Jeff Cunningham had reasons to smile late in 2009. (Getty Images)

This season was certainly a tale of two halves for FC Dallas. Things got off to the rockiest of starts that saw fans across North Texas grew more upset with the way things were being run in Frisco while the end of the year sure seemed to show things could actually be headed into the right direction for 2010.

Yes the rocky start to the season was mostly due to the club’s inability to market the team properly to the fans and let’s face it the on-field product just plain stunk. The club didn’t win their third game until the end of June.

But July brought a change, Kenny Cooper bolted town and somehow from there things picked up. It also seemed like the less General Manager Michael Hitchcock was in charge of moves the better the team got. Schellas Hyndman started trading around for his kind of guys. He sent Marcelo Saragosa packing for Atiba Harris. Later on he moved Drew Moor for Ugo Ihemelu. And at the same time he also picked up Heath Pearce on allocation and Kyle Davies from Real Salt Lake the defense started to take shape.

What was even more important than those moves were ones that happened before the season and even one from the season before started to actually cash in. Dave van den Burgh who came over from New York started producing just as he was expected. David Ferreira gave fans a reason to like the partnership with Brazilian club CAP once again as he started to link up with a rejuvenated Jeff Cunningham.

Yes Cunningham certainly enjoyed the ladder half of 2009. It was amazing to see him score 16 of his league leading 17 goals after Kenny Cooper left town for Germany.

While the club failed to reach the post season on the final day of the season with the loss to Seattle the club did provide reason to the fans in Dallas that this club has the ability to really turn things around for 2010.

What Went Right In 2009:
Once Hyndman got his guys in the lineup his defense started to actually defense Dario Sala’s goal. They went from giving up a couple goals a game to shutting teams out when it mattered most. Thanks to Cunningham in the second half of the season the team found it’s offense again. Hyndman started to prove at the end of the year that he may be worth it as a coach after all.

What Went Wrong In 2009:
Despite the nice finish to the season 2009 was still a bit of a disaster for this club. It wasn’t just the on the field issues early on with this club it was the front office digging a deeper hole with the fans of this club, especially the really loyal fan base that has been with the team from the beginning. Decisions not to market the club or improve existing issues within the club left a lot of people this year in Dallas with a bad taste in their mouths. But the decision to let Michael Hitchcock go after the season was certainly a good step for the club. But again it won’t be enough unless the owners start caring a little more about this club and the city it’s in.

What’s Next:
For this club coming up will be trimming the fat of this club. Pablo Richetti has already been shown the door and a trade will most likely come once the window that kind of thing opens again after MLS Cup. Look for the Andre Rocha loan to end and he be sent back to Brazil as well as a few other cuts that made no sense to make in the first place (Daniel Torres, Steve Purdy, etc.). From there I believe the club is looking to re-sign Dax McCarty. At the end of the day this club just needs to continue to build on those solid young players they have and add one or two veteran players to fill the gaps. I really believe this club is a player or two away from really, and I mean really making a run for things in 2010.

It’s weird to say that its been another quick week for me here but it has, this week has flown by. Tonight’s links and thoughts may end up being a quickie. I had some things planned for the day and for the week for that matter but I never got around to some of them. Blame it on time getting away from me and my normal day job. Whatever it is I just didn’t get around to a couple things. No biggie as some of them centered around the season ending awards and the playoff scenarios, which both are likely to change after this weekend anyways.

No tonight I wanted to quickly touch base on a couple interesting links. One surrounds the on-going USL issue, one is about the LA Galaxy’s post season tour in Europe and the last is about FC Dallas.

First up the USL. Apparently some folks are telling the angry USL owners to just suck it up and deal with what it happening. With the USL final this weekend players from both Montreal and Vancouver will more than likely be getting the same letter that a couple other club’s players got recently telling them they are no longer under contract with the USL. A nice parting gift especially to the club that actually wins the league (note Montreal is up 3-2 over Vancouver going into the final leg).

The Whitecaps and Impact are part of the Team Owners Association (TOA), a group of franchises, plus expansion Tampa, on-hiatus Atlanta and prospective St. Louis that are upset with the new USL ownership. Yes that is sugar-coating it but by now if have been keeping up you know the two sides just don’t get along.

Now apparently the new USL management is just telling the TOA to just suck it up and accept defeat.

You can bet after this weekend’s final there will be a load of stories that come out of the USL front office surrounding talks with the TOA. Okay, well it may be the other way around. Its the TOA who has been talking not the USL. Still whoever does talk next week will sure let us in on what is going on. I still believe that the USL and the TOA will come to terms before long. And yes I just don’t buy that MLS-2 stuff that people have been saying the TOA would turn into. They just don’t have the teams to do it unless a couple other USL clubs joined in with them, which probably won’t happen.

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I don’t have too much going into tonight’s Evening Links and Thoughts. I mainly wanted to touch base with the current coaching hot seat situation in Major League Soccer. I don’t expect any coaching changes to take place until at least after the regular season finishes here. Something crazy would have to take place for any of these teams below to even think about making a switch with so few games left.

I’ve gone back and forth on a couple coaches, which is why they may appear on the fringe of this list. But for the most part the top guys on this list are there for a reason and have a lot of work to do to get out of the hot seat.

Two clubs will are searching for a coach as we speak right now. Both New York and Kansas City have interim coaches and are probably keeping a very close eye on what’s going on around the league right now.

With that said here is what should be the final WVH Coaching Hot Seat of the year. The order is really just a list, I think each are just as much under fire as the next here.

Chris Cummins (Toronto FC): The only thing that may save this guy is a trip to the playoffs. With a workable schedule it is possible but any stumbles on the way only put more fuel on this man’s fire. This club has the talent but under Cummins they really haven’t progressed any more than they did under John Carver.

Tom Soehn (DC United): Again playoffs will save this guy but I still kind of wonder if that will even be enough at times. It could be safe to say that he will need to guide his team to the conference finals to really be safe from a pink slip here. This club has so much talent yet lacks any consistency to get solid results game after game.

Frank Yallop (San Jose Earthquakes): Yallop nearly fell in the fringe category for me but at the end of the day I just don’t know if this is working out in San Jose. It could also have something to do with the partnership with John Doyle in picking out talent that isn’t working out there. I don’t see a change coming this winter unless this club really bottoms out to finish the season. Look for his butt to remain hot going into next year. Year three is going to decide a lot in San Jose.

Jason Kreis (Real Salt Lake): Another guy that needs a playoff run to save his job. I still wish he would have become FC Dallas’ coach instead of RSL’s a couple years ago but it is what it is down here in Dallas. But back to Kreis and his job. Playoffs will certainly be enough to keep him around for another year but anything less and I have to believe he will be out of the door by the end of the calendar year.

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Somehow this man still has a job. (Getty Images)

In light of Kansas City dismissing manager Curt Onalfo yesterday evening, I figured it was high time I updated my coaching hot seat look once again. Funny thing was yesterday I was already set to work on this and got caught up in something else, by the time I went back into it last night the news came down about Onalfo.

And yes, if you are wondering he was going to be on the list.

But looking at the rest of the sack race here I figure it is easier to break things up into a couple different groups. See we all figure coaches with clubs near the bottom of the table need sacked but in the case of a couple teams, that just won’t happen, at least not this season. In other cases there are a couple coaches that should feel some heat based on how their clubs are doing and based on pre-season expectations placed on them. Lastly, there is a group that just needs to go and saying that it really could be just a matter of time.

As always if you think I am missing on any coach below or think I need to add another to a certain group, feel free to post below. Continue Reading…

Kudos to Buzz Carrick for getting these quotes from FC Dallas manager Schellas Hyndman. Many questioned Dallas’s approach to yesterday’s allocation of Danny Szetela since the Texan side had the top allocation spot in the league’s order.

As we all know Dallas passed on Szetela instead of even working out a deal with DC United, the club who had been reportedly very interested in the 22-year old midfielder before being allocated. Dallas didn’t pick Szetela to get a trade with DC for anything and in return kept their top spot and stayed empty-handed in many folks’ eyes.

The passive nature of the non-selection questioned many but Hyndman did have his reasons.

Sure.  We had the #1 allocation spot, so when Danny [Szetela] became available, this was probably about two weeks ago, we thought it through quite well and made a decision today that he’s a very good player but it’s probably not in our most immediate needs.  We though that it may be better for us not to take him.  It may be something else may come down the road.

I don’t know… I hate to play games like that.  A lot of people may say it’s the way to do it.  But what happens if DC doesn’t come after him?  And what happens if we’re in a situation where we have another central midfielder?  We’re gonna have to let somebody go off the roster.

And not giving information away till it’s done, but we have other things that we’ve been planning.  It might upset that whole process.

I know Carrick was pretty upset at Dallas for passing on the midfielder. Couldn’t blame him in the least bit. But as we’ve seen in the past out of this club you could nearly trade anything with them for a box of Oreo’s and they’d be satisfied.

I still hold a belief that Dallas will not use their allocation spot at all this year and in return lost the positioning next year when Philadelphia enters the league.

Its nearly time to call it a day on the Juan Carlos Osorio experiment in the Big Apple. (Getty Images)

A few of you have asked me lately when I was going to write about the good ol’ MLS coaching hot seat again. Last season I updated it pretty regularly during the year since there was plenty of bad coaching to discuss. Thing is I wanted to wait a while this season so we could get a better measure of which coaches were going to be good and which were going to have a seat that was a little warm.

First and foremost I’d like to say that in most situations I am not a fire the coach kind of guy in the middle of the season. I think most of the time you can wait the course and allow the season to do the work for you before you can a guy or not. Thing is soccer just like most sports (and life for that matter) isn’t always the case. Coaches either resign on their own before getting canned or management finally says to hell with them and sends them the pink slip.

So this year I gave most coaches at least 11 or 12 games to let me see if they were good or not for the job. Right now I’d say a few guys are feeling the heat just a bit. Now again before you see your coach and think there is no chance in hell he will get fired, sit back and be reasonable about it. I have no emotional connection to any of these clubs or coaches so it makes this a lot easier to see after watching 12 weeks worth of games. Just be reasonable-objective guy (or gal) here and not super-emotional guy/gal. I know in most situations these guys aren’t gonna get canned anytime soon.

Also, if you think for some reason I missed a coach on this list, please list him below with your reasons.

MLS Coaching Hot Seat: 2009 Edition:

1. Juan Carlos Osorio (New York): Right now according to SportsClubStats.com (great site by the way), the Red Bulls have a 0.5 percent chance of making the playoffs this season. After 14 games there is really little hope that this club will turn it around and a big reason why is not just the coaching from Osorio but the talent HE brought in for this season hasn’t paid off. I think over the last two seasons we have seen exactly how overrated of a coach he really is. While canning him now won’t help the club on the field it will help them out in terms of talent brought in this summer since he wouldn’t be making the moves. The more talent he brings in the less successful this club has been. Continue Reading…

Conor Casey and Colin Clark lead Colorado over NY. (Getty Images)

I guess one could say things are getting a little more interesting here. Summer is here which means clubs either distance themselves from others or some start to figure things out and turn things around for their season. I think after week 11 we saw some of that with some clubs flipping a switch and making things even tigher in the standings.

Honestly it was an interesting week as a whole. The midweek games gave us a preview that it would be an interesting weekend. Loads of goals and loads of cards too carried over from the midweek to the weekend. And of course some more draws happened along the way but not as in other previous weeks. I think the gulf in class is starting to show between some clubs and we are seeing that it is a very long season.

While some clubs near the bottom of the standings got wins this weekend for the first time in months, I’m not about to jump on board and say they’ve all gotten things figured out here. Some may be getting close but others are still a good bit away from being where most thought they’d be. One thing is certain though I believe we will see a very tight race for those final playoff spots this season. Sure a couple clubs will see themselves out of contention by the All-Star break but I do believe the competition for those final spots is where the league wants and needs them to be here.

As for the games this weekend, I did write down a few notes from each. Continue Reading…