Keep Him
Scrap Him
I dunno if I want Winter to be scrapped, because despite supposed personality conflicts between Winter and his players in the locker room, the players are still playing hard. They didn't quit at Rio Tinto.
Once I see that the players have lost complete faith in Winter and just won't play for him, I'll call for Winter's sacking
“Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.
I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’
And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
-Eduardo Galeano
At some point you gotta either pick the coach or the players, no? There's a million posts around here about how bad the players are, how many need to go, what a train wreck the team is. Then there's also the posts about getting rid of Winter.
Are we really at a "blow up the whole damn thing for the millionth time" scenario?
There was a post a while back about a dressing room divide between the new Winter system and a more traditional one. Seems to me if that's true then we're either gonna trust Winter to get the other half of the players he needs, or we're gonna be a team that submits to "player power".
There's a decent poll in there somewhere........ Manager tactics vs player power. Which would you prefer?
A coach that wins the respect of all his players and can motivate them, rendering the question of player power moot. Thats what i would prefer.Originally Posted by cmonyoureds
I don't like Winter to be honest. Carver I liked, Winter I'm indifferent to.
Winter's record is shit. but the goal of the club is to establish a system from the top down. The job isn't finished, it's still in the tweeking phase.
Hate to break it to people, but we are not going to turn the team around and be successful in the long term by constantly changing managers whenever there is a hiccup is the road. Another month or so (June) will be when we will really know the overall state of the assets we have and need.
Everyone knows we need CB's, that is a no brainer. It's killing us.
But do we have the other pieces in place or do we need to move players out? Is Plata really a starter? Avila has shown he is the right person to play the mid, but who is our other guy? Silva is too young to be a full time starter.
There are much more bigger holes in this club than in the managerial side of things.
I guess you didn't read the full post. Maybe if you did you wouldn't be as confused as you are.
Try reading the full thing, then make your comment. Makes you look less like a "flame" poster as you so rightly pointed out.
I'll help you out and post the rest of the post that actually finishes off my thought with what I posted.
Like any developmental process, there is always a stagnant period before the next step of evolution. Unfortunately this stagnant period happened right that the beginning of the season and is being capitalized on by our opponents.
Perhaps some players are tapped out in the potential category?
Do you actually think that guys like Harden, Aceval and Dunfield have more potential than what we are seeing right now?Or that someone like Cann is going to all of a sudden bloom into John Terry under another coach?
As for a large chunk of the other players, they are under 22 and still developing. You cannot expect them to constantly be moving forward in their development ALL the time. There are hiccups in that process, but they should be able to more forward from it. That's why it's not a good idea to have youth as the main make up of your starting 11 or bench.
We just saw Avila break out and hope it continues for a bit.
Plata is clearly currently tapped out and needs to break through somehow - sure he had a great game against Santos, but what else has he done in the 7 games we've lost? Hence the reason he is coming off the bench - give him small amounts of playing time that is full of big successes on the pitch and his confidence gets built up and hopfully he has the same breakthrough Avila had.
This is player development 101.
Playing a guy 90 minutes every game, have him shit the bed and then get dumped on by everyone everywhere - a la Lombardo, Vitti etc - isn't going to help a 21 develop.
Last edited by jabbronies; 04-29-2012 at 04:43 PM.
So to answer the poster's question... which was "what kind of results would you need to see to believe Winter was 'not' getting the most out of his players?" ........
Seriously, what is the fail condition?
Playoffs/being competitive by August
So once were mathematically out of the playoffs, if Winter is still too spineless to resign, will it be acceptable for MLSE to fire him?
This team was suppose to be competitive out of the gate this year.
you are a kind boss my friend
That has been my stance, and I'm pretty sure the stance of everyone who feels he shouldn't be fired yet, in this whole thread
^ So you are OK with sacrificing another season, just in case that winter, may turn this around, even if every indication is that he will not turn it around?
This is when I start thinking that it may be hopeless, that perhaps this town does not deserve a winning football club. However, to be fair I am not sure how many people would acctualy support your stance on this at this point. I always thought 10 games was good enough to get a solid sense were the club is heading, at this as the best that they can do, is 9 points out of 30, clearly it is not happening.
Listen I hope Winter turns it around, but clearly the overwhelming evidence, is that he will not be able too, and that hence the best thing for the club is to turn to a new chapter, and even perhaps even make the playoffs.
This was my problem LAST season, and leaving this to the last minute is going to mean sacrificing NEXT season.
I agree Trane, people get what they deserve.
I used to be in the "keep Winter till end of season, let him get out of his own mess" camp myself. But it's getting to the point of embarrassment. How long will we give him to turn it around? When we've ensured the winless start to a season record will never be broken? I don't even think MLSE will let it get that far.
Yes, let's piss away another season while we wait for the locker room to give up on the coach.
That's like a medical science (ie our results) telling you that you have skin cancer (ie we'll fail again to make the playoffs and have the worst starting record in MLS history, with no reasonable, foreseeable prospects for improvement) and you deciding that, while serious, it's just a rash for now (ie the players are still playing hard), so you'd prefer to wait.
I don't see the sense in it.
Butter?
Toronto FC baby...best team everrrrrrrrrr -Jozy
^ Apperently we deserve rotten moldy butter.
Did you actually say "bloom into John Terry?" You want Adrian Cann to become a dirty, racist, wife-shagging twat?
I remember when people were calling Cann 'a beast'
The undeniable truth is that under this coach these players are playing worse than ever.
To Preki's credit, under him at least guys like Cann looked like MLS starters.
Moderator
He's just about out of time with me (though not quite yet). "Seeing out the project" would be more easily defensible as a stance if the team was even just garnering middling results, that weren't quite where they needed to be. We have zero points, and zero wins in seven attempts. Managers in every other sport have been fired frequently for a lot less, and despite having a far longer list of accomplishments.
Winter was given a year to impose his culture, and his system on the team, and I defended that all the way last season. I liked a bunch of the roster moves he made (though not all - but no GM bats 1.000 on that front). I also liked most of what I saw out of our spirited CCL matches this spring. This wasn't supposed to be a year of "adjustment" for the team, or "valleys" between the peaks - it was supposed to be a year of results.
At some point every one of us has to reflect within ourselves, and decide what our personal breaking point is. Is it 0-10? What if we are 3-17 after 20 games? Do we let him ride out the full season, even if this pace continues, for the mere sake of stopping the carousel of new coaches? Is that a reasonable position to take?
I was actually fine with hiring a manager with a decent European pedigree, but no first team managing experience. However, that also means that when your team starts the season 0-7, there is no past success, no storied CV to point to, to justify why things will get better. You justifiably have less rope.
At this point I still have a small reserve of patience left for this coach, but I mostly understand why others do not. Part of my "patience" stems from simply not seeing anyone else available right this moment, who could do any better without restarting the "rebuild" loop for the nth time. And part of my patience stems from simple confusion at how this team could play MLS sides so much better in a tournament, but look impotent nearly every week in the league. However, that's faint praise at best.
Aside from that, I have little to say about our current situation. I'm not angry. I'm not even apathetic. I'm just sad. I have no interest in fighting with the people who feel differently from me, or making them feel bad for their opinion. If you're still upbeat about this manager, and what he's doing - bless you. I'm glad for you.
- Scott
Last edited by Shakes McQueen; 04-30-2012 at 06:51 PM.
“Heroism breaks its heart, and idealism its back, on the intransigence of the credulous and the mediocre, manipulated by the cynical and the corrupt.” ~Christopher Hitchens
^ Wow, Shakes I feel almost exactly like you. Difference is that I think he should be let go, not because I want him fired, it will be sad when they do, but because I want to see us turn the page on another sad chapter for this club.
But honestly a part of me still hopes he can proove me wrong and turn things around.
He was a defensive coach, so of course the defenders looked better. We averaged under one goal a game under Preki, so the forwards sure didn't look better.
The past coach-present coach thing, to me, is pretty tired. The only coach we've had who got better-than-average results was Cummins, who had a winning record.
Moderator
I have a faint hope that maybe just getting that first win will be a turning point for the team. Getting that emotional monkey off their back, temporarily stemming the tide of supporter negativity about the team, and letting them get their feet back under them. You could see it after the RSL game. These guys are playing with the world on their shoulders right now, as they should be.
Just win a game, already. Give us something to hang onto for a week. The hope that maybe this long nightmare is over, and they can still play like we thought they could. I'm just so tired of hirings, and firings, and drama, and people at eachothers throats because we have no team success to unify around, and wasting more words on MLSE.
Just... fuck, man.
- Scott
“Heroism breaks its heart, and idealism its back, on the intransigence of the credulous and the mediocre, manipulated by the cynical and the corrupt.” ~Christopher Hitchens
^ Yep. Not much more that I can say.
Im sensing a feeling of betrayal here.
Honestly, I defended Mo till I was blue in the face and I felt utterly betrayed once I clued on to his game. It may be why I was reticent to give Winter a chance, and immediately called for an experienced coach and an end to the technical spin that was being fed to us.
You know, fool me once and all.
Whereas I'm in the exact opposite boat. I wrote a fairly widely distributed column in season two saying Mo was quite obviously as much a snake as Celtic fans played him to be, and that there were obvious signs he was responsible for many of our problems. I guess I'm reluctant to give up on Winter for the opposite reason -- he actually has a plan, he actually has made some changes that I see as positive, including the general style and he has been handcuffed to a degree Mo wasn't by having someone else sorting his players for him that might want his job.
Objectively? I think he might be a good coach...in europe, where players are technically more sound and less inclined to play full-field pressure 24/7, and where he has no inherent biases that might get in the way of good decision making.
Here, there are just enough indications that I can't blame the players or personnel outright: the lack of tactical adaptation to different teams with different looks, the stats demonstrating our poor linkup play (low pass percentage), tackles on our own end (nearly double the next worse team), general lack of belief among the players -- they have heart and effort, but little fire and determination.
I suspect he's a good technical instructor, which is what he was doing as a youth coach, but if he were the long-term answer, we'd have a couple of wins.
^ We're really going in circles here, but there's nothing specific about Winter. Even if this plan is the right one, what made him the guy to bring in? It doesn't seem like there was concern given to the three-quarters of the roster that would be made up of MLS players and how it might be best to coach them, or to cleaning up the mess TFC was left with. This may nit be Winter's fault at all, but upper management knew that there was a divided room and they seem to have not considered this at all. I'm just surprised it took Anselmi so long to say "they" have to work it out.
All points back to a certain corporate mindset...
I gave too much stock to Mo's playing career, forgetting that the best ex-player managers with no experience are ones that coach the teams they played on. My attitude to MLS was pretty much the same as Winter's is now, and I used to blame Mo's players for not being able to adapt to 3-5-2, and the fieldturf, and the roster restrictions, and anything but Mo.
Also as it was the first year, I felt we had much more time to develop whatever Mo's system was, than Winter should get.
Bhoybobby used to chide me relentlessly, and I took that as typical Celtic bitterness, and god was I wrong. He used to point out that the league was much better than I was giving it credit for, a belief I arrogantly dismissed as serving Bhoybobby's argument. But in the end he was dead right.
Once I stopped viewing Toronto, like I view Liverpool (I will never downtalk Kenny Dalglish, the players or fans) it all became much clearer and thats were the feeling of 'betrayal' kicked in. Mo made a fool out of me, and I have no qualms coming on here and saying, yep I was dead wrong back then, worse, I was a fucking idiotic loudmouth twat, and the rep I earned back then still haunts me.
Im sorry, but many of you are going to have to do some of the same soul searching that I had to do.
Winter has made asses out of a lot of people on here,.
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