Frankly, his highest priority should be upgrading the GK coach position and I expect him to do so. I suspect he has done more harm than good with our keepers, especially considering he was with Diop for four years and he's still make some of the same mental mistakes. We'll still have to upgrade the position, but I don't want that GK coach anywhere near any new acquisitions.
As a right back or forward, Gyasi has to go, but I do think if Sigi had given him an extended run out at wide midfield he would have done well there. I would like to have seen 1 game of this McBean -- Gio Romain --- JDS --- Jones --- Zardes Cole --- Romney---- don't care --- don't care Rowe
Keep Rowe and Kempin. Diop may become a decent MLS keeper one day, but I don't want to be the team he works out the kinks with. Diop caused us a lot of issues early in the season.
I'm not so sure. In '15 & '16 Bingham was decent, saving 72% of the shots he faced. This season he dropped to a 62% save rate (allowing 35 goals while facing 94 sog over 23 games). Could be injury related or a loss of confidence but is probably why he lost his starting job.
So, there's an article about MLS players signed mid-season. Here are our guys: LOS ANGELES GALAXY Pele van Anholt: $216,000, $216,000 Jonathan dos Santos: $2,000,000, $2,000,000 Michael Ciani: $600,000, $620,000 Yes, $600k for Ciani. He better not be guaranteed for next year.
He's certainly talking as if he'll be here next season: https://www.lagalaxy.com/post/2017/...tter-days-are-ahead-him-and-la-galaxy-insider
The article that was posted here earlier didn't say that Bruce used up all the allocation money, just that we used all the money from 2016, which is to say we didn't carry any over. We still got the $1.2m from MLS this year plus the GAM everyone gets. No excuses for this year.
If that's true, we've got all three of our DP slots for next year and three or four (depending on Jones) TAM players guaranteed for 2018: JdS GdS Alessandrini Ciani Zardes Pedro Jones Yikes.
Ciani is a straight up salary swap for JVD. On the positive note IIRC, JVD did not light the place on fire his first few outings as a Galaxy player either. Jones is guaranteed for 2018 and Sigi has essentially made him the starting #6 and captain. Pedro does not seem to be in Sigi's plans and Zardes seems to have been surpassed by BJIV on the attacker depth chart
Can you source Jone's next guaranteed contract for 2018? JVD was switching from LB to CB and had trouble learning the position, but Ciani's athleticism is gone, something that JVD still had.
On paper, that's a very good midfield by MLS standards just on sheer talent. I don't know why we haven't seen it. OTOH, a midfield of Jones, Jona and Romain couldn't really control the midfield against 10-man RSL, so who can say?
Why are we paying $600k for a 33 year old CB from Europe that was out of a job? Really? There are several MLS CB's that would be great for 1/3 the price. I just don't get the decision making process. It seems we overpay for average talent.
Ciani's salary itself is not shocking (he's supposed to be Van Damme's replacement, so give him his salary), but if we really gave him a 2018 contract with this salary, I already lost faith in our FO for next year. Must find the article (was it Baxter?), but I thought Jones was signed for one year.
The Ciani contract makes zero sense, and it looks like we are absolutely screwed with him. Ciani may have come into the season not match fit, but he has shown me nothing that makes me think he can turn it around next season.
Man, I want to give Ciani the benefit of a doubt because he stepped into a dumpster fire. But he sure hasn't looked good in his limited appearances...
Can you list the MLS CBs that were available that LA could have acquired for 200K when JVD decided to leave for personal family reasons?
I don't think JVD and Ciani are that comparable. At the time we signed him JVD was coming off an excellent 5 year, 124 game run with Standard Liege. He was valued enough to be named captain on his first day and by all reports he was a fan favorite. OTOH Ciani was an unemployed free agent who had unfulfilled contracts for 4 different clubs from 2015-2016. Personally I don't think there is a bigger red flag than jumping from club to club on a yearly basis.* *For an example see "Dos Santos, Gio" who played for 5 different clubs from 2009-2015 before we signed him. Hmmm... wonder why he couldn't stick anywhere?
We were screwed when we let JVD go after the summer transfer window closed. Options were very limited at that point - anyone unemployed at that point was suspect. We then compounded the error by not only getting a mediocre cb to finish out the season but also (apparently) committing to him for 2018 as well. Would have been better to wait until the offseason and then let our crack scouting department find us a quality cb (like JVD or Omar) to build around.
I think we agree but I didn't make myself clear. Our hands were tied when Van Damme left, there weren't a lot of free agents CB worth a look. Why don't try one and convince him with a big salary? If it doesn't work, don't give him a new contract, and if he's good, sign him for 2018 (the problem is that we should have gave him the same big salary, which is not ideal). That should have been the plan, but I fear we signed Ciani for 1.5 years with this incompetent FO. I'm furious if the FO did this mistake because just reading the fans forums of Lorient (his last club) should have convinced us to not take a that big risk.