LOL!!! Dude in this thread alone the idea of Terry was dropped. Believe me it has crossed peoples minds as a legitimate move. And just because you think it's insane doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. I mean hell since we keep throwing out not gonna happen anytime soon names. How about a defender that isn't hated. If Carles Puyol wanted to play in MLS you can't tell me with a straight face that some team wouldn't pay that man DP money to play in the USA. After all this is the same league that paid Rafa Marquez DP money least we forget. Omar elsewhere as a DP for far less DP pay than it would take to sign any of the aforementioned would be a no brainer. My point was that you and others are complaining that Omar is a bad DP and getting a better DP like Bradley should have been our move. I am saying that this talk orignated because the last guy that promised to get us a star ended up at another organization making it happen while LA's front office appeared to sign Omar at the last minute and as a last resort to keep him on the roster. Thus the Bradley name drop happens twice as often here and elsewhere with much more venom to it for not having him instead. But the Fact is Nobody even cared about him being here until it was announced he was in TFC. We were looking for a DP but Nobody, not one single person even dropped his name as a cool what if, and if the front office wanted to know if he was willing to come back to the league, why not ask him? Why not even consider it? No reason not to even try. Unless he wasn't what we were after in the first place. Remember good old Timmy said we were after someone that could win the Latin crowd and boss the midfield since the Lampard move failed. Thus Ronaldinho, Gio Dos Santos and Kaka were the guys we tried for. We didn't want Bradley. We never did. But God forbid anybody other than LA get him though. Because the first time the guy we did sign plays poorly he is gonna catch all kinds of unfair comparison hell.
1. Yeah, Marquez worked out great. Also mostly played midfield. 2. I don't care what people say, Terry as a DP is insane. Way worse decision than Omar as a DP. 3. We didn't kick around Eden Hazard or Oscar either as DP's. Because they weren't available. Same status as Bradley seemed to be. Every assumed he was determined to make his mark in Europe. Lack of speculation has nothing to do with not wanting him.
a 1) It doesn't matter that he was in the midfield from time to time the fact of the matter is he played centerback and was a dp and somebody paid him to do it for more than one year. 2) I don't disagree about Terry. My point is that Omar as a DP is a less crazy idea to some teams who would consider it a legit move. Proven by the fact that ITS HAPPENING AS WE SPEAK LOL! 3)Players make statements all the time to not upset their contract situations. The fact is that if a team wants a guy they call their agents and ask if their client would be willing to play for them and how much would it take. The point is LA didn't do that.
Bradley is costing Toronto $50 million over 5 years. To put that in perspective that is more LA will have paid Landon for the entirety of his 12 year career with the Galaxy when his current contract is up and it’s more than Beckham’s salary for his 6 years in LA. I’m sure had we signed Bradley I’d be justifying the cost looking at his age, but from the other side of the fence $50 million is approaching top-four money in the EPL/LL/BL/SA and he has very little marketing pull – certainly less than a Beckham or Donovan or even Keane.
In re 1: No, he primarily played midfield for them and filled in at CB from time to time. They signed him to play midfield. In re 2: That's a good point. In re 3: No, we have no clue what LA did. But that is beside the point, as the point made was that no on on HERE was calling for Bradley before he came to MLS. And that was because everyone was SHOCKED he came back to MLS, and that didn't seem to be his career path.
I agree, Bradley is very expensive. Two counterpoints: First, with a DP, it's the same cap hit whatever you pay over that. Second, I brought up Bradley to show the point that there ARE always players available and you don't have to make panic signings to fill your spots. Look, from a business perspective, one of the worst things you can do is tie up your resources and options on bad deals or mediocre deals. It means that you have no flexibility to go after what you really want. That's why all these "there was no on better" arguments have no traction with me. You'll never know what was out there if you take a "meh" option because you're worried about not getting any takers. That's how you end up being The Minnesota Timberwolves of MLS. Just make sure you use your max slots on guys who are almost good enough to be DP's.
1. Are you seriously denying that he was a Centerback DP in MLS? His ability to play dual positions is besides the point. The fact is you can legitimately say that he was both a centerback and a midfielder and it wouldn't make either claim less true. 3. Ok then so you do indeed agree with my point that noone cared for Bradley until he came back. And whether or not he was approached by the team doesn't matter as again no LA fans cared until he ended up elsewhere in MLS.
1. I remember reading that Backe wanted to play him in the midfield when he was signed. Could be wrong about that, but I thought that was out there from the beginning that they wanted him to play midfield. 3. No, that is absolutely not what I said. =) I will repeat for the 4th time: No one was agitating for him because he seemed 100% completely unavailable. Again for the 4th time: if he was even RUMORED to be coming back to MLS, you'd have had fans all across the league, including us here, and including me, saying we need to make a play for him. This is not rocket science. No one is advocating we sign Adnan Januzaj (or however you spell him) from ManU because he is not available. No one is saying we should sign Luis Suarez--he is not available to us. That is how it works. If you want to say that every player that has never had a rumor on these boards is thereby "not wanted by the fans until someone else got him" then go ahead, feel free.
You know what? I am tired of fighting this fight and being the voice in the wilderness. I give up. I am done. Omar's contract was great. He's totally worth it. We had to sew him up while we could. We sent a great message to the rest of the league. Our team is fine, we're on the right track, our midfield is the best in MLS, let's not mess with it, DP contracts for central defenders is going to be the wave of the future, in fact it's here now because look NYRB already did it, we can sell Omar whenever we need, he's going to have a great WC and shut down the German and Portuguese attacks, and if that doesn't work, MLS will totally give us another DP slot, and it doesn't matter anyway because there isn't a single player out there who would upgrade our midfield anyway, so really, I don't even know what I've been talking about this whole time. I give up. Have at it everyone.
I think at least some of the people debating with you are using selective hindsight. I was OK with the signing at the time, but now wish we had an open DP slot because Omar hasn't remained (or grown) quite as dominant as expected. But he still could in the near future. It was the sensible choice at the time. The most important points I think you raise is that we had to sign him or lose him, and we can still always sell him to open up the 3rd DP slot if we really want to.
Hey, just checking---you got that my post was a sarcastic throwing-up my hands and walking away from an argument that will never be won by either side, right?
Sort of... I guess... To be honest, I sort of lost track of who was saying what but based on your post that everyone except for you must be on the anti-Omar as DP bandwagon, and just thought I would throw out my 2 cents...
Cool, no worries. =) I'm the guy you disagree with. I won't re-argue, except to say that it's not hindsight bias. I wrote extensively on why it was a bad idea at the time. It's all there in the threads. You may thing I'm wrong and an idiot, but at least I'm a consistent idiot.
The thing about his cost wasn’t the cap hit, it was to illustrate it’s way outside of the Galaxy’s MO to pay massive transfer fees or disproportionately large transfer fees. I believe Keane was the costliest transfer fee $5 million – and all due respect to Bradley, but he’s no Robbie Keane. I’d really rather not become known as an organization that overpays for players. As for tying up resources, you’re right it has tied the Galaxy’s hands in what I think will be a pretty active transfer window. The alternative though was allowing Omar to leave on a free transfer, having to find a replacement (which I’m sure you’ll agree filling the center back role has been one of Bruce’s major failures in LA) and finding a designated player that fits within the financial model of the Galaxy. I’m going to be very curious to see what happens next in that department – will LA start splashing silly money like SSFC and TFC or retain a more measured approach. Last point at least 2 of the 3 DPs for TFC are on 5 year contracts, their hands are just as tied as ours and for a lot longer (none of our DPs are contracted for more than 3 years). Their disproportionately large salaries will make them difficult trade targets within the league, impossible to loan out under current DP rules and while Bradley at 26 definitely has a 5 years in him, Defoe was has become increasingly injury prone as he’s aged. $5 million a year might not look so shiny in 2016 with 2 years still to go on his contract.
It's not like that. You've made fine points; some of us see it a little differently (and even that can change over time). I personally see the DP slot as a double-edge sword, something that's a harder to get right than not. But even in the best case scenario, DPs tie your hands a little. You have to craft your team around them, which can be tactically limiting; we're lucky to have had a player like LD, who is not only super-versatile, but also willing and disciplined enough to play any role the team needs...and yet we were still quite tactically inflexible when teams adapted to the Keanovan dynamic. Similarly, a team built around DPs is in serious trouble when any of them are not available, injured or out of form. Who did we slot in for Landon when he was off for NT duty, Villareal? A ginormous step down. The opportunity cost of benching a DP is often seen as too high, even when they're not in form, which also limits what a manager can do tactically or even how they manage personnel. These are all reasons I prefer a balanced approach, but I tend to be fairly risk averse, more so than Bruce probably. So that's simply my viewpoint. As you say, I'm not sure there's a "right" one.
Don't forget Julio Cesar as well Lieweke is phenominal at what he does and I am still pissed AEG got rid of him
people never thought about Bradley because we figured he was succeeding in Europe and there to stay for a while. A guy like Lieweke had the audacity to chase down players to convince them to come to MLS, not to hold hands with guys that already said they were interested. That's how he made the Beckham move happen and that's why we still miss him.
He was mostly going to be their CB next to Tim Ream and mid game become their deeplying playmaker. So Backe wanted him to drift between positions the way he did for Barcelona. So again yes he was a midfielder, but he was also a centerback. Calm down. Go back and read the thread. I was initially answering someone else's question in the first place who asked why was Bradley's name being mentioned all the time. I gave the history on the matter and that history is the truth from all accounts available to the public. A player's availablity has everything to do with their contract and/or desire to play for the parties interested. Yes if a rumor about whether Bradley (or anybody else for that matter) got started that said player wanted to join MLS then yes everyone would have thought "ohh yeah we should sign him." I never said otherwise. All I basically said was that when he practically out of the blue ended up at TFC it wasnt the shock alone of the move that made the guy's name drop happen repeatedly. It was the fact that Tim L. helped sign him. The same guy who left LA before signing us another DP. And this fact compounded by the fact that we didn't get Frank Lampard and that such a big name in Bradley ended up in TFC when LA instead signed a lesser name in Omar, it made the Omar signing even more bitter sounding especially since nobody even considered the idea of the guy like Bradley in the first place. We are not in total disagreement here. Really? What are we kids? I don't give a crap whether you like Omar or the deal or not. Nobody said that you had no choice but to agree with anybody else geez. Anyway let's just agree to disagree and move on.
To be fair offering to more than treble someone’s salary goes a long, long way in convincing someone to join your organization. You’re probably not going to pry a Gareth Bale away from Madrid on salary alone, but the likes of Bradley (unlikely to ever see that kind of money) and Defoe & Dempsey (last big contract) it’s a heavily weighted factor.
This is all true. He was doing well, but he was on the bench a lot also. But man who would have thought to try to make him an offer he couldn't refuse. Tim L. would've that's who. But then we look at the current LA front office and we didn't even think to go to that level. Hince the extra anger of the Omar signing. This is more of an indeiment of them then anything. I understand why they did what they did and even agree with it but I also see how it will piss people off and put Omar's deal in a no win spot opinion wise.
I think Toronto got Bradley to do something they've been aching for, for a long time: win. And they were willing to pay for it. Being chamipons over here, we don't need to shell out as much dough. They are desperate. It showed.
Which is why uncle Phil now owns an NFL team and construction of Farmers Field is almost complete.... Fact is, Tim royally screwed up something MUCH more important to AEG than Galaxy can ever be, and he had to go. I am not satisfied that the right person is in place at LAG to replace him, but he is replaceable.
On the contrary. You were the one that is being proven right! I'm the one that is seeing it more as a bad deal as time passes... my hat off to you. Now, the Magee trade... I called that one right. Horrible when it happened, still horrible!!
Being chamipons, we can instead afford to trade one of our best players for next to nothing, and let our best DP retire and not replace him with anything. Yaaa, that really worked.... This is exactly why we threw away our chance for a 3peat.