In the MLS season I’m not sure if you could blame him for more goals per game than Moor or Mavinga. He was awful vs the team from Panama but the whole team was. He deserved criticism but now he is playing better. Moor barely played and has lost a couple of steps and Mavinga is prone to giving up penalties. Mavinga is basically an expensive Doneil Henry now.Originally Posted by Menelaos
Nick Garcia was a top defender for KC from 2000-2007 where he logged 224 games. He was the youngest MLS player to ever log 100 starts. However by the time he arrived at TFC he was as slow as molasses. He was only 30 at the time, same age as Omar. It's reasonable to be cautious, that's not judging already that Omar's no good.
Last edited by Oldtimer; 06-04-2019 at 03:31 PM.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
I would rather have a few years younger Moor at the back than any of them but that's not happening. As it stands, this season Mavinga has cost us his fair share of goals against. He is near the top of the list on poor positional play, over extending himself, and coming out too aggressively and leaving space behind. Recently, Ciman's positional play has improved as has his habit or drifting too far upfield. He will always be over aggressive when closing down as that's his make up just like Mavinga. The difference is that Mavinga still has himself way, way out of position and that's why he requires every bit of his athleticism to make goal saving tackles and unless he is 100% you end up with bad tackles which have already led to penalties and fouls in dangerous positions.
And that’s just it. The league has grown in quality, we will have to see if OG is still the force he was.
I think it’s fair to ask if we are signing the best option available for the money or the one that is top of mind for a front office that seems to love anything USMNT.
I shall have to agree to disagree on Gonzalez. His best years were when he had aj delagarza guiding him, just as we had
Moor leading the line in 2017.
As soon as he was forced to make his own judgments he became error prone and by the time he left Galaxy fans weren’t exactly miserable. The year after he got his DP deal his play began to diminish and by most reports he has never been the same.
So I’ll be happy if he comes good, but i suspect he’s another Ciman, good with a line leader but not leading the defence himself.
Oh and Ensco, if they really pay attention to this stuff, which I highly doubt, the message should be ‘compete, win, prove you belong.’ The dude is being paid like a CEO; some forum posts better not faze him or we’re really fucked.
CEOs ain’t TAM players, they make $30M these days, just FYI.
No issue here. I am fine with that message.
I didn't see much of that post announcement. It seemed to be mostly “this sucks, he sucks, we’re screwed”
Not arguing for a free pass. But let’s always try to help the player get off to a good start by being fair to him.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
I think the criticism is more than acceptable. When Moor was brought in he was obviously a dominant player, so was Bradley, etc. This signing is not the same, it’s more like Vasquez, or Altidore, or VDW, or Mavinga. OG is not obviously dominant, and it’s always a risky signing when a player is not in top form. At this point, after a terrible 2018, and a worrisome 2019, a risky signing is NOT going to make many people happy.
Was Nick Garcia so good in MLS that he was singed to a deal in Mexico? That is not a strong comparison, so weird like people want him to fail. Support your team and players.
Nobody wants him to fail, people are concerned. That's all.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
I don’t think anyone wants him to fail, considering he was signed and will be playing here. No one wanted Boyd to be terrible either — he just is.
If he had played enough recently to see how he was doing, people would be less concerned. Combine that with the FO’s less than honest appraisal of the team’s situation and their transfer acquisitions in the last few windows and the way they were conducted — of course people aren’t exactly happy.
The questions are: could we have purchased a better CB for the money OG is coming in on? Did the FO even have other options? If so, why did we pursue him throughout a window assuming he’d later be free and still ended up having to pay a fee? Is he going to be worth his contract? Is he able to fill the role we need?
These are all valid questions.
There’s a difference between supporting a team and its players blindly and being critical where criticism is warranted.
I hope OG is defender of the year for us, but I’m not going to blindly accept that the FO is some benevolent, all-knowing entity that should be supported and not questioned — especially when they aren’t honest with the people who shell out the money to go.
If I wanted to be dicked around, lied to, and told that shit doesn’t stink through a veil of obfuscation instead of transparency I would volunteer for a political party.
Last edited by stegosaurus; 06-05-2019 at 09:24 AM. Reason: Words
At the end of all this - my hope is that
Gonzalez and Moor are interchangeable
Mavinga and Ciman are interchangeable
and Zavaleta stays on the bench
The only thing I don't know for sure is if Gonzalez is that Drew Moor fill in. That is what we need and I'm hoping that is what he is.
Guys, we have played 14 games and given up 23 goals. There is no depth there at all and it has not been like Westberg or even Bono have been terrible. They have been giving up goals that in no way should be occurring. The two across the box against San Jose were terrible, Moor was left out to dry in Vancouver but even then the foul in the box was a poor decision. Clip him the second he got the ball even if Moor was on a yellow. Yes we need upfront help but if we don't fix the defense, we are done. Huge gamble and yes it is TAM money, but if it doesn't plug the holes the season may be lost already. June is going to be f--king hard to get through, maybe harder to watch if the games are like the Vancouver one.
COYRs
Sure doesn't sound that way. I'm curious if anyone here has actually seen Omar play in Mexico? actually followed him and how hes done there.
I think some people are not happy with results and/or the braintrust and are more liable to move towards the negative viewpoint on any move right now.
Then there are some people on here who are seemingly never happy & we only see when things go wrong - they will look upon almost every move as bad.
He certainly hasn’t been very good at Atlas, but that’s not necessarily a death knell for MLS.
It’s just PTSD from the lost years. Every signing is bad until they come good, and then if they’re bad you get to be a smug know-it-all.
It’s a win-win position from someone who has already gambled away all their goodwill, I guess.
I think if anyone wants him to fail it's because they don't believe in the FO and want them gone.
The Garcia comparison is absurd I feel. He was done when he got here, everyone knew it. There was no risk. He cost us nothing.
There is risk in every significant player move.
The question of what else we might have done is the right one, but hard to know what that would be? We could have traded for Calvo (I thought we should, boy I was wrong) but he has been awful.
There is actually less risk in repatriating Gonzalez than, say, bringing in Guram Kashia from Vitesse - a similar but maybe cheaper move SJ made last year. Kashia has lost his starting spot in the last few weeks....
On the spectrum of risk, this one feels low, actually.
Last edited by ensco; 06-05-2019 at 11:44 AM.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
As underwhelming as this move is I can't see it being a total bust. OG will be serviceable and won't be any worse than what we have now. On the plus side, he is tall. Something else we lack consistently besides speed but that's not something I think we'll ever fix.
Nick Garcia being compared to Omar Gonzalez. LOL still laughing at that.
More of an older Olivier Tebily you think? Or maybe an American Eddy Viator?
Wasn’t it reported that Bradley and Altidore would be playing for the US tonight? Neither of them are even on the bench.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to stegosaurus again.
The commonality is age, not initial level, obviously.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
Watching the USMNT vs Jamaica game from last night, and OG actually looked pretty good (even though they ended up losing). I haven't really seen much of what he's done in Mexico the past few years, but if he plays for us like he did last night, in my opinion, I'd consider him a reasonable signing.
I'll have to cut management some slack - if the USMNT picks Omar, hard to criticize Curtis and Manning for acquiring him.
Now, if they knew they could get Omar, what were they doing acquiring Ciman??? (cant let them totally off the hook)
We ran a lot of 3-5-2 and OG would take Moor's spot in the middle but that still would leave Zavaleta and that's not good, so Ciman. I guess.
Ciman was a BEZ signing.
It was this year. It was also Manning. But fair point.
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