseph will leave us listless in the middle. Dorman can do a lot, but what he can't do is control a game like those other players could.

Well, here's to the Rev's offseason looking less like a dismantling and more like a mediocre team in the making.

Stacking The Deck

To say that the Revs' best days are behind them may be a bit hash. However, with several key players looking to ply their trades elsewhere, and the lack of talent coming in, I'm looking at the upcoming season more pessimisticly than the previous few.

The loss of Clint Dempsey is inevitable. He didn't play a ton of the games with the team last year with the world cup and suspensions. Several players stepped up in his absence, especially Andy Dorman. If Deuce were the only player we were losing, I'd feel OK. Stevie Nicol has shown his ability to draft fairly well, last year being a rotten exception. Fresh draftees, Willie Simms, and a pair of promising young internationals could provide a pool of players to draw from to replace Dempsey and aging starters like Ralston, Heaps, and Franchino.

The problem is we may be losing a lot more than Clint Dempsey. Rumors of Shalrie Joseph signing with Celtic, Noonan and Twellman looking for more pay, and Dorman yet to sign an extension could decimate our above average MLS side. There are no guarantees in the player pool I spoke of previously. Relying on them to fill the shoes of our nucleus is folly.

Miguel Gonzalez and Arsene Oka may see some action this year, but we have no idea if they can be full-time starters. Kyle Brown proved unable to pass the ball to teammates and Willie Brown showed he wasn't quite ready, save the USOC match in Rochester where he added much needed speed to a tired squad. If we lose Twellman and/or Noonan, their potential replacements leave a big question mark.

The recently resigned Hernandez and Jeff "Giner Bonito" Larentowicz will be able to fill Joseph's shoes. However, no one controlled games like Shalrie did over the past two seasons. Just ask DC fans why we beat them in the semi-finals. The issue I have is Joseph gave his fellow DM the freedom to get forward. I'm not sure if our two remaining DM's have the skills to control the game both offensively and defensively. Also, lacking a true attacking midfielder infront of them will hurt the duo.

Left Midfield still remains a weak area for the team. Joey Franchino gave a lot of heart to that position. However, his lack of skill and scoring threat allowed teams to overplay our right side. Kano Smith could become a full-time starter. He's healthy over the offseason for the first time. Hopefully, he's working on his individual skills. A full preseason camp could do wonders. James Reily could also move up. Leonard Marshall is coming back after a year's absense. The Revs essentially have four average options at that position. Let's hope the competition brings out the best in them.

There are also depth issues. We should have learned a lesson from last season. Injuries took us out of the Supporters Sheild race early and our reserve team was awful. Even if our current players step up, the fact still remains that we are an above average club that hasn't won a trophy. We still need an impact player that will shake things up. Other teams have figured us out, and that's with Dempsey. Losing Clint's unpredictabilty makes us easy to defend.

I have no idea who the team is looking at. I'm usually against MLS trades because they usually mess up team chemistry. Alexi Lalas has destroyed two teams attempting to trade his way to victory. If there is a year the Revs should look at trading, it's this year. With the new DP rule, th Revs should look at trading theirs for a proven MLS starter. They should also consider trading away some allocation space, which they never seem to use, for a player like Columbus's Virtuoso. He tore through our defense late last year and is left footed.

Either way, the Revs need to make some sort of move. Maybe they are waiting for the transfer window to open. Maybe they are waiting or the draft. Who knows? I sure hope they have a plan.

Sunil Out

When Sunil Gulati was hired as the managing director of Kraft Soccer about six years ago, he seemed like a good fit. At the time, he was a big power broker behind the scenes at US Soccer. He was instrumental in bringing the 1994 men's world cup and the 1999 women's world cup to our country. He had worked his way up the US Soccer ladder to a point where he could help bring US matches to Kraft's stadium and work within the system to bring international players to the Revs. Back then, teams begged for the rights of players MLS signed. A person like Sunil Gulati seemed like someone who could help with this.

His behind the scenes efforts seemed to pay off with Foxboro continuing to host US matches including two important qualifiers in 2001 and the 2002 sendoff game against Holland. Then, Sunil went ahead and got himself a promotion.

By becoming vice president of US Soccer, Sunil went from being a powerful lobyist to one of the faces of the USSF. When that happened, it made it tougher to work behind the scenes for Kraft's benefit. Anything that benefitted Kraft, when it came to US national team games, could be questioned. The two qualifiers in 2001 and the sendoff in 2002 had a higher attendance than any USMNT game leading up to the 2006 cup except the important Costa Rica match in Salt Lake City. The only game that Foxboro was awarded was a throw-away game well after the US qualified against Panama on a wednesday night. An important qualifier was played earlier in Hartford, which was where the final sendoff was played. Both of those games drew 22,000, well below the attendances of the games in Foxboro back in '01 and '02.

Now that Sunil has become USSF president, it will become even harder to get important games. Sure, we're getting the woman's team and some gold cup games, but it's unlikely Gulati can pull strings to get anything better when it's his own strings being pulled. If it seems like Foxboro's being favored in any way, there will be public outcry this time around. By the way, I firmly believe that we are getting those games as a result of the Revs being left out of the tournament with Mexican teams.

So what does this have to do with the Revs?

Absolutely nothing, and that's the problem. I was a big fan of Pepe Cancela, but him being the only international to make an impact during Gulati's reign is pretty sad. Another problm is the fact that most of the Rev's front office considers him their boss. He lives in New York City! I wish some of my bosses had lived three states away, but nothing would have gotten done.

What the Revs need is a technical director who can scout talent, negotiate, and sell the area to those players. Coach Nicol can't do that durng the season. Someone doing those things last year would have set up the Revs nicely for an offseason we need to be adding players.

Sunil represents the Revs on the league's disiplinary committee and audit committee. I guess he leads by example given all the decisions which went against us this year and the Revs having the lowest payroll in MLS for years. We need an advocate, not someone who has to worry about "the good of US Soccer" when decisions are made at MLS HQ. If Sunil were let go by the Revs, he could perform those duties on those committees without the fear of bias. There's nothing wrong with that.

Sunil Gulati is no longer a positive for the Revs. It's time to show the "evil little midget" the door. We can do better.

Shirts, stickers, and more

I've been toying around with the idea of starting a blog for some time. However, for full disclosure, the launch of this blog comes at the same time I'm getting another project off the ground.

Last summer, I began looking around the internet for places to design custom shirts. The reason being I wanted to get a whole bunch of "Piss On The Fire" shirts for an august home game. Clint Dempsey received a verbal caution by the referee for swiping at a Fire player during a game in Chicago. As the story goes, Dave Sarachan, the Fire coach, went crying to the MLS front office and got Dempsey suspended for two games. There are many companies that will do up custom shirts, but most are only worth it if you are ordering over twenty. I didn't want to get stuck with a lot of extra shirts lying around. People may say they will buy one, but many baulk when it comes time to pay. So, I put that idea to rest.

While doing my search, one of the sites I came across was CafePress. It's basically a company that will print up your designs, handle inventory, and process returns for you and send you a check whenever you sell items above their "base price". It was immediately ruled out because they didn't offer blue shirts, which is the color we wear in The Fort (NE Revolution supporters section at Gillette Stadium).

However, that changed a little over a month ago when I decided to open a free store and upload some designs I whipped up. Less than a day later, the USSF fockered up the deal with Jurgen Klinsmann. I got in touch with a friend out in LA and he promised to buy a bunch of "Fire Sunil" shirts to wear at the US-Denmark game in LA next month. That pretty much paid for my upgrade to a premium shop for two months. That means I can now put my designs on blue shirts. The premium shop also allowed me to make it look somewhat professional.

The problem with cafepress is that the quality isn't the best. Even with my designs favoring content over art, the printing method is still a drawback. So, I went looking at it's main competition, printfection. I opened a shop and I ordered one shirt from both shops with the same design on it. In short, the printfection shirt came out much better. I also washed them both several times and the printfection shirt has held up much better. If you buy a shirt from one of my stores, I'd go with the printfection shop. It's cheaper and offers discounts on bulk orders. That site isn't polished yet. I still have to work out some coding and upload some more designs.

The positive thing about my CP shop is I can offer coffee mugs, beer steins, magnets and stickers. Stickers can be a fun way to protest our favorite team or tag up an opposing stadium. I'll definently be sticking with CP for the time being because of the random things they offer.

The goal of this endeavor is to have a place where I can come up with something topical in my head, design it, and offer it very quickly. I would like to get some pocket change out of it. If I make some dough from this setup, I'll probably have the shop on it's own domain linking the shirts with printfection and the other stuff with CP. We'll see how it goes.

As for the name. It's a nice oxymoron, in my opinion. Blue Bloods are normally associated with the Boston area, but not many are hooligans.....until now!

Well, that's my full disclosure. Check out the links to my "designs". I should have the myspace site up shortly. Tell me what you think.

BTW, the purpose of this blog isn't to hawk my merchandise. I'll be expressing my viewpoints on all things soccer. If a blog entry, like my next one, has something to do with a shirt I sell I'm not too ashamed to set up a link.

Launch

Welcome. I'm Blue Blooded Journo. This blog will be the home of my profound pontifications dealing mainly with the world of soccer. I'm a huge Revolution fan, but I also follow a few clubs over in Europe. I'm a fan of the other local pro teams, but they'll only creep into my columns if they're lucky. I am also returning to New England for the first time in over a decade, so I may also be spouting off about the things I find jacked up.

Things to look forward to:

* Why I think the past five years will be viewed as the best five years in New England Revolution history.

* Why the Revs will be the last team without their "own" stadium.

* The freeloader that is Sunil Gulati.

* Why new englanders dislike southerners and why the feeling is mutual.


Check back often for updates!