Can you elaborate? How would you not take the most valuable available players and try to trade or use them to help your team? Some teams had to leave valuable players exposed and he took them.
for those following toronto closely... as Mo used the term "burning desire to win" yet? just curious. he was using that quite often when he f-d up the metros/red bulls.
I think everyone knew that Colorado had targeted Casey with their allocation and Mo took him not necessarily (but I dont know this, just a possiblity) to play for TFC but to try and get something additional out of COlorado for him. It wouldnt cost TFC anything - so why not try it? Of course, it worked in a manner of speaking - they get the rights to the 36th pick in the draft, who is a canadian and wont count against their international slots. Whether he ever plays for MLS is another thing altogether - the Rapids picked Dalby - and he may never play here either. All together - the Rapids didnt give up much extra, TFC didnt get much extra - but some of the front office types may have taken umbrage at this type of dealing - but you know what - (and this is coming from a Rapids fan) - most, if not all , of them would have done it as well as you never know what you can get it you dont try. jeff
Look, I was only kidding but TFC is only an expansion team, afterall, and unlike the Chicago Fire in 1998, who was agressive and went out and got some really good players, TFC has seemed completely uninterested in doing that during the off-season. That acted like an expansion team: just happy to be here. Now they are trading for this and trading for that and frankly its annoying. They played the role of expansion team. Accept it.
Saying he f'ed up the metrodonkeys implies that they had reached some modicum of success. He simply continued the cycle.
I disagree. TFC were fairly aggressive in pursuing what they deemed "good" players. They simply made the mistake of letting Mo Johnston's opinion be the determinant.
Connor can make $250k a year, and live with his Mom now (save even more money!) Seriously, I hope he finally can realize his potential at home. He's got a beautiful new stadium, his hometown support/family, a great crosser in the ball w/Cooke, a team on the upswing overall... Problem I see is: Brown and Nico are pretty good combo up front right now. Petersen is getting better too. Its no gimme for Casey, but then again- if he can't start w/that competition- he's reached his water level for sure.
1. In MLS, an expansion is probably going to be bad but doesn't have to be. The reality is that unlike an expansion team in other sports, a soccer team can recruit talent from the World. There are lots of reasons an expansion side would be bad but that result (dreck) isn't pre-ordained or set in stone. The Chivas and RSL examples are bad ones b/c both of those teams were ineptly run. Ellinger's personnel choices from the gitgo were dubious. When Chivas hired Rongen, those fans of teams that had experience knew that team was in for a long season. Both teams were overly cocky and underestimated how hard it would be. Instead, there was only 1 expansion team this year so TFC got a shot at a lot of legitimate MLS talent (and ironically, Mojo passed on most of it or traded it away and then has, imo, wasted much of what he got in the way of allocations). 2. Mojo has just done a terrible job evaluating talent. He's gotten some good players but just as many that haven't impressed. He drafted Kotchau and then cut him outright when he couldn't get anyone to trade for him. But Kotschau would have been his second best defender (behind Brennan) in his first 2 games. Additionally, almost everyone other than some TFC fans would have told you that their backline was dreadful. Two games into the season, with the trades and the pursuit of Bak, it's evident that Mojo has now reached the same conclusion. 3. He's done an even worse job of assembling a team. I get that with a completely new team there is going to be a bit of a revolving door at times. But he drafts Cancela, says he intends to keep him, anyone who knows Cancela knows you're either playing a diamond 442 OR a 352 b/c Cancela is an A-mid and not a defender/ball-winner type. But now he's given up on Cancela and completely ditched the system and instead apparently going with more defensive types in the middle of the field. I won't claim to have studied TFC in detail but right now, as a team or in terms of a scheme or system, they're a mess. They're a bunch of individuals out there, running hard, trying, some with legitimate talent. But they're playing teams and just getting killed at times. The backline was overmatched. But mostly it's a bunch of parts out there and as someone pointed out with the Buddle-Casey acquisitions, many of those parts don't fit together. He spends good resources to get guys you'd build a team around (Conor Casey, Richard Mulrooney) and then ditches them. He's acting like the doesn't understand the first thing about building a TEAM (as in a cohesive bunch of guys with clear roles who play for each other, have a clear system). This is a real shame b/c the TFC season ticket sales are reflective of a very, very good market with some great fans who are starving for some decent soccer. I feel for the TFC fans like I felt for the RSL fans their first two years--they deserve better, much better. This TFC team runs the risk of not just being a bad team, but an inept team. I'd like to think Gansler's input would prevent that from happening.
Meh. Just to take the other point of view, sometimes recognizing a mistake and doing something to correct it is better than letting a mistake fester and continue to exist. I'm not sure that the sheer number of trades he has made necessarily means that he is taking a hit when he trades someone away. Not every player acquisition is going to work out, and you have to admit, if even half of his acquisitions do work out, then he's going to be doing better than Rongen and Ellinger (circa 2005) combined. How many Chivas USA guys from opening day 2005 were around for opening day 2006? I think only a handful - and even fewer for opening day 2007. So really, Mo's roster revamping is just par for the course (even the change in back from a 3-back system to a 4-back system IIRC), only he's doing it at an extremely accelerated pace. Maybe by the all-star break this year he'll be where CDCU was at the end of the last year (when they almost knocked off the Dynamo in the Conference semis)? LOL There's more to creating a winning team than just moving players in and out, of course, but I don't think it's so awful if the first couple months of the season act like an extended pre-season for TFC where players are brought in and either make a difference or move on. It just seems to be too high of a standard to meet to say that not only are you going to start a team from scratch, but that you have to get all of your players right the first time and you can't adjust your lineup b/c it means that you didn't have the right mix at first. Every team in MLS is always looking to improve themselves. Mo is just fortunate in a way to have a lot more room for improvement than the other coaches in the league.
1. Absolutely--when you see a mistake, you should correct it. That means, when you thought your defensive backline was good enough and you realize it wasn't, you correct that. First, he moved Brennan back there. Well, that wasn't enough. So he traded for Wynne. Then he traded for Goldthwaite. And he's pursuing Jacek Bak. What that means is the ENTIRE backline that Mojo originally signed and planned on starting the season with (after discarding some other players like Kotschau who is absolutely good enough to start for his team) will be reserves or cut. 2. It's not the volume of trades. Its the trades he makes and then so many of them get undone. Picks Cancela and says he's a critical foundation for the team, a guy he intends to keep and build the team around. Then he fields a formation that Cancela can't play in (b/c Cancela is a pure A-mid, no-way he's a 2-way midfielder or a guy who can win balls) and then trades him for an afterthought. Clearly Cancela was not the fit he thought he'd be--that was just a poor choice by Mojo. He's got an excess of foreign players and is in the situation where if he adds a Bak (or another non-Canadian) he's going to have to move players not b/c they're a bad fit but b/c he hasn't planned well. He has an excess of forwards and really the first 3 primary forwards he went after (Eskandarian, Buddle and Casey) all pretty much play the same role (ie: none is a withdrawn, playmaking forward though Eskandarian is making a go of it of sorts). He signs/trades/selects players like Dyachenko or Ibrahim and then discovers they can't get into the country. He trades for Mulrooney (who's a good player) and then discovers Mulrooney doesn't want to come to Canada (no due diligence there). Effectively he's given up what will probably be the first pick in the draft next year for a pick that could be at the end of the first round (Houston's) and given up the first allocation (ie: first choice of any player entering the league) for an allocation (Colorado's) that is further back. Look, I get that sometimes you draft or sign a player and he doesn't work out. That's the reality. But right now, I look at TFC and the only MLS, expansion and domestic signings that seem to have worked out are: ROB (who is hurt), Greg Sutton (who I was skeptical of given his prior MLS record but he's come up big) and Alecko Eskandarian (who has trouble staying healthy). I think we should take a pass on the rookies b/c evaluating any draftees is premature at this point. As for foreign/allocation signings, so far guys like Robinson, Welsh, Lombardo haven't had much impact or impressed a lot. I get that new teams often have a revolving door. But you look at this team and they're basically remaking their entire backline--they could be starting 4 players who were not intended to start on defense as of 3-4 weeks ago (b/c Brennan was originally a midfielder). Their midfield is a shambles. You go from projecting Brennan, Mulrooney and Cancela as potential starters to now Brennan is at defense, and the other two are traded. It's really unclear to me what their midfield is at this point and if they intend to have any kind of midfield quarterback/A-mid/offensive schemer. They went after Conor Casey, couldn't get him in camp and after using the first allocation on him and evidently decided he's not worth having. Again, every team in MLS has personnel moves that backfire. But TFC seems like a team that is constantly pulling deals, getting players like Mulrooney and then discovering that he doesn't want to come to TFC, or on balance, ending up in a worse overal position (basically swapping #1 picks to move from the highest first rounder to maybe the last or close to it, moving down in the allocation order). The Toronto fans deserve much better. This isn't about an expansion team that didn't have much talent to choose from. And again, an expansion team is a stretch to be a strong team. But these moves for Wynne and Goldthwaite are more than just seeking to improve, they're statements that personnel analysis made by the club was horribly wrong and that the team can't count on time or a few games to build cohesion or improve organization.
Retort #1: Sounds like a BigSoccer poster to me. Retort #2: Now we know what happens when you give Eric Wynalda/Jamie Trecker/insert ButtTalker Here a soccer team to run.
Why is it that every coach ConorCassey has had in the last 6 years or so thinks he's useless? I don't get it. He's big and strong and runs around a lot.
I'm sitting here wondering what Mo Johnston ever done in MLS that warranted him being hired as anyone's coach?
People should be reminded that teams were allowed to protect 2 more players each in the recent expansion drafts than they were in the Fire draft of 98. Plus, there was only one team drafting in 98. Thus every player the Fire drafted in 98 would have been protected in 2005-2007. Since the Fire were handed a much better deal, we should not expect the recent expansion teams to duplicate their achievement. Having said that, I think it's best that fans of expansion teams start at the bottom and work their way up. They should be happy just to have a team, more than that is overkill. Throw the long-suffering fans of other teams a bone.
To put it another way, in '98, just short of half the league was available. In '04, it was only a third of the league. That's a big difference, once you assume teams leave their worst players unprotected first.
The window opens again on June 15th. http://www.mlsnet.com/about/league.jsp?section=regulations&content=overview
No quite a fair analysis. 1. The Fire also shared the expansion draft with Miami. Unlike TFC who had the expansion draft all to themselves. What's true is most new expansion team fans look at their expansion draft and say stuff like "wow--we managed to score John Maessner--we're really going to be good this year!" Who does TFC have from the expansion draft still on their roster? Just Nagamura and Ibrahim (who can't get a visa to work in Canada) I believe. To put it another way, I believe that there were more players that Toronto had to chose from than Chicago (b/c of bigger rosters and not having to share the pot with another expansion team). 2. Some MLS teams at that point (when Chicago and Miami picked) still didn't have 11 credible starters. OTOH, almost all MLS teams had credible players exposed in this latest expansion draft. 3. The biggest issue isn't the expansion draft anyway. Chicago brought in Nowak, Kubik, Podbrozny and Kosecki as foreign signings. They were savvy veterans who played a similar style and Nowak was one of the alltime MLS greats. Your foreign acquisitions (or allocations) matter a lot to the expansion teams. But RSL wasted most of their's. 4. I agree that expansion team fans should start with lower expectations. You've got to get your collection of players to learn how to play together--and a preseason doesn't do that sufficiently with no prior history together. But my point is that TFC fans should have expected better. Other than getting Ronnie O'Brien (who wanted out of Dallas), and then selecting Kreis and trading him back for allocation money, there are almost no personnel decisions that I look at and find really shrewd or high-value decisions by this team. And even then, if TFC had picked Canadian Andy Williams rather than Kreis, he'd be their starting A-mid right now and probably one of their 3-4 best players so even that move is debateable (the Kreis selection). I'm not arguing all of their players are bad--they aren't. But they trade for players (or sign them) and then find out those guys don't want to be in Canada or can't get a work visa and so they trade them away, usually for less than it took to acquire them. That's not inherent to an expansion team, that's just bad personnel decisions. Getting Ronnie O'Brien back will help this team be more competitive b/c he'll provide service to Alecko Eskandarian (who has been the bright spot in their attack). But if Alecko goes down (and he has every year in MLS), ouch!