I'm not Vanney Out but Something Has to Change
This team as it currently sits mentally does not know how to beat teams. That first goal in RSL is inexcusable. Yes, Vanney called it out as amateur. But the place to stop that is on the training ground.
Getting in 2-3 players in the next window isn't going to change the fact that this team is a group of individuals who do not try hard enough & does not have a system that provides the comfort zone that allows them to succeed.
As anybody who has read my posts in here knows, I like Vanney. I think he is one of the better tacticians in this league, one of the better coaches & wants to play a brand of soccer I enjoy. But...
Like all coaches in this league, you prep for the next season starting in October/November. I believe he went into 2019 back in late December with the mindset that we were going to have Seba & VV & be playing a 3-5-2 / 4-4-2.
He thought, and the brain trust thought, that Laurent Ciman was the answer to the back woes. He saw width coming from DeLeon & a player to hopefully come in that window. Well, Ciman has proven to be not enough & the width isn't there.
Then, when VV left & Seba left, I think he had to adjust on the fly & made a poor choice to go for an attacking plan 4-3-3 / 4-1-4-1 rather than refocus on defensive stability in a true 4-2-3-1 where the DM's were locked down into a system of support & went with a defensive first mentality.
We are trying really hard to recreate the attacking prowess of 2017 TFC when we really should be focusing on recreating the defensive prowess of 2017 TFC. I'm seeing a system of late when we go up in attack - there is less of the pass the ball around the back mentality. It is obvious they have worked on it in training but these guys like attack so of course they would do that. It is really hard midseason to focus on defence but the training sessions moving forward have to start doing that. There has to be a system for defence in place - we can't be all about what we do with the ball. The days of "well Drew will tell us where to go" are over. This should mean benching a few players who currently start but there is something about all this that indicates to me that certain players know how to go really well in training without thinking about how to play defensively in games - this is on the coaching staff.
I think the brain trust gives Vanney until sometime in August to turn things around. BUT......if that happens, be prepared for not much to change until 2020 when Curtis' changes finally come through. The heir apparent is Robin Fraser who is both a Curtis man & a Vanney man - unless he goes to Cinci, he is likely to be the coach in 2020 if things do not change.