So. Manning. Been making notes for a couple of days.

Appointed President in October 2015.

Things he did together with Bez (and Vanney of course)

Hits:
- Moving on from a whole raft of guys: Jackson, Findley, Bendik, Kantari, Warner, Perquis
- signing Will Johnson
- moving Will Johnson to get Vazquez (this was massive, this counts triple)
- signing Chris Mavinga
- convincing Drew Moor to come
- trading for Clint Irwin
- trading for Steven Beitashour
- signing Armando Cooper in 2016
- signing Nico Hasler
- signing Auro

Misses
- moving Beitashour and signing van der Wiel (ugly mistake that will hurt us over multiple years – we could have dealt for, say, Lee Nguyen with the TAM we spent on van der Wiel, and have a ready made solution for VV departure there)
- Signing Aketxe (same point as above)
- Staying with Cooper in 2017
- Signing Janson
- Protecting Zavaleta over Edwards, and then signing Zavaleta (to be fair, a lot of us got this wrong too, tough to move a starter for nothing, coming off a championship year)
- General weakness of Academy and youth player development
- strategy to wait to deal with DPs until contracts expire (this is something that I think was a huge own goal, this was foreseeable from a mile away – this isn’t North American sports, players don’t just play out contracts if they have options – other shoe hasn’t dropped yet with Altidore but I think there is a real chance it will)

Things he did on his own

Hits

- staying with Bez, would have been easy to change him out
- staying with Vanney, didn’t move him out for his own guy (eg Kreis)

Misses

- poor field conditions at BMO Field
- All things Argos and ground share

Things he did with Curtis and Vanney

Hits

- identifying Pozuelo (I think, this may be premature)
- trading Hagglund for a boatload of assets (impossible to evaluate Deleon, Ciman deals yet)

Misses

- starting process to acquire Pozuelo on our own by triggering release without understanding situation
- general lack of readiness for 2019 season

Bottom Line

We went to three finals in 18 months and never lost any of them. That may not happen again in MLS in 50 years. He has a lot of goodwill stored up (for me anyways). But he is definitely depleting it.

He wins more than he loses on player acquisition. That’s all you can ask. But players came to play with Giovinco. The decline in his success rate may have something to do with that. The degree of difficulty got much harder as players realized Gio may leave, and of course now it’s just that much harder.

Biggest issue: that effing field had better get finally sorted this year. This has gone on for too long, and I definitely believe it cost us Vazquez.

Second biggest issue: young players. We are WAY behind what elite teams are doing, I hope there is urgency on that.

For me, those two issues are bigger than wins and losses in 2019. Not that anyone gets a free pass on wins and losses two years in a row. But if we are a middling team with an identity, and the field and youth issues get sorted, I am OK.