D.C. United was forced by delays and cancellations to wait six hours at Columbus airport Monday, the morning after its MLS season had ended in Crew Stadium. This, writes Steven Goff, seemed a fitting end to a bad year, with the team finally making it home to D.C. via New York, the city whose team reached the playoffs in its stead. All that waiting around gave them plenty of time to ponder the long winter ahead.
"The club already has begun reflecting on what went so terribly wrong and whether another roster overhaul, as well as a coaching change, is necessary," writes Goff. General Manager Dave Kasper said the teams wants to "decompress the next couple weeks, talk about it and make all those decisions."
The post-mortem will look at how the side lost exactly half of its regular-season games, why it failed in all three international competitions it entered, and why none of its six offseason signings were in the team's starting lineup for that final game in Columbus.
"There were some disappointments," Kasper admitted of the new players. "They were all established players, but that doesn't always guarantee they are going to adapt and be successful." With the team having suffered so many injuries, he added, the club will also "take a hard look at our approach to fitness training and maintaining and preventing injuries."
"We had a lot of excuses, but at the end of the day, I don't think any of them are that good," said defender Devon McTavish. "There is not really one thing that we can point to and say we need to fix. When you lose as many games as we did, obviously something is wrong."
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