Under Soehn, our problems were clearly defensive. We had a weak foundation, yet sent men forward with wild abandon. Teams figured us out and would just sit in, waiting to break forward once we lost the ball with too many people forward. Our team speed was low, so you could be pretty certain that we wouldn’t be able to recover in time to help much. However, if we had spent some money defensively, we’d have been able to do better with lower numbers. That’s the thing with attacking teams: The good ones are always strong in the back, particularly in the middle. You’re going to be leaving your defenders with lower numbers than normal on a frequent basis, so you better make sure they’re good enough to get by with less help.

Where I disagree is the idea that pursuing forwards or playmakers should take a back seat because it hasn’t worked recently. The idea to sign a striker, for example, was completely reasonable. Where we went wrong was the execution of that idea (Allsopp simply isn’t good enough to be anything but our 4th choice guy making $40K, and that’s assuming he can fill that role better than Cristman). In fact, all of our moves in this past offseason were reasonable if you look at them strictly in terms of positional need and player profile. The problem with virtually all of them was that the players signed simply weren’t good enough. We needed a physical, out-and-out striker, a left winger, and a veteran center back. Allsopp, Cristian Castillo, and Juan Manuel Pena fit those descriptions, but none of the three was good enough at those jobs. Our inability to spot quality players overrides any concern about whether we should focus on position A or position B.

Also, I think our 2007 playoff loss had a whole lot more to do with losing Moreno and Emilio to injuries on the eve of the playoffs than anything else. I don’t know if we had what it took to be a championship team (our form began to drop after the All Star break), but we lost to Chicago because we couldn’t get any offense going. With Moreno out and Emilio managing just an hour on an ankle he probably shouldn’t have even been walking on, the Fire had nothing to worry about defensively because we had no cutting edge. It’s no coincidence that Christian Gomez looked like he was doing all of our attacking by himself (he was). That team had Bobby Boswell in good form, experienced players like Bryan Namoff, Mike Petke, and Brandon Prideaux on either side of him, and Troy Perkins was playing much better than he is now. We just had injuries at the absolute worst time.