If his first signing is Ciani - - ?? Anyway Sigi and Dom are our only hope right now. Let's hope they can construct a team (again) from almost nothing. Kind of fun for them, really.
I think the Ciani acquisition was in motion before Sigi came here. LAG approved JVD leaving and Ciani was said to be his replacement a while ago.
Well, I saw Phil Anschutz at the game last night, so he had a first-person view of what the team has become under current management....
Ciani is nothing more than a stopgap to provide temporary cover for past mistakes and unfortunate injuries. Let's see how he works out after a few games before we condemn the move as a failure. He wouldn't be the first foreign player to find it takes some time to learn the quirks of the league. Or it could be another screw up.
I wonder how they deal with the idea Gio was brought in to increase attendance in one demographic against an 11% overall drop? Also I wonder if the marketing department are feeling quite so self-satisfied with then results of their work these days. They took a whole lot of credit for attendance when things were going well.
I expect that Lieweke had a large amount of input on the DP or "glitzy" purchases when he was at AEG, in part because of marketing stipulations with the TV contract and other sponsorship deals. It may be that Dan Beckerman has assumed that role now. It doesn't account for all sorts of other roster decisions, though, which fall below that level, including TAM purchases with league money. It's just that DPs require going all the way to the top to get approval to spend the extra money from Anschutz's own pocket while everything else is spending MLS bucks. So, my guess is that the AEG guys sometimes originate the DP ideas, in part because agents have connections with them from other dealings, and then AEG falls in love with them from a marketing perspective and demands they do something.
AEG does own other soccer clubs. I would like to think SOMEBODY in that empire has a handle on player quality and not just following some agent's hype.
Opening up my fortune cookie the other day it read something like "thoughts lead to actions and about wishes come true" Well my Thoughts are to trade the Dos Bros to the LAFC, Get Rid of Pedro, Ciani, Jones.. etc and if my wish were to come true keep Ali and Boa and Lleget the rest are fair game for draft....
I don't know about justification, but it's easily explainable. The vast majority of Latino immigrants are very hard working people... Something that Gio is pretty obviously NOT!
With regard to that extended, closed-door, "playing for their jobs" meeting he had postgame with the players, it had to happen. I think one aspect specifically, is for justification to cut/sell/trade Gyasi. The decision to get rid of a hometown favorite isn't easy and some fans, especially the young ones will be very disappointed. The team is putting it on Gyasi. If the meeting/message came from higher up than Sigi, which it probably did considering the authority needed for those decisions, it's a nice move so that when/if it happens, the media can focus on results on the field instead of blaming the FO for getting rid of a fan favorite. Every players' performance in these last 6 games will serve as reason to cut or keep them.
I have a Mexican-American acquaintance who supports both USA and El Tri (sacrilege, I know, right?) and I asked his opinion about both Dos Santos joining the Galaxy. He pretty much said similarly to what you posted: Lazy, no work ethic, no hustle
If Gio were a wide player then his poor play would be costly -- but at least we could try to work around him. But to have our central attacking midfielder gumming up and/or killing our attacks is a problem that is almost impossible to work around. Add in the fact that he plays no defense and we are doubly screwed. Really wish we could get someone to take him off our hands. Is it possible to send him on loan and get him off the books?
Klein spoke a bit at a season ticket member mixer thing before the TFC game. a few takeaways i had: - they thought (or wanted to give him the shot, which i can live with) Gyasi would be the striker. - a lot of roster flexibility - only something like 7 players guaranteed next year. except at the most important spot (DP) where we have no flexibility. - if Zlatan came to MLS, it was us - robbie rogers injury during surgery a fluke - someone asked about gio and he said he needed to produce - pointed to his double digit goals/assists last year. apparently only the 4th LAG player to double up i both
Weak sauce. Gyasi was always a complementary striker not a primary one and had only produced more than 4 goals once. (Compare that to other strikers in the league!) Robbie Rogers injury was known before we released AJ. As far as Gio - I warned everyone that last season was a one off. He had a long history of not producing. You don't just ignore history and pick a players peak as their expected production for the following year. Plus he no longer had Keane around, a player who increased both the assist and goal numbers of players who played around him.
Hypothetically speaking, can we just cut Gio at the end of the year? I know he has a guaranteed contract, but could we then use the DP slot? I would think we could trade both Gio and Jonathon to a Mexican team and make most of our money back. Can they refuse a trade?
Sure, we can hypothetically cut Gio in the off-season with the "buyout one guaranteed contract" mechanism. It would cost us quite a bit of money but we could. You can't trade a player to a non-MLS team. Both clubs have to agree to the transfer fee (or a free transfer if applicable) and the player moving between clubs has to sign a new contract with the new club. If the player doesn't want to sign with the club interested, he doesn't have to. Think Freddy Adu when he just waited out his contract with Benfica because he knew he wouldn't get nearly as much if he moved to another club.
I’m going to call bullshit on this. Yeah, the nerve damage may very well have been a fluke, but nerve damage recovery is almost always a huge unknown. I’m not a doctor, but a couple of people who have had nerve damage have told me their prognosis after surgery was the nerves either repair themselves or they don’t. Doctors can do everything right and it still might not heal. Rogers’s surgery was in December; AJ was traded in January. If the front office knew Rogers had nerve damage their decision to trade AJ was negligent.
INJURY NEWS: Daniel Steres out with a Stress fracture in his back. Out 6-8 weeks.L2-4 transverse process fractures.#LAGalaxy— Corner Of The Galaxy (@GalaxyPodcast) September 19, 2017
Steres is one of those guys who was likely playing for his job. He won't have any more chances this season with that kind of injury. He still seems like cheap depth at this point, but some of the guys who brought him from the G2s and through to the senior squad have either already left or won't be around too much longer. So, he has to be worried how the decisionmakers for 2018 think about him.