Originally Posted by
Omar
That's true, Toronto doesn't have the patience to wait for a good team to form. Having said that, NYRB under Curtis were quite competitive. In the 2015 season, they won the Supporters' Shield and made it to the conference finals despite losing the likes of Thierry Henry and Ambroise Oyongo. In 2016, they led the Eastern Conference and made it to the conference semi-finals with a team that mostly consisted of NYRB academy products.
Basically, if a gap can't be filled by a local product, they'll look elsewhere for good players (see the NYRB Felipe Martins trade with Montreal Impact and Gonzalo Veron). With Vanney (and Bez), we were typically looking outside the club to plug the gaps. If there's a good local product who can take over the first team, then we'll bring them in instead. This started to happen last season with Ayo Akinola, Liam Fraser, and Ralph Priso. Don't be surprised if we replace both Jozy and Bradley with TFC academy products in the near future whilst looking elsewhere for a new CB (personally, I don't rate Romeo and Dunn as highly as I used to).
In short, our win-now approach will incorporate our academy products and finally make the academy a source of talent for the first team. Beyond that, we'll still spend money when it's warranted, but we won't necessarily be targeting the big-money signings if there's another player who can offer as much for less.