We are NOT a Proud Club- Nor are We a Club to Be Proud of

If the "are you any good?" check is done by making the playoffs, we have been bad at this most of our existence

If the "are you any good?" check is done based on having a great attack, we have been bad at this most of our existence

If the "are you any good?" check is done based on having a good defence, we have been bad at this most of our exiestence

If the "are you any good?" check is done based on players consistently playing hard for the badge, we have been bad at this most of our existence

If the "are you any good?" check is done based on an academy that grows MLS quality players, we have been bad at this all of our existence

Our history is not something to be proud of


Whenever anybody say "a proud franchise" - I laugh - proud because of 2016.2017 & 2019....its not enough to consider yourself a "proud franchise used to success".


We have had some great moments


We have won a lot of Voyageurs Cups


It has been fun, it will be fun again (I remain optimistic that the soul crushing nature of this year will not continue even if the results next season are also poor)


But...this is not a stellar club within MLS


There are things we have done right compared to others


And, I enjoy going to games and thinking about how this team will rise again some day


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This has been a bad club - success is not our norm - functioning attacks or defence are not our norm.

Our norm is to lose more often then win.

Our norm is to be brittle and afraid and "Tobias time".


I am not proud of this club currently - I was proud for those 3 seasons of MLS cup finals



I support this club


It is ...my club


But...I am not proud of it

Our owners are intensely corporate and have no passion for what we love.

Our front office is badly out of their depth in a rapidly changing league.

WE had five good years with Lieweke, Bezbatchenko and Vanney (and many good support people like Devon and Corey) and that was it. Now, we're back in the purgatory of waiting for something positive to happen.

Next three games sure are going to be interesting.

Tfc is always among the league leaders in attendance; always among the top 3 in payroll; consistently in the bottom third of the standings; and likely winning their 4th wooden spoon.

First thing that TFC fans need to do is stop laughing at Montreal and Vancouver ownership. At least Joey Saputo cares.

I don’t think it is precisely right that corporate ownership itself is the problem. The Leafs and Raptors have both had long stretches of being contenders under the suits. But of course, with those teams, if they lose, the Board members hear about it. With TFC, nobody cares.

The issue is the corporate ownership in our niche, passion driven sport. That is a deadly combo. It is unfixable - unless the team is sold. I don’t know how that happens without utter commercial failure.

I just read “Scheisse, we're going up”, which is the story of Union Berlin (Berlin's longtime sad sack second team, which lived mostly in the third division unril recently). https://www.amazon.com/Scheisse-Were...5601099&sr=8-1

The point of the title is that the club has an amazing relationship with its fans, and the fear those fans had that success would wreck what made them special. They cared about the team culture more than the winning. Which, of course, led to winning.

We need some of that here. We were on our way to building it, we understood it (Paul Beirne did anyway) at the beginning, but that is long gone.

I fear I may conclude one day soon that I have to leave TFC to save them.

That is the point I was trying to make. MLSE doesn't give a rat's ass about TFC. On the other hand if the Leafs had 3 years in a row like TFC has had Shanahan would be long gone.

Having said that I don't understand why they don't put the team up for sale, especially given how much MLS team values have risen. MLS games are now on Apple TV so securing TV rights are no longer an issue. They don't promote the team. Neither TSN or RSN covers the club with any regularity. So why not put the team up for sale?

I'm not actually talking about ownership or causes - that's beside the point

I'm talking the basic thing here that


We are usually crap

Can we PLEASE drop the "we have a great tradition" or "we stand for excellence" or "we are proud of our history" when it comes to the quality of the product on the field.


We USUALLY don't win

We USUALLY can't play defence

We USUALLY can't put the ball in the net

We ALWAYS mess up our youth

We USUALLY don't make the playoffs in a league where that is not tough


We are not a good club at what this club is supposed to be good at - soccer


People, for some reason, thought TFC couldn't fail like it did prior to 2015 because...well....who knows.

Well guess what - we are failing...worse then prior to 2015.

So stop the whole "proud club" thing about TFC.

Focus on winning, growing kids and creating a better atmosphere at the games.


Commitment to excellence - oh please. How about actually DOING excellence.

The one thing I hear consistently from every pundit is


"...but yeh those fans...they love their soccer and deserve...."


You want to know what I am proud of when it comes to TFC


ALMOST NOTHING ON THE PITCH

VERY LITTLE IN TERMS OF WHAT TFC DOES FOR US AT GAMES


I'm proud of the supporters - that part of the club

I love going to games in the south end with kids smiling near to guys yelling obscenities

I love the multi-cultural compared to many sports in this twon

I love the comments

I love how people understand the game


I LIKE..yeh its weird but oh well.. I LIKE the fact that people go for 2 hours, cheer hard and regardless of result walk away having enjoyed the experience (to me that's healthy )


THAT part of the club...the people who go...that I'm proud of

The team? The players....the management? Until you commit to the basic basic tenet of corporate philosophy to be good wherever you can (results not as important as trying to get better) then...no...I won't be proud of you.

WHY?

Because....management and ownership are not good enough


Its the fans....they are worth being proud of.


So...no I'm not proud of TFC...I don't see a reason to be so.

But I am proud of who goes to watch these guys lose, with a corporate culture that doesn't take us into account as much as it takes good revenue options and keep going back.


And the next time some pundit says "Toronto has a proud history...." I'm gonna laugh.

I’ll go back to the comment i saw on Twitter a little while ago, which I will post over-and-over: TFC is not a football club it is a “soccer themed experience”

Any concept of forming a connection to this team is being sanitized away, primarily by poor performance but also by a corporate mentality of jamming your hand into the customer’s pocket the first chance they get and as shamelessly as possible. Basic operations of the team are an embarrassment too, which just compounds my bewilderment that Manning still has a job.

I might take a vacation from this soon to be honest. The plan to get better next year isn’t credible or worth following. I skipped watching the game today and it made for a better weekend than normal.

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Originally Posted by NK Toronto

That is the point I was trying to make. MLSE doesn't give a rat's ass about TFC. On the other hand if the Leafs had 3 years in a row like TFC has had Shanahan would be long gone.

Having said that I don't understand why they don't put the team up for sale, especially given how much MLS team values have risen. MLS games are now on Apple TV so securing TV rights are no longer an issue. They don't promote the team. Neither TSN or RSN covers the club with any regularity. So why not put the team up for sale?

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Bell/Rogers will eventually not own MLSE, that's a given. However MLSE being divested of TFC is another matter all together.

There isn't an individual or corporate entity in Canada that would solely buy TFC for footballing reasons. We're too small a club to not be amalgamated into a parent ownership structure like MLSE.

TFC makes no money, and probably hasn't in 90% of the years it's existed, its simply being used as a corporate write off. What's TFC's total yearly budget? Like 2-3 NBA players?

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Originally Posted by Richard

Bell/Rogers will eventually not own MLSE, that's a given. However MLSE being divested of TFC is another matter all together.

There isn't an individual or corporate entity in Canada that would solely buy TFC for footballing reasons. We're too small a club to not be amalgamated into a parent ownership structure like MLSE.

TFC makes no money, and probably hasn't in 90% of the years it's existed, its simply being used as a corporate write off. What's TFC's total yearly budget? Like 2-3 NBA players?

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I don't agree with these statements.

I mean “eventually” sports may not be important to cable, I agree with that, but it could be 10-20 more years, easy. As John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run, we are all dead.

Sure, cord cutting and going OOT are proliferating … but it's also actually going very slowly at the same time.

In the US, percentage of households taking cable satellite, whatever, has dropped from 88% to 66% since 2010. In the meantime…. these sports properties remain hugely important. Bell/Rogers own MLSE to stop others from owning it. In the hands of a startup, access to sports would be a competitive weapon to attract customers.

It's someone else spending$7B or whatever to buy the Leafs and Raptors that is hard to imagine. There are billionaires who might buy TFC. $500M is kind of affordable in billionaire land.

TFC has made Bogers executives (not Bogers itself) lots of money, and that is what matters in decision making. The appreciation of the sports teams has driven the growth in the stock price, and the suits all get paid via stock price appreciation.

It is the decline in the value of sports teams that would create the possibility of a sale. Not that I think that is particularly likely.

I think people over think it. Corporate ownership or otherwise, it's irrelevant. It comes down to good gm and bad gm. Ownerships role beyond that is to keep the money flowing and mlse do that more than any owners in the league

MLSE with bez produced the best team in league history. With Manning, the worst. Our owners need to be more ruthless with firing for bad performance there, but with the right GM this obviously works. Corporate ownership in sports is, sadly, completely standard and non noteworthy. We just need to get rid of our dead weight GM and get someone like Bez back running the team and, if they keep them money flowing, we'll be right back at the top

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Originally Posted by JoesphNdo

I think people over think it. Corporate ownership or otherwise, it's irrelevant. It comes down to good gm and bad gm. Ownerships role beyond that is to keep the money flowing and mlse do that more than any owners in the league

MLSE with bez produced the best team in league history. With Manning, the worst. Our owners need to be more ruthless with firing for bad performance there, but with the right GM this obviously works. Corporate ownership in sports is, sadly, completely standard and non noteworthy. We just need to get rid of our dead weight GM and get someone like Bez back running the team and, if they keep them money flowing, we'll be right back at the top

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Good point.

There isn't a consistent pattern in MLS between ownership type (individual or small group vs large integrated corporation) and success. In fact, it is some of the "small" groups that have held MLS back in terms of ambition.
MLSE has a lot of ambition, to their credit, it just has incompetence at the team President level. That's more a cultural issue than anything else.

I differ here. In the long run, it really is about the people at the very top, their incentives or willingness to pay attention, which leads to hiring the right people or replacing the wrong people more quickly when performance goes off the rails. It keeps those people they hire honest and puts checks and balances behind them.

All kinds of examples of this in sports. The best one I can think of is the comparing the Lakers to the Knicks. The Lakers are perennially successful, the Knicks are perennially a mess. The Lakers are controlled by a family where the team is basically a core part of their family history. The Knicks? They’re controlled by a guy who is a mix of Bogers and Joey Saputo, no wonder they are a mess.

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Originally Posted by ag futbol

I differ here. In the long run, it really is about the people at the very top, their incentives or willingness to pay attention, which leads to hiring the right people or replacing the wrong people more quickly when performance goes off the rails. It keeps those people they hire honest and puts checks and balances behind them.

All kinds of examples of this in sports. The best one I can think of is the comparing the Lakers to the Knicks. The Lakers are perennially successful, the Knicks are perennially a mess. The Lakers are controlled by a family where the team is basically a core part of their family history. The Knicks? They’re controlled by a guy who is a mix of Bogers and Joey Saputo, no wonder they are a mess.

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I don't think you're necessarily wrong, our ownerships big failing has been giving too much faith in someone who is obviously not upto the job.

But, put the right GM there, and we'll be one of the best teams in the league again. MLSE keep the money flowing to a point where it borders on complete irrationality on their part. We've seen it before, these owners with a GM who knows what they're doing and we'll be right back at the top again. If Bez doesn't leave and we somehow keep him for decades, we're not having this conversation. Our long term prospects are great. So that tells me where the problem lies, the variable is the GM seat

So MLSE need to do more in being ruthless moving Manning out and hiring well, and that is a fault of theirs, but they don't inherently stop us from doing well. We know with someone who knows what they're doing sitting on their money pile we'll be right up there again. So the ingredients are there even with our owners with a good GM in place, the problem is without one we'll shit the bed as we learned that all the money in the world can't dig you out of incompetent management in this league

^Why would “the right GM” want to work here?

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Originally Posted by ensco

^Why would “the right GM” want to work here?

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Same reason anyone wants to work anywhere, money. We have it. In spades.

And, we have the bonus of low expectations and high budget. You can make a reputation here, Bez did.

Actually as a GM we're kind of the dream job, and this was noted in the anonymous MLS exec survey. You'll get paid, you have more resources than just about anyone, and a fanbase that would probably celebrate finishing 6th like we won a title at this stage. It's like taking over Real Madrid budget and Real Madrid comp for you with Getafe expectations. There's a very good argument that we have the most attractive GM role in the league, and others have agreed with that

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Originally Posted by ensco

^Why would “the right GM” want to work here?

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IIRC they did a poll around the league and TFC was considered the consensus best job for a GM. Why? The respondents when asked literally lots of resources and zero accountability.

And I should note, this poll happened before Manning absolutely cratered us over the last year.

Interesting discussion.

Personally, I don't think fans "deserve" winning teams. It makes me cringe a bit when I hear that. Fan support shouldn't be simply contingent on winning. That's not really support. Sports is hard. Producing winners is hard.

Having said that, fans do deserve a team that with certain characteristics, like never giving up. That's where the current team seems to be falling down massively. That starts at the top and filters down. I also think money is a double-edged sword. I think we're in the mentality that money can fix the team quickly, so we're looking at Transfermarkt instead of doing the hard, 2-3 year work of building a team the right way. We take short cuts.

I also think there is something around a toxic environment between our supporters and the management and the team. I can't help looking at the Man U stuff going on right now and thinking we have some similarities there. Like the way Jadon Sancho has been turned on feels a bit like the Mark Anthony Kay situation. I can't quite put my finger on it - something to do with how a management looking for the quick fix and their own preservation mixes with a very reactionary fan base?

^^I see the argument you guys are making about why this could be an attractive job.

I'll agree to disagree.

I think there is way more dysfunction between MLSE Board and Manning than meets the eye. I don't believe Manning was in control of the Insigne/Bernadeschi thing, it's probably why he remains in his job.

Tanenbaum situation is very unsettled.

We have remote, uninterested, deeply ignorant, bosses ... who are always one bad quarter away from changing anything and everything. (Just ask anyone at CTV or Sportsnet.)

The evidence is that Leiweke is the only soccer exec of any statute to ever come here, and he came only for the whole MLSE enchilada. Nobody of stature has ever come to TFC, except maybe Kevin Payne.

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Originally Posted by ensco

^^I see the argument you guys are making about why this could be an attractive job

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It's attractive for two reasons;

First and this applies to Herdman; stepping stone for someone unproven or who is looking to re-establish themselves as relevant. Really nowhere to go but up and if the team could be elevated to 9th or 10th, it could be used on the CV to get a quick jump to somewhere better before we return to our natural state of being shit.

Second and something some anonymous MLS backroom people stated; it's an easy job. You get a lot of resources and bear minimal responsibility. If the team tanks then it won't be a complete stain as the whole set up is dysfunctional so it is often seen as a hopeless endeavor. It didn't prevent managers like Armas or Bob from getting quickly rehired and the pay is probably more than it should be too.

Money does not equal success.

Just look at present day Chelsea being run by that American clown

You need money, footballing knowledge and a ruthless disposition. The Abramohvic style of management is what this club needs.

TFC have only ever had money.

MLSE Board will never let non Americans/Canadians come create institutional footballing knowledge in this country, it's all about protecting the old boys network.

The one time we tried by that we undermined the whole plan by bringing in a GM who had the old school English mentality.

The footballing culture in Canada/USA stinks.

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Originally Posted by Richard

The footballing culture in Canada/USA stinks.

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Yeah, I'm increasingly not a fan. The lack of passion over hype is sometimes alarming. I know it wasn't their stadium and a day later, but the fact that they probably barely drew 1,000 fans to Red Bull stadium for the game is just staggering to me. Your club is playing, but ... it's delayed by a day, so you can't go?!? What kind of fucking fans are NYFC fans exactly?

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Originally Posted by ensco

I think there is way more dysfunction between MLSE Board and Manning than meets the eye. I don't believe Manning was in control of the Insigne/Bernadeschi thing, it's probably why he remains in his job.

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Hmmm... now THIS idea interests me, because it makes sense of something that seemed nonsensical: I was told by someone fairly close to the front office that his story about plucking them out of Transfermarkt was fiction.

The version I've heard is that former AGM/head of scouting Jack Dodd was tasked with finding two Giovincos, basically, and that they really wanted a striker and winger, as they didn't forsee getting rid of Pozuelo.

It seemed loony to me that he would've claimed credit for something so flippant, but if he was being directed to replace Seba, effectively, by those on high, he probably wanted to make it seem like he was in complete control. He wouldn't have anticipated it later going to shit.

But that would explain both the leeway and the flippant claim. Plus, it was a chance to seem grandiose about MLSE's strength: "I just flipped to the most expensive Italian."

Maybe the board looked at the revenue and sales spikes in the Seba era and told him "do that". Given his completely fucking up by handing control to Ali instead of retaining Bez, it might even have been "do that, or your fired."

It would explain a lot. Prior to last season, his staff had signed, in order, a Spaniard, an Argentine winger, a Mexican defender and a Venezuelan winger, EVERY ONE of whom fit the profile of an MLS skill-type player. Only two weren't problems, but none was Italian and in Serie A.

If they were so desperate under his reign to bring in more Italian-Canadian dollars or get more local clout, they'd probably have done it long before this year.

So why did the idea suddenly spring up now?

I think you might have something there. It might also confirm why he was agreeing with a lot of what Hernandez said in February and March but just refusing to pull the trigger on changes. He may have been told he has to get them to agree to anything.

I wonder if the "get Seba in" late thing was his or the board's, for that matter. Pretty damn sure it wasn't the coaching staff.

^This is credible to me. The likelihood that the Board gave the orders on the Italians has always seemed high to me.

The whole Larry situation has multiple kinds of toxic potential...

He is a construction guy making personnel calls.

He is 80.

He is operating in a vacuum created by warring factions in the shareholder base and on the board.

He wants and needs wins NOW, he is trying to sell his stake.

That is the case for maybe why this isn't a dream job.

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Originally Posted by Richard

The one time we tried by that we undermined the whole plan by bringing in a GM who had the old school English mentality.

The footballing culture in Canada/USA stinks.

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In fairness, the anointed Dutch saviour has done little of note since his departure. I think he was just too outside the norm to succeed here and had many flaws.

But I agree with your broader point. The various gatekeepers of football here make it hard for anyone outside the usual channels to break in here. Even good USL coaches don’t get poached enough. Bad MLS managers get recycled too often.

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Originally Posted by ensco

He is a construction guy making personnel calls.

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Cement shoes for everyone, haha

In all honesty is there someone either in this country or abroad that would buy TFC around the valuation of $680M Forbes has on them currently. The 6th most valuable MLS in the eyes of Forbes. With revenue projected at $62M and an operating income of $15M how attractive would this team be on the open market? Also the Apple TV deal from what I gather is not bringing in a great amount of money per club and in some ways actually hurts the exposure of a team's corporate partners. This team we love simply is not big enough to hold the attention of the board in any real way outside of maybe the said DP money that was spent on the Italians, especially if there is some sort of costly exit ie at least one buyout?

The only way we would like see a potential sale is if the team has fallen off a cliff commercial and they simply do not see it worth the effort, ie small potatoes but the 2026 World Cup is around the corner too.

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Originally Posted by ensco

I don’t think it is precisely right that corporate ownership itself is the problem. The Leafs and Raptors have both had long stretches of being contenders under the suits. But of course, with those teams, if they lose, the Board members hear about it. With TFC, nobody cares.

The issue is the corporate ownership in our niche, passion driven sport. That is a deadly combo. It is unfixable - unless the team is sold. I don’t know how that happens without utter commercial failure.

I just read “Scheisse, we're going up”, which is the story of Union Berlin (Berlin's longtime sad sack second team, which lived mostly in the third division unril recently). https://www.amazon.com/Scheisse-Were...5601099&sr=8-1

The point of the title is that the club has an amazing relationship with its fans, and the fear those fans had that success would wreck what made them special. They cared about the team culture more than the winning. Which, of course, led to winning.

We need some of that here. We were on our way to building it, we understood it (Paul Beirne did anyway) at the beginning, but that is long gone.

I fear I may conclude one day soon that I have to leave TFC to save them.

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^ exactly this, the real problem I have with TFC and its MLSE owners is that they have very good “media”/“social media” people. Bill Manning knew how to manage the fans on a high. He has no idea to manage the situation on a low and why he needs to go (regardless of the fact that he directly / indirectly caused this mess). This lack of engagement and hiding is just making it worse. We all know he caused it and he is accountable.

I question the numbers somewhat but don’t necessarily disagree, until we have full transparency on the Apple deal, we will never know if it is financially better or worse for MLSE. For sure not having the content available for content AND coverage on TSN is a big miss in the deal. There is no way to engage non SSH’s so that for sure is a huge miss. For other owners, clearly this was a win.

Spend 1/10th of the money that they spend on Bernie, hire a great crisis communications team and get a vision for the club again. HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO PRODUCE A RED SHIRT? And hype that we are back to basics. For anyone other than the Leafs, Toronto fans are more jump on the bandwagon fans than they are not, TFC had the potential to have a really solid core base. This situation is such a shame, there is no respect for the fan experience.

When you see long time supporters cancelling, and they are. It is brutal for the club, short and mid term. We have tried 2 quasi cheat rebuilds, rip it apart, keep a core and set the right expectations and try to really compete for 2025/2026.

The biggest problem is if the club had have ripped the bandage in 2021, we would be 2 years in and we could be aiming for 2024, 2025,2026 MLS Cup and CCL tournaments. Its time get your PR in place and #FIREMANNING

I am still on this question of our ability to compete for GM/President talent.

Let me just leave this quote from the CEO of Brighton here. Paul Barber is an interesting name because, to me, he would be the central casting "perfect" hire for Manning's role. Barber grew up at Spurs, then came over and ran the Whitecaps in their first couple of years in MLS, then left to go to Brighton & Hove Albion(where Paul Beirne worked for him for a couple of years). Barber rebuilt that team - but it took them 5 years to get to the EPL from the Championship.

Ask yourself, could you get someone like this to come here? If you threw enough money at them? The answer I think is no, because they know they simply wouldn’t be allowed the time to spend/build, or the autonomy, to do what they do…

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Brighton chief executive Paul Barber:

"We try to have players through our door before we need them. In an ideal world, you don’t want to be targeting a player right after you’ve sold one in his position, because everybody knows you’ve got money! A lot of work goes into that process of looking at players all over the world. The more data there is when it comes to recruiting that player or coach, the better, but there are certain markets where the data is thinner than others. The data will be thinner in places where, for example, players have a longer education or don’t feature in as many league games. When we’re looking at players from those areas, we combine our research to make sure we’ve got plenty of eyes on scouting and character referencing, to build up a picture as best we can.”

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Originally Posted by ensco

I am still on this question of our ability to compete for GM/President talent.

Let me just leave this quote from the CEO of Brighton here. Ask yourself, could you get someone like this to come here? If you threw enough money at them? The answer I think is no, because they simply wouldn’t be allowed the time to spend/build, or the autonomy, to do what they do…

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You're reasoning is why people would want the gig. All of the reasons you mention above we offer too much of but we have a boob taking advantage of the position. For example, Manning has had time (too much time with this many failures) and enough autonomy to ruin the team to the level of full scale tear down 3 times while still hiring his old boys network people and directly signing DPs himself. No pro sports executive anywhere would be allowed this many mulligans, with an increasing payroll, this many times. To say he hasn't had time or autonomy is just wrong.

If we ditched Manning and hired a smart football guy to run it all, it would work and he would have time & resources to do the job.