Really exited about these signings. I do also have some concerns along with other people who posted this. How fast Can a whole new defensive line with a new goalie who never played together build chemistry ?
Does anyone know of any teams in Europe that has done this in one off season, and the results that followed?
This is a a really good point and also true from a club perspective. A lot of South American teams need to bring in cash from transfers to operate.
However, I am not personally as optimistic that we sign a young DP or any U22 signings during this window. I think we need to start winning before MLSE is going to approve more spending.
I would be happy if we signed 2 more MLS veterans. One in the midfield and one outside back to provide depth.
Then, we sign a young DP and 2 U22s in the summer while we transfer JMR and or Nelson out.
Even if we don't make anymore signings, I must say I feel good about where the roster is at. Can't wait for the season to start.
Yes. The biggest question of preseason/early regular season is probably the status of Richie. Is he worth the 700-900k transfer fee (it can be spread over the length of the player's contract) and his 900+k salary? It is gonna be a huge decision from both parties based on his performance.
We had a largely brand new defense to start 2016 and the new guys seemed to hit it off pretty quickly. We were in the running for the supporters shield for a while until we faded down the stretch and then regained our form just in time for the playoffs. Granted the pre-2016 defensive makeover was less extreme and more MLS-heavy compared to this year but I'm not so worried about the new players gelling as I am about them living up to their pedigree or getting acclimated to a new league. Which I think by and large they'll do
I like the potential of MacNaughton and could see him fighting to be an occasional starter. Could be a steal if he works out. He did make mistakes last year but I think it’s fair to say he’s trying to adapt to a new level (TBD if he can) and the overall instability of the team did him no favours.
Statically he didn't rate that well overall in games but a lot of that seems to have been the subjectivity projected by always losing, because his individual stats across the boards were pretty good. His tackle rate was low, but commonly is for center backs when there's little foot traffic in the box. He was generally good in the air and had several monster games.
Tried to do too much late in the season, and on occasion was isolated too high up the pitch. But given that we saw him as a "can he even play at this level" guy, he did really well. Solid backup and maybe still getting better, as he seems pretty bright.
FWIW, for those, as myself, somewhat concerned about asap team/player gelling, we do have our participation in The Coachella Valley Invitational this preseason to assist. Perhaps a setting that is more challenging, mindset preparatory, than just the typical series of one-off preseason friendlies?
IIUC, 4 matches...
1/ Toronto v Vancouver 08FEB23 @ 4PM
2/ Toronto v LAFC 11FEB23 @ 2PM
3/ Toronto v Portland 15FEB23 @ 5PM
4/ Toronto v LA Galaxy 18FEB @ 10:30AM
I was just going through the TFC related videos on the new Apple TV service and the Insigne 2023 media day interview was interesting talking very directly about the quality of the squad needs to get better around him and Fede. Good to see he doesn't mind calling it out versus beating around the bush. He also mentioned about not being 100% at all last season so looking forward to a 100% Insigne.
Maybe? No knowledge, but a possibility. Perhaps even a try-out for both clubs? There were Quebec rumours at the time that trialists were participating. And La Belle Province does seem to have some sort of connect to TFC on goings lately; re.: Bernier and SJ.
From French Canadian source BBN Medias...
Translation... 'Several rumors are circulating at the moment about this match behind closed doors. Toronto could have on board players who have not yet been announced to the public and this is one of the reasons which would have led to this meeting on the sly'.
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/BBNMedias/status/1617429013756010498
Excited to see the training camp list for our February camp. Gotta think there are a couple trialists we didn't know about since none of our journos bother to try and get information on this kind of thing.
Could this footballer be a TFC candidate? Realize.... an AM; not what is needed. Supposedly has a very reasonable contract buy-out clause.
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/mlsnetwork/status/1620895201274499079
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/Mikoaj49172933/status/1621227016832917506
Translation:
'During the matches, they said that Sebastian Kowalczyk (Pogoń Szczecin) has a clause of EUR 400,000 in the contract. A footballer with great potential, especially since Praszelik has crumbled for us.'
In terms of team player turnover, here is a lot of data
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/etmckinley/status/1091390516858638336
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/etmckinley/status/1224718116099244032
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/etmckinley/status/1370364418568110085
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/etmckinley/status/1488545758567567364
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/etmckinley/status/1621209116080234497
^that is super interesting data.
I would be interested in something that showed what each team's avergae contract term/length was and what payroll was relative to average payroll. I bet, if you graphed it, the correlation would be there.
Thesis is that in our low turnover years, we had very little flex to do much of anything without doing what Bob did, which is set $10-20M on fire in the service of overhauling the roster.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Bogert dropping this.
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/tombogert/status/1621301930327785472?s=20&t=GYXgVCutiwdSg3TSgnfPpQ
Last edited by MikeForbes; 02-02-2023 at 08:00 PM.
I remember arguing Oso might be a DP if he had a big World Cup, but I sure never thought this. How does making Oso a DP create cap benefits?
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
If he's a DP he has a ~600k cap hit and we don't use any TAM on him. Otherwise we'd have to spend about $1 million TAM to buy him down below that DP threshold. With all the TAM players we have (Laryea, MB, Oso, Petrata, Johnson, Jimenez, Hedges) we might not have enough TAM and thus Oso has to be a DP for the cap to work. I speculated this a few days ago (but with using Bradley as a DP when signing Poz was floated).
Could be to sign multi U22 initiative players by having a TAM DP, but I think it might just be we spent too much TAM. I'm thinking Raoul Petratta just happened to become available and they weren't planning on a TAM left back originally and it ate up all the TAM
Last edited by rydermike; 02-02-2023 at 08:53 PM.
Oso being bought a DP means he's making more than MB.