The guy did have a good 2017, without question (can’t remember 16 one way or another). Now, whether that was down to the players around him or his own abilities might be called into question in retrospect but to give no credit is kind of insulting.
Moor spent a good chunk of that year out and Mivinga looked hugely suspect until he adjusted to the league. For large swaths of 2017 it has Haggs-Zavs back there and it looked like a good F’n pairing.
One (more) knee injury later Hagglund looks suspect and Zavaleta looks like he’s going to be turned or beaten for pace every play. In 17, he still wasn’t fast but looked incredibly smart when it came to knowing when to challenge / foul / how to position himself to mitigate the fact the other guy was faster.
At $300K a year, I am absolutely blown away that there is even a fraction of a thought spent defending Zavaletta and his salary/value to the team. He is the most over paid player in the league, based on return(which is of course our net filled with soccer balls). Even in his best year, the guy has no clue what he is doing out there and generally looks terrified any time the ball comes to his feet. He is terribly slow, terrible at passing and controlling the ball, he's just well, terrible. He should thank uncle Vanney for hooking him up with a sweet contract that is way more than he ever deserved, and allow us to give him away to the first team(sucker) thats willing to take him from us. I feel like he's been stealing a pay cheque from MLSE, and if this team is going to improve, its with his $300K of cap space.
When do you think the signing will be announced for moving up the allocation ranking... I hope a deal didn't potentially fall through.
Zavaleta in 2017 was good. Zavaleta in 2018 was shit.
Zavaleta in 2017 was worth maybe 250k. Zavaleta in 2018 was worth league minimum.
Bottom line: Zavs, even at his best, is not worth 300k.
We have a buy out and it should be used on him.
It would take quite a bit of incompetence to make a deal for the #2 slot without having an agreement with whomever the target is.
Don't forget - Defoe was technically not signed and could not be discussed until January. Meanwhile, they did a whole promo shoot with him in early December.
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As for Zavs, the same people that have never rated him are the ones that talk about it being nepotism - reminds me of the same people who don't rate Bradley because he left Europe.
Rate the quality of the play and whether he is value for the % of the cap - ignore the relationships.
His 2017 seasons was outstanding. His work in the CCL was good. His league work in 2018 was crud.
If he doesn't get better then he was in 2018, he's not worth it.
Last edited by OgtheDim; 12-16-2018 at 07:16 PM.
Thank you. This is an excellent summary.
It's bizarre, like a bunch of people literally have no recollection of us winning game after game after game after game with Zavaleta putting in great work in 2017.
Also $265K isn’t crazy money, it’s the price of eggs for non all star starters in MLS, which Zavaleta was coming into the season, and is around what both of Beita and Deleon made too.
I have no idea what the right answer with him is, btw. It’s really not obvious.
Last edited by ensco; 12-16-2018 at 09:14 PM.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
ben spencer is gone..now its time to pick on zavaleta,it was a off year for alot of guys,lets hope they bounce back if not next man standing thats sports.
Yes $265K is reasonable for a starting CB but all evidence points to TFC deploying a 4-3-3 next year. So that puts Zaveleta where on the CB depth chart? Mavinga, Moor, VDW?, Hagglung?, Zav? Worst case 5th best case 3rd. No other 'succesful' team pays a 3rd backup CB that kind of wage even less likely the 5th CB.
In 2017 Moor was healthy all the way, it was always Moor-Mavinga (each played 34 games) and one of Zavaleta or Hagglund.
Hagglund and Zavaleta had a good 2017 because they were the 3rd man on the coat tails of their much better 2 parters. Without these 2 leading and covering you get 2018 where they both look like USL level.
Anybody better then him is going to cost more.
A new cb is still ultimately needed as a high priority. That means one of zavaleta or haggling will need to be traded.
For me the order of centrebacks are 1)Mavinga, 2)New CB, 3)Moor/Vdw, 5) Hagglund or Zavaleta (1 to be traded), 6) Julian Dunn (potentially for gaining experience)
The only alternative I see is that Vdw becomes the new cb until deleon gets injured/needs break at rb. (vdw has said multiple times that cb is his original position at Ajax and he likes to play it).
Last edited by DinamoTFC; 12-16-2018 at 11:32 PM.
apparently cinci is after johnson...i dont think we would of picked up deleon if johnson was coming here,i still think we are looking at a american CB with that 2nd allo pick.
You lost me here. I wouldn’t recommend watching those matches (ptsd), but if you do, watch the whole matches in Mexico (all 3 of them). He was a deer in headlights.
This is my point. This team offensively wasn’t that bad in 2018. We were top 4-5 in GF for in the league. Are backline was historic bad. Yes some of that is on Auro, who isn’t a good defender (I like him going forward though), but Hagglund and Zavaleta proved that they can’t handle being starting CB’s, without 2 elite CB’s beside them.
How you can justify paying a 4th-6th CB $300,000 in a capped league once we get a new CB, is unfathomable.
And to be honest, even though I liked what I saw from Hagglund in 2017, he may have been worse than Zavaleta in 2018. He’s on thin ice. Keeping him though would be understandable because 1) He’s half the price 2) He showed “some” promise of one day being a starting CB for this team. But his passing is so bad, I don’t think that will ever happen.
I'm not justifying the price.
I'm saying
- he's unsellable now
- the closest player to him that we have is worth something right now
- we have nobody in the pipeline to replace him
- replacing him is going to cost about the same with no guarantees of fitting in
- he has potential to bounce back
Good MLS teams don't throw out what were good assets after 1 year of ineptitude - we gave Cooper 1.5 years for example.
All this is because our academy was a joke until 2015.
Moor has a suspected heart condition and missed a month of action. Mavinga was roundly panned for the first month or so following some poor play and was temporarily benched. The other guys stepped up during this time and at others point during the season. I’ll stand by my initial statement.
Last edited by ag futbol; 12-17-2018 at 07:56 AM.
^ They do produce players, they just don't identify them before they let them go to other clubs.
Here's a good trivia question for you ... name the four guys who played the most minutes on the best team in MLS history, I'll spot you Michael Bradley, Victor Vazquez and Justin Morrow....
https://www.torontofc.ca/stats/seaso...ld_filter_form
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
The thing with Zavaleta is that on our 2017 squad that had our best defense ever, he was pretty much our worst defender. Still okay but still the weakest link out there defensively. As our overall defense slipped this past season he slipped as well, maybe even more than the rest of the squad. He could be an okay depth CB but his salary is very high for that. I'd rather see us buy him out and use his $$$ plus a bit more to have a more solid, longer term solution in place to cover when Moor is gone. Zavaleta looked his best when beside Moor in the 3-5-2 and that formation is probably on the outs this year and this is most likely Moor's last season. I would rather us address this now or in the summer when the window is easier than wait until next winter and hope for the best.
It should also be pointed out that the season never really started until Mavinga figured out the league. Both he and Moor started more than 2/3 the games during the regular season. (by which I mean the team was trending with the rest of the league on a points per game basis and never separated from the pack until mid June)
Count me in as a Zavaleta detractor. That includes 2017. He was sheltered by Moor and Mavinga (and Beitashour) throughout the season.
His ratio of fouls committed to fouls sustained was almost 4:1, which to me says he was always in the position of having to recover rather than being pressured (I would expect fouls under pressure would break 50/50). And that is consistent with my memory of the games that year...
I think the absence of Beita was the single largest reason Zavaleta regressed. Beita is a very solid defending & back tracking FB whereas all his replacement options were more offensive. He really needed cover as his positioning, even in 2017, was poor. How many times did he get yelled at and have his proper place pointed to by Bradley, Moor, Delgado, Bono, and now VDW this past season? Multiple times per match. If we want to get back to being one of the best teams in the league you can't have defenders whose success (and more so failure) directly depends on who can cover for them consistently.
Boy we sure do love a scapegoat.
Comments are a maybe little overblown. I do agree with TFC1154ever above that Zavaletta got seriously exposed during the CCL though. He looked truly frightened with the ball at his feet. He couldn't play at that pace of game. Does ok in MLS though. I'd be fine if he goes or fine if they give him another chance.