The fact that we finished 9 points behind the third place finisher NYCFC and dropped 11 points after the 90th minute that we very much have a roster good enough to have earned a home playoff game. The tactics were poor. The players weren't giving their all for the coach. The talent was there. I have a lot of issues with the roster and Bez has made a handful of costly blunders. But the 2022 Crew team absolutely had the talent needed to qualify for a home playoff match.
I would amend this to say we have a lot of players with talent, but who are not able to be successful now. This could be age, injuries, poor coaching, all kinds of reasons. But none of those reasons are acceptable excuses. In sports, you are what your record says you are, and this has been a weak team for the past couple of years. I think if you take a clear-headed, realistic look at our roster, you see a handful of guys we could build around (Zelerayán, Hernandez, A. Morris, Moiera, maybe some of the Crew2 guys) a few veterans who might have some value, and a lot of MLS veterans who haven´t produced with any consistency. IMNSHO Any rebuild based on our current core has a very slim chance of success. This year was an unmitigated disaster. Not all of that can be laid at Porter´s feet. To pretend a new coach is going to fix everything is either dumb or dishonest. Hard decisions need to be made, and the sooner the better. I don´t expect it to happen, of course... but a guy can dream, right?
We don't actually know where the Crew's salary spend this year falls on the overall league curve. What we know is that when the PA released their numbers in mid season Columbus was tenth in spending. Then they brought in Cucho Hernandez for big money and it's almost certain that the team is now among the top five Think about that for a minute. A small market team laying out the bucks like the big guys. Who would have guessed it was even possible? Say what you want about the Haslams - and you can take all the Watson crap and cram.it; has nothing to do with me or my team- but they have stepped up to the plate. Stadium, staff, practice facility, roster, all.absolutely top shelf. As with the Browns, they are willing to throw stupid money at their teams. They just took a $20+ million contract off Atlantas hands for a malcontent linebacker who's only been healthy enough to play one game in 2 years. Problem is, when you manage a team upon which the owner lavished very large resources, you simply have to give them results or you gotta go. Nobody needs to kid themselves that Bez isn't on the hot seat here and it will get hotter next season. Porter had simply lost the locker room and had to go right away but that doesn't mean that Cleveland isn't looking very closely at the guy in the big chair. Porter got the sack, and rightly so. You get the feeling even he thinks it was time to go. But don't think for a minute that Bezbatchenko is skating home free. He is under enormous pressure to get this coaching hire right. If he doesn't, if the team doesn't turn this around in the short term, Bez will be gone within 12 months.
How much of the transfer targets/player evaluation falls on Bez? I assume that the head coach identifies a player that they want and Bez works the numbers. That said, I'm not sure how much say Bez has in the identification of talent. Maybe that is something our new and improved beat reporter can look into.
Danielle De Rossi named manager of Serie B side, SPAL. Sweet Dee, Truck Stop Jimmy, Edwards, and Bez all asleep at the wheel again. What a missed opportunity. Shameful.
Depends on the club. For example: • In most of continental Europe, the GM is really the one in charge, not the coach. The coach is there to coach, and the GM is there to pick the players, deal with the youth academy, etc. Of course, there is a spectrum. Some teams are as described, in others it’s more collaborative, but generally speaking the GM is higher in the pecking order since they can be there for multiple coaches. The GM will have a way they like to play, and they will find coaches who share those philosophies, so that the roster doesn’t have to be turned over for every new coach with completely opposite ideas. • There is the old timey British model where the coach is really a manager and does it all (Ferguson, Wenger, etc). I think this happens far less now, but I get the feeling coaches have a much larger say in player signings than in continental Europe, which leans more towards the German model. • I think the general ‘modern collaborative model’ goes something like this. The coach or GM identify a weakness in the team, say winger. They discuss what kind of winger they want to look for (classic wide, inverted, pocket, scoring, playmaking, hardworking, etc) and then the GM and scouting department will use analytics and find… 50 players, 100 players, whatever. They watch tape on those guys, talk to dudes who might already have knowledge about them, and then narrow that down to 5 or 10 and then go and scout those guys in person. From there, a decision is made. • There is also the ‘know a guy from Ghana’ model, which we seem to practice here. Know a guy from Ghana? Great, sign him up. • There is also the ‘an agent sent me a highlight reel of a dude playing in the Romanian league and I thought he looked good and he has good potential on FIFA so let’s sign him’ model, which is not ideal. All that being said, considering the amount of guys that were signed here that either previously played for Porter in Portland (Nagbe, Adi, Guzman) or Akron (Kitchen, Adbul-Salam, Nagbe again) I think it’s fair to assume Porter had influence on signings. To think it was all Bez would be absolutely moronic.
There's been very little public information about this since Bez came to the Crew. But in Toronto he described that set-up as being a group effort. He certainly was deeply involved there, but worked with the head coach and scouting director on player acquisitions. Recall, Bez talks about himself as being so data driven, and I can't say that I recall Porter talking about that too much himself. Could be that Bez uses data to identify a pool of possible players; the player acquisition braintrust goes over the data, reviews player video, a short list is determined; McGuinness checks them out initially to further whittle down the list; Porter then comes on board; and Bez closes the deal in such a way that the roster budget is adhered to. Pure speculation, of course. Except that Bez has, repeatedly, talked about the group structure at work in Toronto. I do find it inconceivable that since 2019 this has been one person's role, as we were used to with Berhalter.
I don't know if his name has been mentioned here, and I am certainly not doing so as a possible head coach candidate, but I do think it's valuable to note that in the senior technical staff purge, one person left standing was Marc Nicholls. Recall, we poached him from Charlotte in January.
Based on what we know about the Cucho signing, Porter told Bez what kind of player they needed, they communicated that to their scouting network, and they went to ownership to figure out what their budget would be. Scouts pulled together potential options and them to Porter who provided feedback on who he would prefer. He liked Cucho, Bez agreed, and they asked ownership for the money. Now, that was process for a big signing. It's similar to what would have happened with Lucas. For mid tier players, it's going to work a bit different. Some signings seem to have originated with Porter, like Nagbe and Adi. He probably found out they were going to be available and asked Bez to make something work. This is going to happen with most coaches. Other players, especially guys in foreign leagues, would have been identified by scouts and passed along to Porter/Bez, like Degenek, Moreira, etc. When it comes to picking up guys from other MLS teams, like Molino, Hurtado, Etienne, etc. I think the GMs around the league talk to each other a lot. Bez probably gets info that a team wants to move a player or isn't going to re-sign a player and so he'll go to Porter and see if he's interested in the guy. I think current players also play a part every once in a while. Mensah played a part in bringing Yeboah here. I think Steffen sold Room on coming here. But that's from the recruitment side than the identification side. It's kind of difficult to truly rate Bez's performance from the outside because we don't always know how signings came to be, what signings we've missed out on, and what responsibility the organization has agreed to give the coach and the GM (i.e. maybe Bez always gives the coach the final say on signings and then he makes the signing happen).
Specific player acquisitions mechanisms aside, I'd be very curious to know how the decision was made to (for example) commit to Pedro Santos at LB. That was a major decision that affected not just tactics but also roster structure. Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, since we'd heard that the club was looking at a LB who decided not to come here. Still, considering the types of players we've signed the past two years, I have little confidence that that player would have been a solid starter, thereby allowing Santos to play in midfield. Could have been like Moreira. Or Cadden. Who knows? Same goes with the whole Berry as a starter debacle.
Waiting until early December makes sense to me. The pool of available coaches will really start to fill up once the WC break hits. Clubs in Europe who are off to a slow start will likely use the WC break to fire managers and give the new manager time to get things set up before league play starts back up. National Team coaches will free up after the WC. MLS coaches will also start becoming available through the end of the playoffs. We obviously need someone before the January transfer window opens up, but we also need to be patient and see who comes available in the next month or so.
I disagree with your disagreement. If you simply take the 11 points we lost in stoppage time, and instead the Crew doesn't collapse, they would be at 57 points or 3rd in the east. (And ahead of all but LAFC in the West) Their salary is also on Par with the top 1/3 of the league. So, Yes I agree with Bez this team has the capabilities to be a top 4 team in the league.
Not this shit again. Go look at how many points were dropped after the 75th minute and tell me this roster wasn't good enough to be top 4.
One key thing the new coach will have to figure out is how to harness the power of Cucho. The guy is so insanely talented and versatile that he wants to be everywhere on the field. The new coach is going to either have to be able to convince Cucho to play more structured, or he's going to have to be able to set up the rest of the attack to accommodate Cucho's freedom. I don't think Porter was ever able to completely figure that out. Also, I think the new coach needs to give Degenek the armband. A lot of the blame for the late game collapses obviously goes to Porter, but I think Mensah deserves some blame as well. Your tenured captain CB has to be able to step up and get things fixed late in the game and he was never able to do that. Degenek is an extremely mature player, has a ton of experience in high pressure games, and is a natural leader. Give him the armband next year.
Not all Dogpatch Crew beat writers have sucked as badly as the last guy. but after just a couple months Bailey Johnson may already be the best ever.
I thought that Jardy was quite good before he left for the CBJ beat, but I think I'm on board with this.
You mean give the captain armband to the guy who waved his hand in the air getting the handball causing penalty that cost off a playoff spot? That guy? That's the guy you think should be leading the team on the field?
Considering he signed a big name Italian player in Toronto, and then after he left they signed more big name Italian players, with the TFC president coming out and saying (more or less) he wanted those guys, I think it’s fair to say Bez isn’t doing all the GMing on his own. He’s a cap wizard, he helped write the rules for the cap (literally), so I think that’s more his specialty.