My recollection and perception of Gerrard is much different then most. I tend to separate the '15 Gerrard from the '16 Gerrard. I vividly remember Gerrard's debut. We went down two quick goals against SJ. Keane and Gerrard had a quick word with one another and in a blink of an eye those two willed this team to five straight goals. Even down two early on, the outcome never seemed in doubt. In a ten game span, in 2015, the Galaxy earned 24 points winning eight games with a +20 goal differential. The following last eight games of the season we only won once, with a -8 goal differential. That contrast in form, from my perspective, was because we tried to squeeze Gio into the team, and surprisingly was also because Baggio Husidic went down with a major injury. Coupled that with the Pendo saga and the Ricketts trade, the end of the season turned into a dumpster fire, instead of which should have been a MLS Cup.
I agree that the signing ultimately failed as his presence wasn't enough to get us over the hump when it counted. However I remember his time here well enough to say with confidence that I believed he wholeheartedly played every minute like he really wanted to win more than anyone else on the field (with Robbie Keane being the only other person that probably wanted the W more.) I, like many others, hoped that Gerrard's body would hold up as well as Beckham's did in his last years. But sadly that was not to be. Frankly I'd take a Gerrard with his form from 2 years ago over Gio at present. The dude in the year and a half he was in LA gave us 5 goals and 12 assists where as Gio only gave us 1 good season out of the 4 he has been here and that was 2016. I hope they trade his a$$ in the offseason like we did Juan Pablo Angel(Who is another DP we got 2 years to late). Yep he should have left for Real Madrid when they were trying to get him back in the day. Playing for one team practically all of his career hurt the growth of his game bigtime.
I remember Gerrard as the guy responsible for breaking up our midfield of Juninho and Sarvas. Guys who ran non-stop and bled for the Galaxy. My unending memory of him, was him giving the ball away in midfield, then watching as Bradley? ran right past him and scored. We traded substance for glitter.
My memory is that Klein and Bruce let Juninho and Sarvas go because they were getting too expensive for their tastes. Sarvas salary grew from 162k in 2012 to 192k in '14. More to the point and he/his agent were asking for a lot more $ for 2015. Our FO didn't agree to the price and sent him to COL for allocation money. COL immediately more than doubled his 2015 LAG salary to 425k! Similarly Juninho's salary had increased from a paltry 80k in 2010 to 350k in '15 and, like Sarvas, he also was asking for a big raise. Instead we released him to Tijuana for a rumored $1.5 mil transfer fee. Not sure what Juninho made at Tijuana but he came back to the Fire in 2017 for a salary of 716k! Point is that Sarvas and Juninho performed well enough to price themselves out of the Galaxy's plans. Mistake on our part since we let Sarvas go to help pay for over the hill Gerrard. And Juninho was dumped in part to help pay for bringing in Ashley Cole. Not surprisingly Klein's bumbling fingerprints are all over Juninho's release. From http://www.espn.com/soccer/la-galax...r-juninho-to-tijuana-as-salary-dump-continues in Dec 2015: "LA Galaxy midfielder Juninho has completed a transfer to Mexico's Club Tijuana for an undisclosed fee as the MLS club continues to dump salary. Juninho's move comes in the same week that the Galaxy sent center-back Omar Gonzalez to Pachuca. The deals will help the Galaxy free up salary-cap space to sign former England international Ashley Cole, with a source confirming to ESPN FC that they have offered the defender a non-designated player contract. Juninho, 26, made 180 starts for the Galaxy since joining the club in 2010. The Brazilian initially joined on loan from Sao Paulo before signing a permanent deal three years later. During his tenure with the Galaxy he scored 18 goals and helped Los Angeles win three MLS Cups. ... Juninho made $350,000 in 2015, the fifth-highest salary on the Galaxy behind designated players Steven Gerrard, Giovani Dos Santos and Robbie Keane and the now-departed Gonzalez. ... By taking more than $2 million toward their salary cap off the books, the Galaxy now have the freedom to reinvent a team that crashed out of the playoffs in the opening knockout round. Club president Chris Klein said the team will be "aggressive" in adding new signings."We don't like to lose players that are important to us, and that is Omar and Juninho," Klein told the Galaxy's website. "However, the Galaxy has shown over the course of our history that we will have players that will leave, and we will replace them with players that will make our team stronger. That's our aim and focus. "Nothing has changed, and we're going to be as aggressive as we've ever been heading into 2016."
Yay losing Sarvas and Juninho still hurts to think about but I get why we had to let them go. What kills me though is that when you look over the salaries of the guys we did open up our pocketbooks for over the years that we now need to cut this offseason, it's amazing we didn't have enough money to get Gerrard and keep our Brazilian duo as well. Michael Ciani = $620,000.00 Ashley Cole = $722,499.98 Gio Dos Santos = $6,000,000.00 Perry Kitchen = $474,166.67 Joao Pedro = $240,996.00 Jorgen Skjelvik = $1,000,000.00 David Bingham = $275,000.04 Only Bingham would I consider keeping if we couldn't find better as these last few games have convinced me that he would likely be competent if you put a legit defense in front of him. Otherwise cutting all of these guys would free up $9,332,662.69 Get rid of a Perry Kitchen and a Skjelvik and you can afford a Juninho and Sarvas type signing for the wages they were last paid and still have over 300k to spend on other players. ($333,166.67 to be exact) Sigh,...what a waist of good money. By the way Juninho is 29 and out of contract I believe
The last few pages of this is depressing. Very obviously Klein should be fired or put in a dark basement office at AEG and told to write his name 1000x a day. Curious to see how the coaching search is going. We need someone to take on the field decisions away from Klein.
Far be it from me to defend the Galaxy FO as they truly are terrible but the SI article as quoted is misleading and incomplete. First Omar was being paid above the DP cutoff. The Galaxy used much (all?) of their first allocation of TAM to buy Omar's 2015 salary down. They needed to free up a DP slot in order to keep him in 2016. The correct soccer decision would have been to waive Gerrard in the off season, but that would have cost the Galaxy a bundle (well worth it IMO). Second, there is nothing in the portion quoted above about the decisions (I think of BA) to bring in: Nigel de Jong as the D-Mid at a salary of $500K and a commitment to make him a DP in 2017, this made Juninho an overpaid bench warmer. Note, given his performance in Tijuana and Chicago, this may not have been a bad decision in hind sight. Of course replacing NDJ in mid season and 2017 did not work well either Jelle Van Damne at $425K to replace Omar. Bringing in Ciani and Skjelvik to replace Jelle was a major failure as well.
As much as I love the Samba Duo, I'm not mad that we moved on. Remember, Bruce wanted to break up the duo even earlier and bring in Kjlestan at the 8 position in late 2014, which would've been an absolute upgrade.
Lletget-Jonathan has serious potential as our CM duo. I really think they can form one of the strongest partnerships in the league. Both are really talented.
Could the FO be any more stupid? ...the answer is yes but, Klein and co. would get so much more heat for this. INFO - L'Impact de Montréal serait intéressé à acquérir le DP 🇫🇷 Romain Alessandrini pour la saison 2019.Intéressé par le projet de Rémi Garde, l'int'l de 29 ans évolue surtout comme ailier mais aussi comme mil off.2017 : 30pj / 13b / 12p2018 : 24pj / 10b / 7p💵: 1,8M#IMFC pic.twitter.com/xyGBtJSIbK— Nilton Jorge (@NiltonJorge) October 12, 2018 INFO-The Montreal Impact would be interested in acquiring DP Roman Alessandrini for the 2019 season. Interested in the Remi Guard project, the 29-year-old's evolves mainly as a winger but also as Mil off. 2017: 30PJ / 13b / 12p 2018: 24PJ / 10b / 7p : 1, 8m # IMFC
Pure speculation on my part - But Zlatan might be asking for DP money (who could blame him), and if we can't/won't dump Gio, then Alessandrini is the only option. Nothing Klein does shocks me anymore.
I know I won't do this but part of me really felt like calling up and cancelling my season ticket when I read this. Gio is a failure. Cut him loose and swallow the money. Heh... now I think of it, maybe that's the point. Klein's defenders claim that AEG like him because he is producing on the bottom line. I guess buying out a $6m contract might jeopardize that perception...
If you could only keep 1 person from the entire roster, would anyone not pick Romain? This would be worse than trading AJ.
Yeah, I think a buyout is unacceptable; best option is to move him. Which might actually be happening against all odds. The guy's value is plummeting.
Gio may go down as the greatest DP failure in MLS history, at least in terms of money outlays versus performance over time.
At Romain's age and production, he's definitely the one guy you keep and build a team around. Perhaps (this is what i think actually happens) we can loan Gio to Club America for a year. He only has one year left under his contract, so we don't really need to cut him. This would alleviate the need to buy out his remaining 6 million left on his contract, while simultaneously opening a DP spot for Zlatan. Club America might pick up a good portion of his contract. Saving the team money and making it actually feasible to move Gio on.
Here's a question: Which scenario do you prefer: A. Transfer both Gio and Jona? B. Transfer Gio and retain Jona? C. Transfer Jona and retain Gio? D. Transfer neither? My choice is B with A a close 2nd.
Let's all raid the Gs FB and Twitter pages yo voice out B, but A if that's what it takes to get rid of Gio.
B > A > C > D I could swing either way on C or D. Either way we're wasting a DP slot. I'd like to keep JDS presuming we bring in a coach who wants to play through the midfield. However if we have to trade Jona in order to dump Gio then I think it's a trade we should make.
Kalamity Klein sure hates when players connect with fans, play with heart and represent LA like they were born here.
Moving Alessandrini to keep Gio (or anyone on the current roster, actually) would be a horrendous mistake. Keeping Gio on the roster in any capacity is a horrendous mistake on it's own. However, if I pull that out and talk a bit about moving Alessandrini on it's own merits, I wouldn't be against it. I don't have the same affinity for him as most on here do and I think he's replaceable (and he's certainly not a guy I'd build a roster around) but it depends on what we get in return from Montreal. We're going to be stuck with some bad contracts this off-season. I know Montreal wouldn't take Gio (and I know that Gio would never agree to go there and he certainly has a no-trade clause) but if we're able to pawn off $1.0m+ of Skjelvik (and I doubt there are foreign clubs interested in matching his salary here), $450k+ of Perry Kitchen or $450k+ of Joao Pedro in addition to some other incentives (allocation money, draft picks, maybe players), maybe that doesn't look so bad. Evan Bush is probably an upgrade on Bingham at this point, Daniel Lovitz would absolutely fill a need at leftback, Duval would at least be an experienced MLS right back. We've not had a true #10 here since Cienfuegos (Hertzog doesn't count). Piatti serving in balls to Kamara and/or Zlatan would be pretty tasty. There are options here. Perhaps ones that would make Montreal uninterested but who knows? Just to be clear, I don't actively want Alessandrini off the roster, but it's an option I'd hear Montreal out on if they're willing to break the bank.
Piatti is a winger and is on the wrong side of 30. I don't think Alessandrini is someone you build the team around, but he fits into a bunch of different formations and styles of play and can produce at a high level. If we put a decent team together that's decently coached he's good 20+ combined goals/assists a season. AJ was also replaceable on the field, but the FO didn't clearly didn't care and/or recognize how much he meant to the fan base. Romain doesn't have that kind relationship with the fans (very few players ever will), but he's one of the few players we currently have that are universally loved by the fanbase.