Dub Narcotic
10-25-2009, 04:13 PM
Mo Johnston: C-
The team's inaugural GM, Johnston has had a tough time assembling a squad, according to him, due to league roster restrictions, lack of interest of players to play on turf and the general travails of putting together a brand new franchise. While these are legitimate excuses to an extent, Johnston has to be nearing his end of his tenure having built a team that has the same holes for several years in a row and where coaches and players seem to leave in blazes of discontent and recrimination again and again. Coming into the season, Johnston had several main charges: get some star players, build depth, build a defense and find multiple competent strikers.
Johnston started off the year well, getting rid of expansion-era dead weight like Marco Velez and Jarrod Smith, and getting Dwayne De Rosario for draft bust Julius James and a first rounder, a good trade. Johnston also drafted well (albeit in what looks like one of the best ever draft classes), with stockpiled picks from previous years, picking up Sam Cronin and O'Brian White early then stealing top-rated GK Stefan Frei with the 12th pick. However, under pressure from media and fans, Johnston than made a disastrous move that would haunt the team for the whole year, letting solid MLS veterans Tyrone Marshall and Todd Dunivant go for allocations that were used to sign River Plate exile Pablo Vitti. The defense never recovered from the loss of two veteran pieces and Vitti was a horrible bust.
Going through the year, the need for a solid center back pairing and more scoring from forwards (two long-standing issues) were still apparent. Johnston responded to these needs by signing Euro-league journeyman forward Ali Gerba, Haitian Gold Cup standout Lesley Fellinga at LB, veteran CB NIck Garcia, who had worn out his San Jose welcome, finally pulling that trigger on a DP for Julian de Guzman and playing some undetermined part in the mysterious forced retirement of Danny Dichio while also getting rid of Johnan Smith and Rohan Ricketts. The constant shaking of the roster led to a lot of instability that hamstrung the coaches and did little to improve the team in the short term.
Given the four goals that Johnston had coming into the season, he gets a very mixed grade. Johnston was able to upgrade the talent level at the top and the bottom of the team, signing De Rosario, the first real all-star calibre player TFC has had, as well as De Guzman. Depth also generally improved over previous years, with young Guineans Sanyang and Gomez making positive impressions and Lesley Fellinga looking the part off the bench. However, Johnston's major failures were familiar ones as he never managed to find a consistent defensive backline or find strikers capable of consistently scoring, two problems that sunk the team during the year. In fact, by giving up Dunivant and Marshall, who both had very good years, he doomed the team to another year of defensive uncertainty.
Another unfortunate Johnston trademark was the constant roster shakeup and inability to have a team in training camp that would last the entire year, hamstring first Carver and then Cummins. Really, if Johnston even gets more time, one year has to be the limit. The problems with the team are clear: it needs a consistent back four, a veteran coach with the authority of the front office behind him and probably a whole new strikeforce. These problems have to be addressed in the off-season, and not in a piecemeal way during the season. If Johnston can't do this before opening day, 2010, he should be on his way without further ado.
John Carver: D+
Well coached teams have a few characteristics in common, no matter the sport. They are hard to break down, they win games they shouldn't, they win games late, players play above their ability or are put into roles that they can succeed in, the team is able to adapt to adversity and they rarely give a poor effort. John Carver's teams had none of these traits, with the possible exception of the team playing hard. Carver might have succeeded in a different team, one with a successful veteran core and formation that he could put out on the field again again, but given Carver's lack of a resume and limited coaching skillset, he's only likely to find that opportunity available to him in FIFA '10.
Carver's modus operandi was to align himself off the field with TFC's older Anglo-Canadian core and play a traditional British longball 4-4-2 on it. Unfortunately, he was unable to get performance out of players beyond his favourites (most infamously, Jeff Cunningham), unable to adapt his tactics to suit the players he had and hamstrung by a squad that didn't really have a lot of options during his tenure. He also had a very irritating and destructive trend to cast blame for bad performances on everyone and everything but himself, repeatedly railing against referees and the league, throwing players under the bus and generally fostering a club culture that lacked accountability. His leaving was a blessing, as he was clearly not a coach that was going to succeed in this franchise or this league.
Chris Cummins: D-
Saddled with the 'interim' label, Cummins was really a dead man walking from day one. The team had a brief 'new coach bounce', then settled into a very mediocre rut as Cummins jumped from formation to formation in increasing desperation to show something in his brief tenure and he was also forced to try and integrate Ali Gerba and Julian de Guzman into the team late, further upsetting the dynamic. A bustup with Dichio lost Cummins what little pull he had into the dressing room and Cummins' favoured 3-5-2 was undone by poor center back play, whether by fork-in-back Nick Garcia or the inconsistent Emmanuel Gomez and Adrian Serioux. Cummins didn't have the tools or the opportunity to have a successful run here, and it's best that the team moves on with an experienced MLS hand next year and Cummins tries to rebuild his career elsewhere.
The team's inaugural GM, Johnston has had a tough time assembling a squad, according to him, due to league roster restrictions, lack of interest of players to play on turf and the general travails of putting together a brand new franchise. While these are legitimate excuses to an extent, Johnston has to be nearing his end of his tenure having built a team that has the same holes for several years in a row and where coaches and players seem to leave in blazes of discontent and recrimination again and again. Coming into the season, Johnston had several main charges: get some star players, build depth, build a defense and find multiple competent strikers.
Johnston started off the year well, getting rid of expansion-era dead weight like Marco Velez and Jarrod Smith, and getting Dwayne De Rosario for draft bust Julius James and a first rounder, a good trade. Johnston also drafted well (albeit in what looks like one of the best ever draft classes), with stockpiled picks from previous years, picking up Sam Cronin and O'Brian White early then stealing top-rated GK Stefan Frei with the 12th pick. However, under pressure from media and fans, Johnston than made a disastrous move that would haunt the team for the whole year, letting solid MLS veterans Tyrone Marshall and Todd Dunivant go for allocations that were used to sign River Plate exile Pablo Vitti. The defense never recovered from the loss of two veteran pieces and Vitti was a horrible bust.
Going through the year, the need for a solid center back pairing and more scoring from forwards (two long-standing issues) were still apparent. Johnston responded to these needs by signing Euro-league journeyman forward Ali Gerba, Haitian Gold Cup standout Lesley Fellinga at LB, veteran CB NIck Garcia, who had worn out his San Jose welcome, finally pulling that trigger on a DP for Julian de Guzman and playing some undetermined part in the mysterious forced retirement of Danny Dichio while also getting rid of Johnan Smith and Rohan Ricketts. The constant shaking of the roster led to a lot of instability that hamstrung the coaches and did little to improve the team in the short term.
Given the four goals that Johnston had coming into the season, he gets a very mixed grade. Johnston was able to upgrade the talent level at the top and the bottom of the team, signing De Rosario, the first real all-star calibre player TFC has had, as well as De Guzman. Depth also generally improved over previous years, with young Guineans Sanyang and Gomez making positive impressions and Lesley Fellinga looking the part off the bench. However, Johnston's major failures were familiar ones as he never managed to find a consistent defensive backline or find strikers capable of consistently scoring, two problems that sunk the team during the year. In fact, by giving up Dunivant and Marshall, who both had very good years, he doomed the team to another year of defensive uncertainty.
Another unfortunate Johnston trademark was the constant roster shakeup and inability to have a team in training camp that would last the entire year, hamstring first Carver and then Cummins. Really, if Johnston even gets more time, one year has to be the limit. The problems with the team are clear: it needs a consistent back four, a veteran coach with the authority of the front office behind him and probably a whole new strikeforce. These problems have to be addressed in the off-season, and not in a piecemeal way during the season. If Johnston can't do this before opening day, 2010, he should be on his way without further ado.
John Carver: D+
Well coached teams have a few characteristics in common, no matter the sport. They are hard to break down, they win games they shouldn't, they win games late, players play above their ability or are put into roles that they can succeed in, the team is able to adapt to adversity and they rarely give a poor effort. John Carver's teams had none of these traits, with the possible exception of the team playing hard. Carver might have succeeded in a different team, one with a successful veteran core and formation that he could put out on the field again again, but given Carver's lack of a resume and limited coaching skillset, he's only likely to find that opportunity available to him in FIFA '10.
Carver's modus operandi was to align himself off the field with TFC's older Anglo-Canadian core and play a traditional British longball 4-4-2 on it. Unfortunately, he was unable to get performance out of players beyond his favourites (most infamously, Jeff Cunningham), unable to adapt his tactics to suit the players he had and hamstrung by a squad that didn't really have a lot of options during his tenure. He also had a very irritating and destructive trend to cast blame for bad performances on everyone and everything but himself, repeatedly railing against referees and the league, throwing players under the bus and generally fostering a club culture that lacked accountability. His leaving was a blessing, as he was clearly not a coach that was going to succeed in this franchise or this league.
Chris Cummins: D-
Saddled with the 'interim' label, Cummins was really a dead man walking from day one. The team had a brief 'new coach bounce', then settled into a very mediocre rut as Cummins jumped from formation to formation in increasing desperation to show something in his brief tenure and he was also forced to try and integrate Ali Gerba and Julian de Guzman into the team late, further upsetting the dynamic. A bustup with Dichio lost Cummins what little pull he had into the dressing room and Cummins' favoured 3-5-2 was undone by poor center back play, whether by fork-in-back Nick Garcia or the inconsistent Emmanuel Gomez and Adrian Serioux. Cummins didn't have the tools or the opportunity to have a successful run here, and it's best that the team moves on with an experienced MLS hand next year and Cummins tries to rebuild his career elsewhere.