On paper the signings have been underwhelming. If this team doesn’t qualify for the playoffs this season, it’s time for Georg to go. That’s the minimum level of success; over half of the league’s teams qualify for it. Not making it is nonnegotiable.
Why does Heitz repeatedly fail to have a competent roster ready for opening day? Could this just be a European mindset that you plug holes in the winter window and do your real building in the summer window? Not like he's succeeded at either, but just trying to understand his repeated inability at roster building for MLS.
Are we getting happy with Georg these days? Still concerned about his MLS player evaluation, but his imports have been good this year.
Back to the top with this. I want to understand Mansueto's obsession with the Swiss because I just don't see it. This team should not be this bad with the time and resources Heitz had at his disposal, yet here we are.
Mansueto is just trusting who he hired. Whether or not that trust is warranted, that's what's in question. But at some point, Reinsdorf fired Krause. Let's just hope Mansueto can see the signs early enough.
I would not expect Heitz to go, but perhaps shift roles so someone can focus on the US while he focuses on Europe.
Last night's game isn't on Heitz. The players need some accountability. That was their loss. This team, on paper, should be good. Just like the 2019 team. The 2017 team wasn't that great on paper but somehow won all those games. I don't get it, but it's just frustrating.
Fans love to defend their players. The fire players on a whole are not good enough and that falls on the guy picking them Heitz. Our 3 strikers przybylko, duran and offor just do not score enough. The guys feeding them have to do a better job or we need to get players that can.
It is top to bottom. Heitz has signed some good players, some bad and whole lot of players with a bit of potential but not up to snuff yet. He then dumped our top 6 scorers from 2021, without adequate replacement. Ezra seems to have no game plan, continues to play people out of position, seems to have virtually no interest in attacking football, but has yet to have his full squad. The players lack focus and cohesiveness. That is on both the players and Ezra. Some lack talent. Some have talent but are not playing to that talent (Kascper, Shiqiri, probably Ivanov). Some have potential, but that's it.
Sure, but Heitz signed the players and it's not like these guys usually play much better and just gave up a flukey loss-this is who the Fire are under Heitz. Alex Calabrese lays it out beautifully in his HTIOT article. By spending so much on transfer fees ($35 million during his tenure, whereas Nelson spent $7 million) and giving huge contracts to capable, but not brilliant players like Sekulic ($600,000), he limits his ability to correct mistakes when guys don't live up to expectations. Roster holes end up needing to be plugged with developmental players, because he has no money left to work with. This is exacerbated by his reluctance to scout or sign MLS players, instead focusing abroad. All in all, Heitz has to go. The guy is not a good MLS sporting director.
Other then implying Sekulic has not lived up to his worth...I agree. To me he is one of the few that has been steady and good though not great.
Despite last game's 2 defensive errors you can't complain too much about the fire's defense, it is the offense that is the problem.
And now we find out that Heitz gave Shaqiri the highest guaranteed compensation in the league and highest base salary (8.15 million/7.35 million). When will Joe tire of Georg wasting his money? I'm not saying Shaqiri is a bad player, but in a salary cap league, the name of the game is value. Is the highest salary in MLS worth 2 goals in 9 starts and 2 wins in 11 games? Don't forget that the Fire paid more for Shaqiri's transfer fee than Lyon had paid Liverpool. Was that really necessary to secure a player who Lyon didn't even want to use? How shrewd is Heitz?
I am not going to give up on the Shaqiri signing yet. He has the ability to lift the team like few players in the league could do. That being said, it is very clear that he needs to be surrounded with players who approach his skill level and he simply does not have that here. He could succeed in his time at Liverpool as he could do his thing and the defense had to focus on other players. Here, stop Shaqiri and stop the Fire. Was he worth what we paid for him? Probably not. I would have preferred us to sign a free agent and use the transfer fee for salaries. However, the only practical way to sign Shaqiri was to pay a transfer fee. As for 2 goals in 9 games, that is par for his career. He has never been a double digit goal scorer.
I'll never say Shaqiri's bad. He's a good player (albeit underperforming) who makes the Fire better than they were in 2021. My problem with Heitz is that the way he has constructed this team, he's overpaying for Shaqiri, overpaying for Sekulic etc., and that means he doesn't have the funds left to surround these capable players with anyone else. It's the opportunity cost of locking so much budget space into these players. Could we have gotten similar or better results with Mihailovic (751,875k) and Fagundez (450k)? The Fire spent 9.92% of their roster budget on forwards...the second lowest amount allocated to that position in the league. Comparatively they spent 67.22% of their budget on midfielders (mostly Shaqiri). If I'm building a team, how do I neglect one critical position group so heavily? The Fire being unable to score is near obvious from this perspective--that's unavoidably on Heitz. https://mlsplayers.org/resources/salary-guide
Shaqiri, and then Kasper, haven't had the skill sets around them to put their skill sets to work. Shaqiri didn't have Shaqiri level guys around him when he was at Stoke City, but he he had better than Ivanov (who I had hoped would take the next step in his career- oh well) and Herbers (again, clearly almost good enough to be impressive) around him. When Kasper was signed it was widely pointed out that he is a finisher in need of service. A coupla games with Kasper, Shaqiri, Torres and Mueller and we'll see what kind of offense we have. Then get depth and more depth. All that said, I'm good with moving Georg to head of European Operations.