A salute to Steve Morrow

May 20th, 2008 by KirkBhoy | Posted in News |

I have to say that since the end of last season, I’ve agreed with far more of Steve Morrow’s decisions than I’ve disagreed with. It is difficult, from the outside, to know who made what decision or whose connections caused what move. But, I get the feeling that since Oscar Pareja left, most of those decisions fall on Morrow and Michael Hitchcock’s shoulders.

I posted on the FC Dallas Blog that hopefully this was a decision made that combined Morrow’s UK job prospects with whatever discontent might have existed. Having said that, I’m going to proceed under the assumption that this decision was entirely out of Morrow’s hands and analyze the major decisions of this season.

• The trade of Carlos Ruiz to the Galaxy for allocation money that eventually led to Davino seems to have panned out completely. Even just having Ruiz off the roster seemed like a good move in a salary cap situation. In the NBA, we would have gotten nothing, as trades need to be approximately equal value so we just would not have picked up Ruiz’s option. Duilio has been a wonderful addition. This was probably a Morrow/Hitchcock consensus.
• Moving from a 4-4-2 to a 3-5-2 seemed almost obvious to me given our personnel and how many other MLS teams have used a similar formation successfully.
• Loaning Ray Burse to Portland seemed borderline brilliant. I’m sure a lot of people would have liked to have seen Burse come in during the 2nd half, but I wouldn’t have made that decision.
• Playing Dario Sala over Ray Burse? Questionable but understandable pre-season, obvious after Sala’s first 3-4 games
• Letting Clarence Goodson be taken in the expansion draft proved wise.
• Lackluster start for Juan Toja, Arturo Alvarez, and most of our midfield has been the most unnerving part of this entire season to me and where Morrow deserves most of the blame. My question is this: which of Morrow’s superiors is qualified enough to judge this? Hitchcock is a salesman. HSG put this team in Frisco. And isn’t this the kind of thing you judge after the season as opposed to 1/3 of the way through it?
• Not bringing in a top-notch striker, as was rumored, seems completely out of Morrow’s hands. Given the way many Latin American playmakers and strikers play (this is where all the rumors came from), I don’t think there’s a chance that could have had an effect on that blowout.

Again, this all assumes this was a one-sided decision. Reading through the comments for the above FCD Blog post and the LA reaction, I seem to be in the minority, so did I miss anything?

[Edit: Buzz agrees with me]