You would expect that however, from both players who frequently engage in 1v1’s or are expected to put in the final ball (Berna and Laryea). The thing about MAK is he’s giving away the ball on bad plays in the defensive third. He’s been lucky to have not cost the team a goal on a couple of occasions.Originally Posted by OgtheDim
I am torn on MAK. He does have some bad giveaways at times but in the same game he can have some excellent tackles likely saving a goal scoring play from happening. He also has a good workrate. You just hope the giveaway part can be reduced. Kind of reminds me of Bradley a bit in that way. Good workrate and does some good in the game but can have a couple brain farts each game. Unfortunately if more in our defensive third, for both MAK and MB4, those brain farts can lead to dangerous plays.
Yeah I think he basically is what he is, a decent MLS mid fielder. Not bad at all, not amazing, but definitely useful and for sure worth a start in our current lineup.
We overpaid, but that doesn't make him absolutely useless or terrible. He definitely has things he brings to the table which can make up for some of the errors
Definitely reminds me of Bradley in that way, though not as good as he was. But similar upside and downside parts of his game for sure
MAK gets too much heat. End of the day he ain't perfect but he comes out and hustles every game, giving 100%. He has excellent work rate which is what you need in MLS. He is defensively good. We all know that hard work beats skill many times in MLS (as we have been beaten by far less "skilled" teams).
He just needs to be paired with someone like a regista type midfielder in the mold of an early MB or Pirlo or Jorginho. Coello might be able to do this.
I honestly think he would thrive in a 4-2-3-1 type formation. Being paired next to a regista I mentioned above.
All the positives re:MAK above are valid
BUT
I would rather the 1.3M in GAM and Priso given where we are against the cap
Yeah. Someone else posted a while ago that MAK reminds them of Delgado when he first joined TFC, which I kind of agree with. Trouble is that they are the same age.
At least Priso is still only 20. The trade still boggles my mind.
I haven't seen the bouncing elephant in so long.....
Jury still out on Priso. He isn't exactly tearing it up in Colorado and really not earning a lot of minutes on a very shit team.
That trade is nowhere near as terrible as the Shaff one regardless of the money involved. Next year that allocation money is gone but Shaff will be still doing a solid job for Nashville.
Priso showed a bit of brilliance here, I thought, but so very briefly before his injury that nothing much could be confirmed except that he was probably our best #6… for one match! I really hope he develops to his full potential because, if so, Canada can probably use one of him in the future. But he’s not earning many minutes, as you say. Still very young.
Shaff was a different story because we’d been nursing him along, developing him though his bits of brilliance and his many one dimensional lapses. He had 40-50 appearances over three seasons. We knew he was coming good. Just a question of whether the manager could use his type him properly.
Edit: to be perfectly fair, putting him at left back at that moment in his development was a joke. It showed no understanding of him.
Last edited by los sonadores; 05-30-2023 at 01:35 PM.
Or it showed that Bob's arrogance level made him believe he could convert any young player to play anywhere because he is so good (in his mind) at developing youth.
I thought Priso was quite promising under Vanney and that one game where Perez benched Bradley / Altidore he was a revelation.
Since the injury he has not been the same. He may well be struggling for confidence a bit. There’s still years for him to develop.
I don’t think he’d be an immediate solution but more someone to look at as promising in 2-3 years time.
I really don’t know what Bob was thinking. Probably just thought Insigne’s coming in and that one dimensional thing Shaff does well could work at RB. But a fundamental misunderstanding of Shaff.
To be honest he had very few players and he was throwing young guys around semi-randomly. Petrasso was a better choice and he actually stuck there (just not for us but he looked okay there right away). I think he was giving guys games here and there as he needed them and if it worked out, okay. It was more musical chairs rather than Bob imagining he had the answer.
Vanney was a hell of a lot more careful. Bob I think it was more like sink or swim experiments and not so much about Bob expecting himself to be right.
Seemed kind of reckless to me. IIRC, Bob pushed Petrasso, a back, up to the wing, and pushed Shaff to the back position. Why not leave Shaff high amd Petrasso as a back. Made no sense to me, it was almost like he was trying to see who would break.
Interesting viewpoint from Sapong on the locker room
https://www.torontofc.ca/video/lates...ng-may-30-2023
"My algorithm is different then yours"
He talks about "the forge" - what he does up front creating channels, getting the ball.
Last edited by OgtheDim; 05-30-2023 at 03:15 PM.
All right now. Here we go. The fourth reply was the straw that has broken the camel’s back. I dislike doing this, but sometimes enough is enough. For the past year I have been biting my tongue on this matter. I enjoy this community. I love engaging in it’s coffee house atmosphere opposed to the ether of a nightclub. Given my freshman status, I preferred to mostly defer to the seniors of the Forum. To usually go along to get along. Still, when I choose to, I can still critically think. These reactions to my post are feral. Of mob rule mentality. Unbecoming. And most important, undeserving. Posturing shaped by presumption and consensus unchecked is fallible and elitist in thinking.
In comparison, predominantly, relatively, on a reasonable scale of more or less, Niccola Schira does not make stuff up. He is as much a Fake News transfer journalist as all of them are; the entire lot that make such reporting the primary focus of their brand. He has as much and as little sources as most of them. He makes things up as much and as little as most of them. Some are just smarter at managing it than others. To believe otherwise is foolish. It is today accepted nature of being a so called Transfer Specialist. Pandering to the lowest common denominator; a by-product of the social and media environment. His reporting is as credible and reliable as the best or worse of them. Why? Because Nicolo Schira at best is an opportunist and at worst a fraud. I presume on the occasions not from a cultivated source or not attributed to one, ahem, made up, he then appropriates, that is plagiarizes, the reports of others as his own. The content is as correct or wrong as those source journalists would have reported. This is the essential assertion that Colin Millar confirms in his expose. He is not wrong, He is the News Editor of Football Espana, he does seem to be motivated by a personal peeve, yet contributes as a football opinionist/analyst regularly to that pillar of scholarly publication, The Daily Mirror, a tabloid filled with sensational stories targeting the blue-collar class. Review here…
https://twitter.com/Millar_Colin/sta...37032207585281
However for anyone to judge Nicola Schira in such a manner, by such measures, must understand the inherent nature of the pool those pundits choose to swim in every day. Hopefully you may be enlightened by this background read from the FourFourTwo staff…
https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/truth-behind-transfer-window-rumour-mill-those-know
And then… now… be subject to the same standards. This cry that Fabrizio Romano is better than Nicolo Schira in my opinion is a distinction without a difference. Nonsensical. Because those who rabidly advocate Colin Millar’s position must then accept those that subscribe to the exposes of…
1/ @notescapism; that got banned from twitter by Fabrizio Romano…
https://en.rattibha.com/thread/1508376280894480387
2/ Highlighted by Aniket Awasthi…
https://www.essentiallysports.com/soccer-news-football-news-fan-slams-world-famous-soccer-reporter-fabrizio-romano-for-stealing-news-from-other-journalists-shows-evidence-in-huge-accusation/
&
3/ The Truth About Fabrizio Romano by FNG…
https://youtu.be/LQCugod_pzU
How to you like them apples! Enjoy. Please don’t choke on them.
Last edited by Mr. Inbetween; 05-30-2023 at 04:25 PM.
I'm not sure what you intended to prove there, but all you proved is that you posted a guy you know is frequently full of shit.
You then pivoted, for some unknown reason into an argument that didn't actually exist, saying "hah! but some of you quote Fabrizio Romano and he's also full of shit."
Okay? So? First, I don't recall any consensus on Romano being accurate. Of course he's full of shit, he's a European football journalist.
Second, I think anyone actually paying attention knows that of the two, the blind guy who hits the dartboard more often -- and has more actual contacts, as I'm sure you read that Sun story you posted and realized they DON'T make it all up, they just don't care about accuracy -- is Romano.
That's why he has some public credibility. SOME public credibility is not the same as trust. That's not the standard anyone's asking for.
We all remember Romano reporting Messi repeatedly resigning with PSG, after all.
Anyway, it's all a bit moot. We don't regularly publish European rumors here; it's just not that common and when it does happen, it's usually because North American media have picked it up.
And while the debate is certainly worthy, if a community asks you not to quote someone, the civil answer generally isn't "but you guys also quote someone who's wrong." It's a community; if the majority of people accept Romano's line of shit more than Schira's line of shit, the civil thing to do is respect that, not to suggest they don't choke on apples.
(Although pointing he's often wrong too? Fair game dude, particularly if someone has just posted him.)
That would be my take.
Last edited by jloome; 05-30-2023 at 05:18 PM.
Mabika is expected to be called up to the Zambian national team for the African Nations Cup qualifiers in mid-June.
Whether I agree or not with you on a matter, whether you care or not, I value your opinion. For me, in this case, your wet or not wet, your pregnant or not pregnant, the in-between is all subjective. Anyways, if the pursuit is more scholarly, I came across a comprehensive list a while ago. Obviously do not agree with some of the categorizations, but I think at the very least it's a fair and respectable attempt to codify the situation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddevils/wiki/transfer-reliability-guide/
Last edited by Mr. Inbetween; 05-30-2023 at 07:44 PM. Reason: Grammar
Good for him! He’s an underrated story at this point, like how he’s playing, especially next to Hedges.
What Mabika will be > Mavinga ever was
If moving McNaughton is what it took for this to happen, I'm OK with that.
He’s one of my favourite developing young players on the team right now, along with Franklin. Mabika is definitely looking like a future lock to start.
If there is any space in the budget for the mid, would it be worth considering the recently released Canadian David Wotherspoon, stalwart of the ScotPrem club St. Johnstone? Perhaps as depth?
He would be a good pick-up and lord knows we need midfield help.
I love Mabika. I'll take his potential over Lukas any day.
I feel like Wotherpoon will just stay in Scotland. He's born and raised in Scotland and only played for Canada from a loose connection and didn't make Scotland. So it's not like it'd be a "return home"
^
True, fair and likely. Failed to realize he was one of those that made his home where he could lay his hat. Anyways, fan chatter suggests Dundee is who he ends up with. If it's that 'Dundee' (not United), they need all the help they can get. One even indicated 'he is not fit to to lace Jay Chapman's boot's'; ouch!
I met a large number of his family members in Qatar. They were all in a group having a good time pregame v Croatia outside the stadium (12 people wearing Wotherspoon jerseys were kind of noticeable). This was exactly the conversation we had - they all said he would love to play in Canada some day. One of them specifically mentioned Vancouver , fwiw
Last edited by ensco; 06-01-2023 at 06:05 AM.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
defense of laryea hedges mabika franklin actually looks very solid.
kind of makes you wish you weren't spending so much TAM/ GAM on rosted and petretta, but them's the breaks.
we badly need a DP striker. the amount of chances and half chances we had yesterday without scoring is crazy.
you can't succeed without a DP striker in this league. needs to be addressed in the summer window or will be another year wasted...
vancouver last night has a similar xg to us and scored 6 goals btw.
Watching the highlights makes me wonder how different the club would be if we had of acquired Gressel (who's now playing as a central mid) instead of Kaye.
Be the same as long as Bob was in charge. No point in wondering about how anyone could fit or who we could get in July if he is still here. It's just a waste. I would rather we sign nobody and tank the year rather than bring on more contracts that might not fit later.
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