Bogert and Doyle on Rydström and the Crew
I didn't see either of these pieces posted here so I wanted to share them because I think they both have some revealing information
The biggest takeaway from Doyle's blog is that this wasn't just the team not giving Rydstrom enough time as has been speculated, but that he thought the team was "soft" which is interesting considering how good we recently were. Sure, no two coaches are going to see their squad exactly the same, but how did we get it so wrong hiring this guy that he had such a low opinion of the squad he was taking over?
Bogert's piece was interesting for me because of the quotes from Tall. Usually when a coach is fired there's a lot of talk about getting to work right away on a coaching search to get the right candidate. He doesn't say any of that, and instead talks about backing Courtois and wanting to give him a chance to succeed. He also says if Laurent wasn't here they probably would've waited longer to fire Rydstrom. It feels like the plan is to hope Courtois is good enough that they can eventually just drop the interim tag, and that they're not going to be looking for a new coach. But that begs the question of why didn't they just hire *him* in the first place?
Finally, the Nancy question comes up.
I recommend reading both of these because they fill in some of the blanks that were being speculated on here yesterday