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Dynamo land Cummings from Rapids

By IVES GALARCEP

The Houston Dynamo went into the off-season needing a speed option at forward after losing Calen Carr to a torn ACL and not only did they get one, they managed to land one of the best in Major League Soccer.

The Dynamo acquired Jamaican forward Omar Cummings from the Colorado Rapids in exchange for Nathan Sturgis and allocation money, the teams announced on Sunday.

The Dynamo land a forward in Cummings who has endured two injury-hit seasons with the Rapids that have seen his production diminished. After managing just three goals in 2011, the 30-year-old Jamaican international produced six goals and two assists in 2012.

Houston will be banking on Cummings benefiting from playing in a dangerous Houston attack featuring midfield aces Brad Davis and Oscar Boniek Garcia, as well as breakout forward Will Bruin.

For the Rapids, the deal lands them a versatile player in Sturgis along with allocation money the club can use to work the international market for defensive help. Colorado currently holds the No. 6 pick in the 2013 MLS Draft and will be expected to select a forward with that pick. The Rapids parted ways with Conor Casey earlier in the off-season, but added a lead forward in Edson Buddle from the LA Galaxy.

What do you think of this trade? Think the Dynamo stole Cummings? Giving the edge to Colorado for dealing a player who might be on the decline?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. Calen Carr’s career was finished according to Chicago fans when he came here. He was done and a has been.

    Wait until see you see what the Dom gets out of Omar Cummings this next few years. I am not saying 2010, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see 8-10 goals and double digit assists per year.

    No coach in the history of the league has done more with less, and it isn’t even close. Kinnear is the greatest coach this league has seen. Arena gets all the credit, but has been gift-wrapped ready-made, “star studded” teams with the largest payrolls. Kinnear does it without the superstars, and does it better than anyone else. Arena is a good coach, but I would be interested in seeing Beckham and Donovan gone, and see if the Galaxy can come close to the output of last year.

    Cummings is going to have the best 4 seasons of his career in Houston, put that **** on paper!

    Reply
    • Ricardo Clark, Brian Ching, Stuart Holden, Dwayne DeRosario all were stars and have played for Kinnear. To say he hasn’t been blessed with talent on his squads is misleading. I get everyone hates the galaxy, but give credit where it’s due. Bruce Arena took over when we were a laughing stock. He not only manages players beautifully, but he drafts better than any other coach in this leauge. He brings in players like Todd dunivant and mike Magee to be key role players, grooms young players like Villarreal and Mcbean on top of scouting foreign talent like sarvas and juni. So with all due respect to Kinnear, arena is a much better coach.

      Reply
      • All four players you named were nobodies before they played on Kinnear’s team. These names were far from household names and a couple of them had played in the 2nd div. The Galaxy’s best players were well known before they played for Arena.

        I didn’t say Arena was a bad coach, in fact I said the opposite. He manages players very well, but in my opinion Kinnear is the better coach where Arena might be the better manager. Kinnear gets average players to play at levels they had never reached through team synergy.

        The proof is in the pudding… The amount of Kinnear’s “guys” who have gone from role players to stars or playing top flight football in Europe is astounding when compared with other MLS teams.

        Cameron, Holden, Clark (until he came back), DeRo (a DP now), Davis, Ching, Mullan, Kamara, Onstadt, and to a lesser extent Wondolowski (prob a DP soon) and Donovan (oh yes, he played for Dom, who was an assistant and then a head coach for a yr, during his resurgence in MLS after a dying Bundesliga career)… He holds 2 of the 4 home undefeated records

      • True, Bruce Arena took over the Galaxy when they weren’t doing so hot. He fired damn near everyone except Landon Donavan, had AEG and some other companies to invest over $300 million and hired a new roster, David Beckham, and Robbie Keane.

        I bet if Dom Kinnear got $300 million to get Messi, Kaka, and Ronaldo along with some other talent that Houston would get referee favoritism too. LOL!

        Why did David Beckham not get in trouble when he kicked that kid in the face with the ball? Why in the final did Beckham throw his body into Taylor who didn’t even have the ball and plow him over and receive no call??

  2. Damnit… As a Rapids fan I am starting to feel like the Cleveland Indians fans in Major League… We’re going to watch our team take the field and say “Who are these bums?.”
    Seriously…

    Reply
  3. Not a bad trade at all for the Rapids. Cummings looked lazy and disinterested for most of last year. It was time for him to go. Lots of Rapids fans grousing about this trade on the team’s Facebook page, but this isn’t 2010 anymore. Guys like Casey and Cummings had outlived their usefulness on the team and are on the decline. Sturgis doesn’t add much to Colorado’s lineup, but having the allocation money does because it doesn’t look like they’re done wheeling and dealing. Kudos for once to the Rapids front office for being proactive and making some moves.

    Reply
    • As a person who loves to hate on the Crapids who are they building the team around? Maybe it was time for Casey and Cummings to go. But who is there to lead? Please fill me in?

      Reply
      • They aren’t building a system around players they are getting players to fit a system, so the question of who they are “building around” isn’t the right question, I don’t think.

        As far as leadership goes, which I think is a good question to ask: you’ve got Moor and Mastroeni, Larentowicz also has a lot of gravitas in the dressing room. Pickens as well. Hendry Thomas certainly has shown leadership capabilities.

        The Rapids are also scouting younger players to come in and build the team. They’re divorcing themselves from the “win now” mentality of people like Dom Kinnear and trying something different. We’ll see how it plays out, but I think the Rapids are going to be fine for leadership in the forseeable future.

  4. I like Omar, and Dom seems to appreciate the Jamaican internationals, but this is hopefully not the end of the search for a player to help the Dynamo score more goals.

    Reply
  5. At first I thought great for Houston, bad for Colorado. But it is really a win win for both teams. Houston has an aging Ching, and Kandji and Weaver are possibly leaving as free agents. Now with Carr out with a torn ACL they really need some depth and to get a speedy forward to partner with Bruin. Even if Cummings is only healthy for half the season, a healthy Cummings is the exact kind of player they want and need. Worth the risk, although Houston still need to sort out Weaver and Kandji before preseason starts. Re-sign them or replace them.

    Colorado gets some much needed cap space to rebuild. At 30 and coming off two injury plagued years, it is hard to argue that they offloaded a once really good player who is on the decline. They freed up some salary and got some allocation money to help buy another striker. And, if they get a decent pick out of the draft, I’d say Colorado did pretty good too.

    Reply
    • Carr is sooooooooo mediocre and now knee-op’d (before that he spent the majority of his first year here concussed) that referring to Cummings — a Jamaican international STARTER who scores more goals in a bad year than Carr in a good one — as “depth” blows my mind,

      He was an all star just two years ago! 14 goals that year, 8 G 12 A the year before that. There is a health risk but considering in an off year last year with an off team he had 6 goals, when the internal options are playing Ching one more year (5 goals), praying for Carr (4 goals), or re-signing Kandji (4 goals) or Weaver (0 goals), this is an upgrade. The Dynamo, strong as they are, need a top-level striker option other than Bruin to scare a team like LA Galaxy.

      If we’re content finishing second, we keep muddling by at forward. The fanboys can throw a parade for Calen Carr and 4-5 goals a year. This is a risky move on another injured Colorado player (Clark, Kandji…), but it at least is also a sign we understand in the biggest playoff games we need more firepower. [We also need more CB mobility, which may or may not be Brunner, and we could use a real CAM instead of multiple CDMs, so that we can create more from the run of play a la DeRo.]

      I’d say sign Kandji (with Carr in reserve) as Cummings’ back up, you still have Bruin, cut Weaver, retire Ching, sign a backup target who will produce. Weaver had no goals in MLS whatsoever, that’s indefensible even at a paycut.

      Reply
      • Weaver had 11 goals in the reserve league. He’s pointless in a 4-3-3 but in a 4-4-2 with Cummings he might not be that bad. Last player to get that many goals in the reserve league was Wondo. We know how that turned out. Its not bad to keep a second “hold up” striker, after all Bruin will be taking a beating this year being more of a marked-man.

      • I think it’s very hopeful to suggest that a player with a best MLS season of 4 goals is ready to bust out. The Wondo comparison, well, in theory we could say that any player with a couple goals is prepared to be the league’s leading scorer. The likelihood of it actually occurring?????? Not much.

        FWIW, Wondo never played more than 307 minutes in a Houston season. There’s an argument to be made he needed some consistent use to thrive. In comparison, Weaver started 16 games in 2011. He managed 4 goals. He was given a proper runout and stunk. I’d particularly note that after a few months of struggling with Weaver and Ching and a young Bruin we felt compelled to sign Carlos Costly.

        I mean, you get down to it, my basic thought is he’s immobile, no history of producing in MLS, pretty expensive for a disused striker at $100K, and Houston has gone to his well for a few years and we’ve not won the Big One with him. Cummings is in the spirit of “we need to get better”; Weaver is not. If Kinnear just basically runs out the same players next year it won’t be better than 2nd again.

    • Colorado got ripped off, plain and simple. They get almost nothing in return for a still very dangerous striker. The draft pick is something they already had…and they’ll probably wind up with a GenAd player, so they won’t even get a cap hit for drafting a good player. The allocation money might help lad some some new international talent, but unless it’s a lot of money, I think this trade is skewed heavily towards Houston’s favor. For getting to CCL, Houston had a little extra allocation money to throw around, and they’ve put it to good use. Remains to be seen what this does for the Rapids.

      Reply
      • I think the teams are working on different timescales. Colorado is looking a few years down the road and in that perspective Cummings may have peaked and may be injury prone. I don’t think they think they can win before he’d be too old. And they can lay yet another broken player on our doorstep…..it’s questionable what Clark and Kandji did for us and they got rid of two ACL-injured guys.

        Whereas, Houston sees itself as on the edge of its window and wants to try and win now. So they’ll dice roll on Cummings’ health and production. Right mix of strikers and luck and maybe we’ve got a speed striker to pair with Bruin. Bad luck and by 2014 this team will be certainly too old. Long list of people will turn 30 in the next two years. In fact, there’s a chance the team will be just plain too old next season, already.

      • Anyone who thinks the Rapids got ripped, hasn’t watched the rapids play for 2 years. Omar just isn’t the same player he was 2 years ago. Hell Omar wasn’t that Omar Cummings 3 years ago. He had one really good year and that was it. He certainly needs a change of scenery and if he regains his form(which I would wager a large sum of money that he won’t) then you can say Colorado got ripped, otherwise you are misinformed.

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