Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/brunoandrd/status/1480637168909529089?s=20
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/brunoandrd/status/1480637168909529089?s=20
I'm not sure how much I trust these reports, as others have also said that while three clubs (including us) are interested, they've lowered their asking price from $5M to $3M already (dollars, not Euros). Wolves would easily be able to pull that off if they were really in on this, and Palmeiras has had serious money problems for months, so it's hard to believe they'd ever be in on the bidding.Originally Posted by MikeForbes
It seems like Tigres is trying to play this as a big-money transfer and we may be the only ones actually interested.
I am now formally changing my rating of Curtis from F+ to Z-.
He can sit right next to Mo Johnston as one of the two worst GM's in our history. This off-season really has shed light to just how badly the team was run, and run off a cliff.
Who hired Curtis? I just can’t believe how easy most fans are giving Manning a pass, he is much more responsible then Curtis
Also, not that it matters, but Armas deserves a lot of blame for this. This whole story will be too subtle for 97% of Manchester United fans to understand, but he should be fired today from that job, just because of what happened here.
Do they actually want the guy who made this call to tell Cristiano Ronaldo about football?
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
The English papers are all reporting that the same shit is just happening there. The Express and the Guardian both had stories that the team has split into cliques, and the pricier players who don't want to gegenpress are already saying Armas can't teach them.
https://www.theguardian.com/football...chester-united
The specific concern was that while he's teaching them to press, he's not teaching them how to convert that into offensive movement once they have the ball back. They don't respect him so they're not learning, basically. But that locker room is an egotistical shitshow, sort of the EPL version of us.
It was precisely the wrong environment for him to go into.
Last edited by jloome; 01-10-2022 at 11:04 PM.
I was shaking my head when watching the FA cup game today. Armas was all up in Rangnick's ear giving him advice on the touchline. Rangnick must really be naïve, I just cant understand what the hell ManU are doing.
He's one of Klopp's mentors, that was all they needed to hear. The fact that he's never won a league title or coached a major team to success was secondary to his tactical nous.
I mean, it's the Glazers. They're just awful.
This is like the exact thing that I observed here. I saw lots of other similarities too. When they played Newcastle, the midfield was entirely ineffective at stopping the counter and there were massive gaps between the lines.
This whole philosophy, whether it’s Armas or Rangnick, it’s just all nonsense. You don’t dogmatically drop into a team and suddenly take a formation or style of play out of the box and expect to be successful. You have to look at what you have to work with, what the environment is, and what the opportunities are. Then figure out a direction for the team that suits it’s strengths or otherwise gives you the best chance to be successful. That doesn’t mean you abandon what you know entirely but it’s more complicated than some cookie-cutter setup.
I still remember Curtis and Armas and all their Red Bull references. What a couple of clueless dolts. You wouldn’t show up in the kitchen in a Michelin Star restaurant and make hay about how you ran the grill at McDonalds.
Yeah, exactly. The times gegenpress has been successful falls into two camps: overwhelmingly strong teams that would probably win even without it, and minnows where the players are all so mediocre at a pro level that they'll take a lemming-like approach to following instruction (the NYRB effect).
His prior career successes, other than one cup win, were all in getting low-level clubs promoted. When the team will behave like a singular automaton (and he learned it off a Soviet Club, so...) it works. When they have the talent to make up for its tactical and coaching shortfalls, it works.
Every other instance (Us, Liepzig, now Man utd) it creates more problems than it helps resolve.
EDIT: Worth noting that Bruce Arena, Bob's mentor, teaches a high recovery press to his players as well. But it's disciplined.
Agreed. Thats what i observed as well with Armas coaching TFC. We used to be compact in MF and we would managed to control the MF, but with Armas’s approach that all went out the window and there was tons of space for opponents to exploit. The end result is that our CB’s (especially Omar Gonzalez) would get hung out to dry, moreso given that they were never quickest players to begin with. He was getting caught in a lot of one on one situations. It bugged me the number of times he would get singled out by ppl as the culprit for goals against. I am not denying he lost a step and a chnage was needed but he was never quick to begin with but he still managed to be effective under Vanney.
The Tajon outcome is an outlier, Superdraft isn't what it used to be, but have a look at good teams, most of them of have 2-3 key, cheap drafted players, making an important contribution on low wages. Making the draft work is critical to the model.
This Dwyer thing, it's Knicks/Dolan level bad (this won't make sense to non-NBA types here).
I haven't felt this down about TFC leadership since Anselmi/Cochrane. I hope the outcome of all this is that only Bob has his hands on the steering wheel now.
I appreciate Insigne, but MLSE basically sent over a draft contract and told Insigne to fill in the number. I know who to thank for that, thank you Larry (and maybe Masai) and I am genuinely excited to see him in TFC red. But nothing in that tells me anything about anyone's ability to figure anything out.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
New England set an MLS points record on the back of a team primarily built through the draft.
Giving up the #3 pick could really hurt in the future. Hell, remember the Kyle Bekker and Emery Welshman draft year? Andrew Farrell, everyone's consensus #1 pick that year, and the player TFC had to be brain dead not to select, has played 272 games for New England since being drafted in 2013. That's not even getting into the fact Walker Zimmerman was drafted #7.
The draft may not be what it once was, but man oh man can players still find some gems there.
That reminds me, Kevin Payne was an idiot.
Yeah I agree, I think you can still find some great defenders in the draft although each year as the level of MLS pulls away exponentially from the level of college soccer there will be a set of diminishing returns creeping from the bottom up of the draft table. Eventually even the 1st overall pick will find it hard to break into a team.
I'm not a pro scout but is it that difficult to pick a CB top 5 in the draft that you think could transition well to pro soccer, one that seems to have decent positional and tactical awareness and not just brute strength and stick him in your facilities worth millions of dollars to incubate and become a starting 11 calibre player? TFC have never once done this in their history and it's mind-boggling, they've done it with a couple keepers but it's never seen itself all the way through (traded Frei away just as he was starting to become one of the best in the league and Bono sucks now)
The year after him it was Daryl Dike. The thing is, there are always one or two "can't miss" talents in the draft. It's just amazing that American scouting is so bad that they get that far before being identified.
This was one of the reasons the transfermarkt comment was so alarming. Basically what Manning was saying was "we need to fill seats so we had to get an Italian, so I scrolled though the internet to find the ones out of contract". It's worrying if thats the level of sophistication of thinking. I do trust BB though. He has pedigree.
Man U thought they were getting a Klopp/Tuchel like manager but both of them have adapted gegenpress tactics and moved beyond it. Plus they can man manage. Or at least Klopp can. Man U is playing a 4-2-2-2. No wonder the players don’t know what to do. Ragnarok is a dolt.
My first thought about Dwyer was, "He only effin joined in the summer!"
Apparently it was May but still.
My gawd, that has to be in the top 10 stupidest moves ever at TFC
You had a typo
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
Lol. I think Mista is still #1. His $1 million for only one goal is pretty hard to beat.
I get that, but this seems worse because the cap is so much lower.
And now he's gone as Atletico Ottawa's coach. An interesting CPL metric had the top three players with the ratio of Highest difference between xA - Actual assists as all ATO players. Apparently he couldn't teach how to score either.
Also speculating, but do you think that Curtis could have buried Dwyer's second year increase and didn't tell Manning?
Well at least mathematically 1 goal is Infinity% better than Dwyer's 0 shots on target season
Thank you for the detective work. Makes the head spin but good to know. Sounds like Ali Curtis and his 300 page plan. As if extremely complicated is somehow preferable to clear and transparent. It isn’t, at least, when you have few football GM skills.
Last edited by los sonadores; 01-10-2022 at 08:23 PM.
Mista was lovely to watch very briefly when our quality level was not high. He almost completely gave up after a few matches (or less!) but it was good at first. Dwyer had zero redeeming aspects in my opinion. But then, I’ve always disliked watching him play even when he had a good strike rate (long before us).
Last edited by los sonadores; 01-10-2022 at 08:24 PM.
DP signings re sort of in a different category. There is inherent risk because you don’t know what the player will look like here. Soteldo is an example, he just seemed better (in YouTube highlights anyway) in Brazil.
TFC we’re looking at Dwyer in practice for weeks before they decided to risk so much on a vet that obviously should have been on a minimum deal
Plus I recall that the Mista story was possibly not really about talent evaluation… I will leave it at that.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
Soteldo is "99.9%" certain to go to Sao Paulo now according to random Brazilian journalist 4 that has 179k followers on Twitter. The Soteldo transfer rumors have more cutbacks than Yefe himself on the field.
It was fun while it lasted. Though I did enjoy Soltedo braying MLS defensive mules.
I’m really hoping we focus more on European transfers going forward… scrolling through Twitter, pressing “translate Tweet” is exhausting. The Borre and Soteldo transfers have been enough for me. A few hours ago, things were a long way out and seemed to be in doubt.
It really was crazy that Dwyer was signed on that contract after being on trial with us for so long. It would seem fishy but that Curtis was usually not only slow to act but then seemed to act on preconceived notions. You might think preconceived notions would be quick.
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