This Company MLSE does not deserve this team Or its Supporters.

[Fort York Redcoat]

What proof do you have that being owned by MLSE isn't shambolic?

I don't need to prove that. It's what's happening right now.

I don't trust this community from what I see to own and run a team. Do you see any indicators this community could work together?

[MightyDM]

I don't need to prove that. It's what's happening right now.

I don't trust this community from what I see to own and run a team. Do you see any indicators this community could work together?

I don't see why we cannot. There is a strong history of community owned teams. Toronto is a bit large but that's the only challenge I see. Couldn't really be worse, could it?

[jazzy]

I read the doom and gloom and I just don't get it. I'm actually considering whether I get back in on season tickets for 2015.

The way I see it is that with Tim L leaving, a new President needs to be put in place. I can't see Tim B running the show at this stage. Therefore, this current power void is temporary.

The new guy will simply either keep Tim B (if he is doing a good job) or will install his own GM.

That means that the clock on Tim B is running and he has a short window to seize and secure his job in advance of Tim L's replacement. That means winning.

He has the balls to make the decision on Nelsen. If all goes well today, TFC will no longer have the boat anchor that is Defoe's contract (injuries and no budget relief for injured players and all of that). I don't think any of that will be Bez's doing. Defoe wants out and any deal would need to be approved by the Board. But still, it will be a bit of a fresh start.

Vanney either does well or he won't be back. It's either win or be replaced and this time they actually have a roster that should be able to do it.

And with multiple draft picks next year, they can actually start to rebuild the way that works in the MLS… via the draft.

So, I'm not seeing the downside.

Fans in the stands sure but there is no danger of the franchise folding… MLS owns it. It might look and sound like New England but it kinda already does.

who is this imposter? giving a positive glass half full view of the future . I'll scare myself and say I agree with this and I actually feel better today than I did after that piece of crap game I saw Sat night . Everyone I know who are ardent , knowledgeable supporters and ( I am not including myself as that knowledgeable) , were dumbfounded after Sat nights game . The team was adrift without a rudder . Something had to be done . I'm especially happy I don't have to listen to anymore 'all is good Nelson post mortems' ....Tired of being the laughing stock of the league .

[Oldtimer]

It's not necessarily stupid or blind to support an imperfect team. It depends on what you value. You can always be a bandwagon jumper for this year's top epl side.

If you mean the RPB should be protesting, forget that as far as I'm concerned. Been there, not going back. Not this season. Not ever.

[inheavensince07]

It's not necessarily stupid or blind to support an imperfect team. It depends on what you value. You can always be a bandwagon jumper for this year's top epl side.

If you mean the RPB should be protesting, forget that as far as I'm concerned. Been there, not going back. Not this season. Not ever.

With all due respect "Oldtimer" I have followed you and your views since the beginning and IMO you are part of the problem .. Again that is my own opinion to which I am entitled .. fyi I don't care about the EPL or any soccer team enough to jump a wagon.. I strongly disagree with you OT and always have ..

RPB will continue to do what you want as a unit but I firmly believe it is time to drop this team like a old pair of gitch ..

[Phil]

What do you mean ? stick with them and keep their bottom line on forecast ? Or stand up and use your power .. Just in some quick thoughts , i figured out that if RPB had 500 people that wanted to stop with $500 / season ticket that would hit their precious bottom line by 250,000, not to mention all the game day spending each week .
This group has been strong since day 1 , BUT i really don't think it has used its powers properly .. THE RPB make the game what it is down there thats the bottomline ..

Asking the group to not renew or support this club is certainly not a mandate of this group.

[Fort York Redcoat]

I don't see why we cannot. There is a strong history of community owned teams. Toronto is a bit large but that's the only challenge I see. Couldn't really be worse, could it?

If you can't see how divided people are in opinion in this community...then stick around- you will.

[Fort York Redcoat]

RPB will continue to do what you want as a unit but I firmly believe it is time to drop this team like a old pair of gitch ..

Read this again. You're asking the support to drop the team? I thought you wanted a protest by dropping tickets. Really, if you expect people to follow you should choose your words more carefully.

[Phil]

I don't see why we cannot. There is a strong history of community owned teams. Toronto is a bit large but that's the only challenge I see. Couldn't really be worse, could it?

Given the current cost of the team - we paid what, $10 million and its gained value since then, massively. So right there, a new MLS team is what - $70 million a franchise. Here is the kicker, MLS owns the team and we bought the rights (MLSE in this case). So even under what you say is done throughout history, I don't think there is one case of this working on such a large scale and with a single entity league setup.

So community owns it, then we better start selling the players because it doesn't take much to figure out that the team is operating at a loss given the payroll. It would be great, we would all own the team, then have to up our seasons price and protest ourselves at the same time for money gouging ourselves. Sorry but I find it comical when any degree of logic is applied to this scenario. I do appreciate the idea, its just the realities around it that are being misunderstood.

Lets not even start to tackle the logistics of actually purchasing the team from MLSE, I am sure they would love to part with their heavily invested in team.

[MightyDM]

If you can't see how divided people are in opinion in this community...then stick around- you will.

I've been around, don't worry. Personally, I would like to do more than bitch and moanabout MLSE.

[Fort York Redcoat]

I've been around, don't worry. Personally, I would like to do more than bitch and moanabout ML

Do me a favour. In all sincerity, just find out what communities own sports teams and how it came about. Then just pick some comparable leaders in this community to shed the image of a fan-operated club. It would be a better sell on the idea.

[MightyDM]

That's fair enough. I fully understand why these boards don't give you hope but if the first response to a new idea, that has worked well elsewhere, is to crap all over it, then we are all as bad as each other. "How would it work?" is a better response to my way of thinking than "we are all too stupid to do it"

[MightyDM]

The Green Bay Packers are a publicly owned non profit company with 352,427 shareholders. It was started in 1923, and has five separate calls for capital, the most recent in 2012. There are community owned models that work.

[OgtheDim]

The Packers are a religion.

The Green Riders were a mess for 30 years.

To me, this idea is like the pro / rel discussions. Not every idea works somewhere else.

[Phil]

The Green Bay Packers are a publicly owned non profit company with 352,427 shareholders. It was started in 1923, and has five separate calls for capital, the most recent in 2012. There are community owned models that work.

Most teams that have this type of ownership failed at some point and didn't have the support of a company so community ownership stepped up right?

I just don't see how MLSE hand over this team, or how the MLS does. They want strong ownership and would relocate or re brand a team (ala Chivas) vs some of the proposed ownership models. Even if the MLS revoked our team, there is such demand that they would probably put it into a different market.

[james]

Alright MLSe is not selling the team. It is a pipe dream that people don't even understand how this all works. Might as well just change this subject.

[Oldtimer]

With all due respect "Oldtimer" I have followed you and your views since the beginning and IMO you are part of the problem .. Again that is my own opinion to which I am entitled .. fyi I don't care about the EPL or any soccer team enough to jump a wagon.. I strongly disagree with you OT and always have ..

RPB will continue to do what you want as a unit but I firmly believe it is time to drop this team like a old pair of gitch ..

Since the beginning? You mean October 2013 when you joined this board? Or earlier? My opinions have changed greatly over time since 2006 when I was an original on Simon's board, or when I first started following MLS in 2005 or the Toronto Lynx before that. If my opinions have changed so much, which opinions do you mean? My current ones against protesting? My joining in protesting in 2011? My gladness at just having a top flight team of our own in 2007? My feelings when the Blizzard folded? (Yes I am that old).

If you believe that the RPB should drop this team, then . Be true to your values and drop the team, I'm not even sure why you would waste another 10 seconds discussing this team. I don't spend a second on the Toronto Rock board because I don't really care about them (sorry to any Rock fans).

[Fort York Redcoat]

What do you mean ? stick with them and keep their bottom line on forecast ? Or stand up and use your power .. Just in some quick thoughts , i figured out that if RPB had 500 people that wanted to stop with $500 / season ticket that would hit their precious bottom line by 250,000, not to mention all the game day spending each week .
This group has been strong since day 1 , BUT i really don't think it has used its powers properly .. THE RPB make the game what it is down there thats the bottomline ..

This isn't the first suggestion from a Registered User to the group. If you don't think we've used our power properly than it sounds like we could've used your help. You could've become a member. You still could if you weren't giving up on the team.

Anyway, thanks for the input but I'm not quitting my seasons tickets.

Good Luck

[trane]

For the first time we have a front office that is dedicated to winning in word and action. I am not protesting anything. I was very much against MLSE, but this is the first regime that really got something done, and continuous to show that it is serious about winning. We need to support them.

I did give up my season tickets, and now I have worked out a deal to get new ones, in 115. Your timing is way, way , way off.

[trane]

By the way guys, Nelsen did some good things, sure, but he had his kick at the can, and he won 3 out of 13 at a critical time of the season, ANY serious FO would have fired him, and they showed balls in doing so. (Listen I was not even calling for his sacking but in retrospect it was the right thing-as for the new hire, I have not clue if it will work and that does worry me a bit, but as far as firing it was called for).

I find it funny, that now that we finally have serious leadership some are calling for a protest, years after many of us, former-RPB ( and I hope for me future) had taken up the fight already.

[Ultra & Proud]

Trane is right. If the FO sat around until the season ended and let the team tank then you could accuse them of not wanting to win. The fact that they are making difficult calls to try to save the season rather than to save face shows me all I needed to see. Right or not at least Bez took a stand and made the hard choice.

[Oldtimer]

For the first time we have a front office that is dedicated to winning in word and action. I am not protesting anything. I was very much against MLSE, but this is the first regime that really got something done, and continuous to show that it is serious about winning. We need to support them.

I did give up my season tickets, and now I have worked out a deal to get new ones, in 115. Your timing is way, way , way off.

You know Trane, I wanted to give Nelsen a chance, it seemed like he was learning, but you can't argue with results, they were dismal.
Kudos to Bez for making the hard decision. So I am in total agreement with you.

[Phil]

Gotta say, trane has been bang on with a lot of my feelings this past year.

[Ivy]

Kudos to the execs for keeping this thread open. If it were up to me, I would have shut down and deleted this disrespectful thread long ago.

[OfficeGuy]

#ForeverRED

Boycotts are not what RPB is about

We need a good cry and then we need to pick ourselves up and support our Team

[tfcleeds]

You know Trane, I wanted to give Nelsen a chance, it seemed like he was learning, but you can't argue with results, they were dismal.
Kudos to Bez for making the hard decision. So I am in total agreement with you.

Not sure how hard a decision it was exactly - when you basically rip your boss to shreds in a presser, you can be pretty sure your days are numbered. However, I do agree with the decision. Nelsen may yet become a good manager, but this season was slipping away under him.

[Masked Man]

Not sure how hard a decision it was exactly - when you basically rip your boss to shreds in a presser, you can be pretty sure your days are numbered. However, I do agree with the decision. Nelsen may yet become a good manager, but this season was slipping away under him.

Bez needed to suck it up & take one for the team there. Instead he canned Nelsen & probably put this season in real jeopardy by creating instability & dysfunction. There is no way this team has a higher chance of making the playoffs with Vanney then they would've had with Nelsen. Regardless of what you believe about Nelsen as coach, his firing was a pure knee-jerk move.

As far as MLSE goes. Honestly, they are a complete & utter plague upon sports in this city. I found it interesting combined with all the Nelsen stuff going on, the Defoe thing leaks at the same time. Already starting those rumors so they don't have to look bad when they sell Defoe.....

Seems like Leiweke was the only one in that operation that understood long-term vision & investing now to reap rewards later on.

[Shakes McQueen]

I think saying MLSE doesn't "deserve" this team, is looking at it in a wonky way. MLSE put up the money for an MLS franchise. MLSE made the necessary deals to get a stadium built for their MLS franchise. If someone better wanted to come along and do it, where were they? Where are all of the white knights, coming in to do "better" than MLSE?

MLSE purchased the team, and we all made a conscious decision to support it. We had the option not to - we still do. It's not like supporting TFC is some generational thing that's been passed down for the last 100 years - the team is less than a decade old. They are peddling a new product, and you had/have the option not to consume it.

[dutch]

We use to bitch about Anselmi. We knew peddi and his legion of idiots did this to us. Yet Anselmi left and 'roger&bill' came in shortly after and still peddi has his power. I want to know who hired lewicki and gave him a golden egg contract, where he vacationed in Toronto with our media for a year and got to go home unscathed. I believe peddi still has the ears of whatever audience happens to surround his percentage interest since theyre all newer than him to the MLSE game. Roger and bill havent been here long so they let him have a full swing and believed his perfect pitch. I now want them to find a way to kick him to the curb, buy him out like all our other athletes. I'm not mad man, I'm more confused but I know he has been behind so many of our problems since 07. he was anselmi's boss, leiwicki's boss and the next guys boss will also be hired by peddi unless we make it known he dosent deserve a say in this bloody mess anymore

[Shakes McQueen]

We use to bitch about Anselmi. We knew peddi and his legion of idiots did this to us. Yet Anselmi left and 'roger&bill' came in shortly after and still peddi has his power. I want to know who hired lewicki and gave him a golden egg contract, where he vacationed in Toronto with our media for a year and got to go home unscathed. I believe peddi still has the ears of whatever audience happens to surround his percentage interest since theyre all newer than him to the MLSE game. Roger and bill havent been here long so they let him have a full swing and believed his perfect pitch. I now want them to find a way to kick him to the curb, buy him out like all our other athletes. I'm not mad man, I'm more confused but I know he has been behind so many of our problems since 07. he was anselmi's boss, leiwicki's boss and the next guys boss will also be hired by peddi unless we make it known he dosent deserve a say in this bloody mess anymore

This paragraph is hard to follow, to say the least, but Peddie hasn't worked for MLSE since the end of 2011.