I hope Danny has more sense than to willingly step into the line of fire like that. The level of patience with this club is at an all time low, and it would place unrealistic expectations on his shoulders as a rookie coach.Originally Posted by ensco
Last edited by ManUtd4ever; 07-09-2012 at 11:18 AM.
And by now anyone looking at the coaching job here knows what a mess the FO is, they know they'll never be able to get much of the roster they want. This is probably the worst possible team for a rookie coach. And yet, who esle but a rookie would take the job?
uh-oh. here comes the dreaded "a lot of people" that're so widely quoted.
never get tired of a single statement being compared to the entire fanbase.
it's pretty well known that winter made the bulk of his changes in the back. we had something like 8 different pairings in 11 matches, but that didn't mean he didn't swap up top when it was warranted. i didn't find many complains that he was shuffling the back 4 as much as i found complaints that he didn't produce a winning formula yet. and as much as i enjoy the vast generalization, you're missing the point i'm trying to make..
3 games in 2 weeks (2 on the road in incredibly warm conditions) with the same physically demanding style is going to take it's toll on ANY team. unbeaten in 5 has now become winless in 3, with another match in two days and one on the road this weekend. if the team were pulling out convincing wins and playing like a cohesive unit, by all means i'd stay stick with the winning formula, but when we're dropping under 70% pass accuracy and 45% possession, we have a problem. look at what happened to the spurs this season (ie: look at the drop off by the end of the season). any judgment he would've gotten in a losing effort for swapping out a player would be easily answered by him going "yeah, road trip, 3 games in 2 weeks, he was gassed, it was hot.. what do you want?" in the postgame. now he's on the hook for playing a squad that looked dead tired halfway into the match. there's no hindsight here, the players we have on the bench would've been more than capable to at least grind something more outt've this game than 35% possession.
it was an idiotic move.
Can we really blame the FO for the squad of players we currently have? As far as I'm aware, Winter got all the players he was looking for? (2 DP's, Dutch contingent of players etc). There's no reason to believe that the FO would "stop" any manager getting the players he is asking for, is there?
I think barring some sort of miracle or an absolute truck load of cash, we are screwed in our search for a new coach. Who in their right mind would want to walk into this?
I'm sorry that I don't have time to go through the individual posts and name every single person to have claimed something. If you wnt that type of forum, then I have to leave this one, as I have a day job, like everybody else. I find picking on me/other people saying "generalisations" is hampering the aruments/postings here sometimes.
Ok, "a lot of people" is a generalisation, but what else do you want me to say? Individual names? I'm sorry I just can't do that! I'm working in an office and tryng to also get myself involved in a good conversation about my football team, I'm sorry I can't be specific every time!
Uh, yeah, I certainly would. I don't think either guy operated on an island while looking for new talent. Clearly there are players on the roster they are both responsible for.
I want to see what comes in this summer. If he can identify a player or two that improves this team, he can make a case for coming back next year. If he doesn't, I see no reason to let him continue.
see, that's the thing. this isn't a no win situation, and you're trying to refute hindsight with an assumption isn't helping your argument. if he did change the starting XI, you'd see the bulk of people who have an understanding of the game citing the fixture congestion as a reason for someone to be benched. when you've got players (like coach stated) that can swap out to rest others, it's bad managing.
hell, even mariner cited the team being tired as a major reason for the loss. could he not tell they were tired during training? or from speaking with them pre-game? or even think "hey, i started some of these guys (let alone THE WHOLE TEAM) for the past 2 games, maybe i should give a few of them a break", did they all of a sudden hit the pitch and realize they were tired?
I've posted this before, and I'll ask again, if anybody can answer:
Does anybody KNOW which players Mariner has been responsible for bringing into the club. I know of only two FOR SURE - Eckersley, and Lambe. (Ecks played for him at Plymouth, and Mariner was the one who held the press conference for Lambe when he arrived). Which others are Mariner (solely) responsible for? Anybody know? (so we can make a better judgment of the type of players he might bring in future, and better assessment of the players he has personally brought here already).
i don't expect you to do that, and im not expecting you to be specific every time. in the same light, im not expecting you to take one post and compare it to the sentiment of everyone else. trust me, im the same boat you are (work and conversation wise), so im not trying to jump down your throat or anything, my apologies if that's how i'm coming across. it's not my intent.I'm sorry that I don't have time to go through the individual posts and name every single person to have claimed something. If you wnt that type of forum, then I have to leave this one, as I have a day job, like everybody else. I find picking on me/other people saying "generalisations" is hampering the aruments/postings here sometimes.
Ok, "a lot of people" is a generalisation, but what else do you want me to say? Individual names? I'm sorry I just can't do that! I'm working in an office and tryng to also get myself involved in a good conversation about my football team, I'm sorry I can't be specific every time!
if it was just something you noticed about me, like if i had a tendency to flip-flop, i'd be cool with you calling me out on it, but i've seen way too many posts with "some people", "fans", "you guys", etc. it tends to make people on here antsy.
Having coached kids, its extremely difficult, sometimes, to judge when somebody is fatigued. You ask a player how they are and they are all enthusiastic "I'm GREAT". Then you play them. It's easay, afterwards, to see they were not great at all!
I would judge Mariner on this in the next game, not this one. IF Mariner plays the SAME starting 11 V Vancouver, then clearly he's got a screw loose and he's asking fir trouble. But I want to see that's he's learnt this lesson, and changing the starting 11 for the Whitecaps game.
Fair enough, point taken. (posting on here is a hell of a lot more interesting the work right now, anyways! It's even more interesting that I seem to have the opposite oppinion of "some people" on here too - haha. If I was just posting the same as everybody else right now, it would be rather dull on here!).
Portland Timbers presser today at 5:30p ET. Spencer sacked.
More than a few people said it at the time...they were just laughed at and marginalized. The situation with Dichio's "health" and the "league" forcing Carver to return to the side lines exposed our FO's lies for the first time. The people who pointed it out were out-numbered 10 to 1 back then, now it's probably 20 to 1 in the other direction.
gotta love that man's passion for the game. hopefully he'll get a new start (maybe NASL?)
Robin Fraser deathwatch is also on
Years have gone by and Ive 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 dont give a damn which team or country performs it.
-Eduardo Galeano
Winter went on record saying he wanted to keep DeRo, front office said no and he was traded away. Would have been a completely different team if Winter had gotten what he wanted.
Sacked? What does that mean?
I thought it was they were relieving Spencer of his duties after he refused the offer of a different role within the organization. Really, it's a promotion for the assistant!
They also got the timing of the presser all wrong. They should have waited until 1:00 pm on a Friday before the weekend and the day before one of the largest tournaments in all of world football.
#PTFCMAJORANNOUCEMENT
I don't see how John Carver should ever have been considered an answer to anything. Chris Cummings took the same team and got better results out of it, despite basically operating with more constraints than any other TFC manager has ever faced.
I personally thought he was a bit green but could have grown into a decent coach, providing we had someone else to do scouting etc...
Agreed about Cummins. I thought he earned the right to start the following season as head coach. He left with the best record of any TFC coach to date. It's not his fault that Mo Johnston interfered and forced him to play a formation he didn't agree with in that fateful match against NY on the final day of the schedule.
Let's not forget Cummins' exit interview with KJ in which he highlighted infighting, meddling and a cultural divide within the club. This was Molinaro's story back in 2009 focused more on the locker room than above. Note the comments by Jim Brennan:
...
But Cummins also painted a grim portrait of a franchise that's in a quagmire a team burdened with backstabbers and bad eggs.
Media speculation has run rampant the past few months about a divisive Toronto FC locker-room with cliques, feuding players and a general lack of team cohesion. Cummins didn't exactly substantiate those claims he's a decent bloke, as the Brits are fond of saying, and he understands the perils of burning bridges.
But he left no doubt that Toronto FC, which prides itself on its team motto "All For One," has serious player personnel problems.
"Yeah, there is," Cummins told reporters when asked if the club had any bad apples. "Every dressing room has poor characters, and maybe on that side of it I'd deal with certain people a different way.
"What I didn't like was at times people putting the knife in, backstabbing and talking about people, because we're in this together."
"I don't agree with that," Brennan stated. "I think we've got a good bunch of guys here. People want to say there are bad apples, so be it."Could there be a few rotten apples in the TFC barrel? Not according to team captain Jim Brennan.
Johnston said he had no knowledge of such player dissent in the locker-room, and stated that Cummins should have brought that to his attention so it could have been addressed immediately.
Cummins claimed he did tell Johnston and the GM's response was: "You get on with it, you have to deal with it."
For his part, the Englishman admitted he should have taken a more hard-line approach in disciplining the problem players.
"Unfortunately, if you let one or two in there that are not good characters, maybe I shouldn't have let them disrupt things as much as I did," Cummins said.
He also questioned the overall spirit of the roster, suggesting the team could use an injection of character players a sentiment echoed by veteran Canadian midfielder Dwayne De Rosario, who joined Toronto FC via trade from the Houston Dynamo in the off-season.
De Rosario explained the biggest difference between Houston and Toronto is that the Dynamo had more "spirit and fight" and "you had more hunger and more guys wanting to make a difference" in Houston.
"You can't force guys to have heart, you can't make guys have the desire to win," stated De Rosario. "Either you have it or you don't have it. Fortunately, throughout my career I've been around a lot of players that have had that kind of desire, [but] here it's been a little eye-opener in terms of that."
'We need to change the culture here'
Fellow midfielder Sam Cronin spoke openly about one of the club's biggest issues after last Saturday's humiliating 5-0 loss to the last-place New York Red Bulls, a result that effectively ended the Reds' dreams of clinching their first-ever playoff berth.
"More so than anything, we need to change the culture here, make it a winning, passionate group next season. I think it starts with a mentality and a kind of psychology of the team," Cronin said after Saturday's loss.
Johnston played down the rookie's comments, chalking them up to the sting of defeat.
"I think in the heat of the moment we all say things when we don't win, and I think in Saturday's case losing 5-0 in New York was devastating," the GM said.
But Cronin was just as insightful with his assessment of the club's woes on Tuesday, almost 72 hours after the debacle in New York.
"I was speaking about the team, and that as players we need to come into next year and the mentality needs to be different, and we all know that," Cronin explained. "I think the competitiveness and the way we approach every single day and every single game needs to improve."
The most interesting aspect of Cronin's startling indictment is the fact that it comes from a rookie who appears to be wise beyond his 22 years and isn't afraid to admit that all is not well with Toronto FC.
You would have hoped for the team's captain to come out and make such a bold and honest proclamation, to shake the troops up a bit and tell it plain and like it is. But he didn't.
Instead, Brennan chose to play it safe, as usual. The closest thing he said that would even mildly cause a stir was his rather tame comment that "maybe we don't have that urgency and that bit of desire to make the playoffs."
Maybe? No, Jim, there are no maybes about it. Ask Cronin, he'll fill you in.
As for Cummins, his most telling comment was the one he made to CBCSports.ca during a brief phone conversation as he packed to return to England.
"There's a lot more that I could have said but didn't for obvious reasons. Hopefully, people can read between the lines," Cummins stated.
Yes, there's something rotten in the state of Toronto FC.
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/stor...c-cummins.html
Not Carver, specifically, but his hiring/firing showed that the front office here was dysfunctional. MLSE put an inexperienced guy "in charge" so that the team could actually be run by someone higher up (as we've seen since). In fact, the first warning sign was when the assistant coach (who came from KC with Mo) left after the first year. It was so easy to say the problem must have been Mo (even though they'd known each other for years) when maybe this was the first time promises of promotion and raises were made by MLSE and not followed through (the first year coaches all got one year contracts and promises - only Mo actually moved his family to Toronto and when the lowball offer came in for yet another one-year contract, the other coaches didn't want to continue to commute from KC under those terms - of course, maybe this is all rumour...).
I've coached a lot in the past, and have done exactly the same thing as Coach.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
I know its easy to complain about Mariner NOT changing the team for a few games, and there eventually getting a loss "due" to that. But I'll be on the side, right now, that Mariner is still learning on the job. IF he plays the SAME 11 this next game, I would complain like everybody else. But, for the Philly game, I can see the case for AND against keeping the same starting line up. I don't think anybody can win on this argument really. We have NO idea if the result would have been different if the starting 11 would have changed. They guy son here that argue it should have been changed can't prove either way if it would have worked on or.
But like any coach, or manager for any company, you TRY and retain continuety until it doesn't work anymore. NOW, if hasn't worked, you see change. So, I expect there to be a change in the starting 11 for the Whitecaps game. but, personally, I'm not surprised at all that Mariner TRIED to keep faith in the same set of players that got him good results in the games before Philly.
"learning on the job"
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
Isn't he?"learning on the job"
Mariner said in his own words that his "Smart coaching staff knew the fatigue was coming" and yet he still trots out the same lineup. That's hard headed stupidity.
I don't think most teams play 7 games in 22 days and play the same starting XI for 3 games straight in the last 9.....even if they've won the last 3. There's always lineup rotation.
Especially teams with players that can easily be subbed in to replace tired players (like JDG for Dunfield and Soolsma for any one of our outside mids or even striker)
As far as I can tell there is nothing that Mariner has done that you're critical of. Strikes me as odd.
I'll say he's learning when I see evidence of it. Sucks that ML$E would stick us with yet another inexperienced coach.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
They are still getting the hang of the MLS coaching fandango. Eventually PTFC will be as experienced at it as TFC.
Last edited by Detroit_TFC; 07-09-2012 at 02:00 PM.
If you look back through all my posts on here from the very start of when time began(!), you will see I wasn't very critical of Winter to start with either! I'll give benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise!
Maybe I'm just an easy guy (or an easy manager in my company also!), I will allow a mistake once as its ONCE. When it happens a second time, THEN it starts becoming a pattern. I will criticise when its due. I don't think we can judge a guy accurately over a few weeks, long road trips, and hardly any training sessions with the full first team available.
Maybe I am just an easy guy!
I can agree to this, of course. At least Mariner has SOME knowledge of the MLS, unlike Winter!
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