@73Bruin said "IMO as a DP striker, Gio has been below average in terms of contributions over his 2.5 seasons " which I thought was interesting. Turns out that the poster was too kind. Over the last 2+ years, Gio has been the worst DP when measured by $ per production. Gio is the problem for LA and until that is fixed it is like rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic.
Get AJ into the team. He was injured a couple times this season, but he is still a good right back who can also play center back for us. He is only 30 so he should be able to recover from the ACL injury. He is exactly the type of veteran player we need in the team. If we can sign a good center back, I feel a lot more confident in our back line.
He was fairly productive when Keane wasn't on the field with him; those were his best matches generally in 2016. But I agree he doesn't really make his team a great deal better. But I also think a lot went wrong in 2017, independent of Gio. BTW, I'm not averse to moving and replacing Gio. I do think that's going to be a challenge for us at this point.
I think overall with Gio, as some of us have pointed out since he's been here, he seems more like a luxury than anything else. Unfortunately the team can't really afford for him to be only a luxury considering the make up of the team and the league.
Yes, basically Gio is a supporting-cast player. But being paid leading man money. Doesn't mean he isn't a good player and can't do great things - just means we are putting him in a position where he can't effectively deliver....
You keep changing the goal posts; now it's worst DP in $ per production? If Gio is the problem, then we should've played better in 2017 when he was unavailable. We didn't. In fact, Gio didn't play in the string of losses that arguably got Curt fired, culminating in the 6-2 loss to RSL at home. OTOH, Gio scored 5 goals in 4 matches in 2017 when another certain player was unavailable with a long-term injury and enjoyed a relatively stable (if unremarkable) midfield pairing of Pedro and Husidic. A consistent problem this season has been the midfield construction and consistency, in part due to injuries; there was a point where Ashely Cole and Joao Pedro started in midfield together. We also relied on Rafa Garcia and Jaime Villareal at times.
Gabby Agbonlahor from Aston Villa is looking for a new club. He is 31, and likely is looking for any team willing to take him. He has had a bad few years at Villa though. He showed up overweight midseason the year we got relegated, and was seen partying the night we were officially relegated. He has gotten better though. He worked himself back to full fitness and got back into the team. He could be a decent option for this league if he actually tries. He still is a good player, but mentally a bit stupid.
Here is what I first posted with the table: Comparing his MLS career with other high-en DP (>$1.5MM base) Gio is arguably the 3rd worst of the 13 or so I have looked at and absolutely the worst on a production per $ basis. The only DPs that have performed clearly worse than Gio is Gashi from Colorado and Movsisyan from RSL and combined they still make $1.8MM less than Gio. This is very simple. In a salary capped league if the 6th highest paid player in the league and the highest on the team by almost a factor of 3 is significantly under performing by almost a factor of 5 (3G (run of play), 3A) then the team is totally, royally, absolutely, screwed. Like I said, the Titanic is sinking and you are worried about the exact shade of ivory of the table cloths!
This is overstating it. I don't believe he is so much of a problem that LA Galaxy can't be successful with him in the team. I do believe that having his DP spot available, puts us in a better position build a successful team and that he's not good value for that spot.
Our old and busted XI for next year: Kenwyne Jones Sneijder - Vicente Sanchez - Lloyd Sam Sarvas - Jones Cole - Ciani - Onyewu - Mears Rimando Hey, Sigi did say we were getting more veteran this year.
You're right, my bad. That's the main problem with these 33+ teams, you don't lose them to contract demands or other teams wanting them, they just up and retire on you. Alan Gordon's available. I'm sure there's some washed up Euro available too.
While we all agree Gio has under-performed in 2017, in terms of impact on the cap, it doesn't really matter if he makes 5 mil or 50 mil. I find your way of proving that he is the worst DP out of that assortment to be pretty flawed. For example, Gio is one of the few players on that list to have double-digit goals and assists in a single season. Wondo, Altidore, Kaka' and even Lodeiro have never done that.
Yes Gio had a statistically great 2015-16. But I've never liked the way he plays. He absolutely, positively slows down play 90% of the time he touches the ball. He receives the ball, makes two or three touches (ignoring open teammates who are making runs), then gets his head up and looks around. Most of the time if he sees an open winger with a good chance to get behind the defense he just ignores him and instead looks to make the glory pass up the middle that usually isn't on. Or else he tries to dribble through the defense and is dispossessed. Once every three or four games he makes a beautiful 1-touch pass and slightly less often he scores a great goal. But he's wasted the efforts of so many teammates and killed so many attacks along the way that it just makes it hard for me to watch him. I will be so glad when he is gone.
Geez, I just looked into this in the twittersphere, and a lot of Turkish tweets say that an agreement has already been reached.
I don't know if he or anyone else has put it in print yet, but on the latest COG podcast he and Guesman talk about Pedro and his salary: (17:25 mark) http://cornerofthegalaxy.com/2017/1...ve-the-la-galaxy-put-a-price-tag-on-everyone/
Baxter doesn't actually comment on Pedro's transfer fee (unless I missed it), Guesman does. Guesman says: "[Joao Pedro's transfer fee] I guess you could say, is defined anywhere between six... six hundred and fifty thousand dollars and one point two five million dollars and lies somewhere in there, uh, we don't know the exact numbers but it... the narrative on it right now sounds like it's closer to six hundred and fifty thousand dollars than it ever was to a million, but nonetheless Galaxy spent some money in order to do that" It doesn't really sound like anything official or even intended to be official to me. Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of Guesman's so I don't give it too much credence. It's kind of irrelevant because we know two things: He's a Special Discovery Player and therefore his transfer fee is spread across the length of his contract. This means, unlike in other cases with transfer fees, his transfer fee isn't absorbed in single season and the next season it will fall off, it will remain for the duration of this current contract. He's a TAM player which, by definition, means his cap hit had to be above $480,625 in 2017. So just by those two facts, regardless of what his MLSPU salary is listed as or his transfer fee actually was, means his cap hit last year was least $480k+ and will be at least that for the course of his current contract. He's expensive regardless of what the transfer fee is.
Yay! Faced with the undebateable fact of Joao Pedro being a waste of cap (and most other forms of) space, we're reduced to nitpicking about how much space, TAM, oxygen, skin or column inches about an arbitrary shirt number he doesn't wear, has been specifically wasted on him. We need to sign new players, fast. We have to have someone new to talk about, before Jermaine's Mom's sock account returns to tell us how awesome it would be to be the only Galaxy player within a 30 yard radius each game, because angry-dreadlocked-bromance-material, is once again off being pointless in a random area of the pitch. Because there's nothing more inspirational than some dude chewing you out while being such a disaster himself, that an American sports league is considering naming a team after him.
I thought Sneijder was heading to LAFC? It would be a great coup if we can pick him up and poach him from the pretenders. OTOH, doesn't look like he's getting lots of time with Nice, so I don't know if anyone has insight into what kind of form he's in? Player at Nice that's getting minutes that I would take? Super Mario Balotelli.
Nah. Too much potential for him to view the league as an easy pay day and blow it off in terms of effort and focus.
I’m told the report out of Turkey saying Wesley Sneijder is joining the LA Galaxy is "not accurate.”We were told a little while back that neither Galaxy nor LAFC was interested in the player. #LAGalaxy #MLS— Corner Of The Galaxy (@GalaxyPodcast) December 7, 2017