Next Coach discussion - update Herdman is now coach

[ensco]

^I just listened to it. I thought it was pretty bang on accurate.

Manning coasted on what Leiweke built until 2019, and has bungled everything since. Bang on.

The league has changed a lot, and Manning thinking he could copy the Leiweke/Gio signing, and thats it, is dumb. Bang on.

It is a full on 2013 type restart. Bang on.

Bob has flaws but it was a terrible situation. Bang on.

Bob’s signings (Diomande, Petretta, Rosted) are all on horrible deals and we cannot easily fix it. Gulp. Bang on

They are trying to figure out what is next by looking at unemployed managers on transfermarkt and sorting by Italians. Bang on.

[ag futbol]

But that sounds like lazy "Bez left and was never replaced" thinking extrapolated to be more...something MLS pundits do a lot - take one thing & then make it into a trend.

That’s what I thought too when I heard the tagline but it went way beyond that. They did talk about Bez and Jack Dodd obviously. Then mentioned Fraser and the people Bez took with him. And then they mentioned guys who I never heard of that ended up in some of the other clubs around the league. Made it sound like people knew we were onto something after 2017 and we got absolutely raided, never fought back or recovered.

It really put a lot of our current failures into context. Not only are the people we know not capable (Manning, Bradley) but the people we don’t know who work with those people are also underwhelming / inexperienced.

Between that and our cultural issues, it’s going to be a while before this club sees success again. There’s no coach Manning can hire that sees us out of this. The smart candidates will stay away, we’ll end up with someone inexperienced without credibility or past their best days like Bob or Paul Mariner.

It really needs to be a too-down rebuild to get us out of the woods here.

[leedsandTFC]

^I just listened to it. I thought it was pretty bang on accurate.

Manning coasted on what Leiweke built until 2019, and has bungled everything since. Bang on.

The league has changed a lot, and Manning thinking he could copy the Leiweke/Gio signing, and thats it, is dumb. Bang on.

It is a full on 2013 type restart. Bang on.

Bob has flaws but it was a terrible situation. Bang on.

Bob’s signings (Diomande, Petretta, Rosted) are all on horrible deals and we cannot easily fix it. Gulp. Bang on

They are trying to figure out what is next by looking at unemployed managers on transfermarkt and sorting by Italians. Bang on.

Sounds about right.

Manning really beeds to go, or at very least bring in a bunch of people around him to do most the work.

[Mr. Inbetween]

My ideal international 'semi-realistic' candidate would be (a) Claudio Ranieri (type). Domestically? Maybe John Herdman? Probably... Bobby Smyrniotis? Though, IIUC, he did just signed a 4-YR contact-extension with Forge FC. Yet, given the opportunity to coach at the MLS level, he may be able to work something out; worse case, Jim Lawson and Nick Eaves might be able to facilitate a solution. I mean, besides Bob Bradley, TFC's Jason Hernandez and/or Bill Manning, may have been dealing with Agent AXIA- Nick Mavaromaras for Richie Laryea (staying or going?) So perhaps there would be opportunity for a continued dialogue just on the Bobby Smyrniotis matter.

Addendum...

Believe Pirlo with Sampdoria. Nesta linked with Reggiana?

Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/pbernier10/status/1673688486304415745

[ag futbol]

WTF is this supposed to solve? I’m tired of this club with a huge payroll being used as training wheels for Americans with no experience

https://twitter.com/TorontoFC/status...11630977302528

[Mr. Inbetween]

Sort of expected? IIRC, been mentioned in the past that he was (acting) Assistant GM?

[MikeForbes]

WTF is this supposed to solve? I’m tired of this club with a huge payroll being used as training wheels for Americans with no experience

https://twitter.com/TorontoFC/status...11630977302528

Doing actual searches for candidates is hard work and we don't have anymore players on the team with dad's involved in MLS.

[Yuushalinsky]

WTF is this supposed to solve? I’m tired of this club with a huge payroll being used as training wheels for Americans with no experience

https://twitter.com/TorontoFC/status...11630977302528

Jason Hernandez has been with us for a few years now in the system, hasn't he?

Not saying this is a great hire, but this is 100% not just a nepotism promotion and I feel better about this than Ali Curtis or Bob.

Again, definitely wary of a bad hire, but this is almost certainly short term and he's at least been close to the job for a while.

[ag futbol]

Jason Hernandez has been with us for a few years now in the system, hasn't he?

Don’t care. Hasn’t been a GM in the past. We are test piloting someone yet again.

We should be taking the stance that we’re a big club and if you want to manage here, prove yourself elsewhere first or be a part of a group that has achieved success.

Who has Jason Hernandes learned his trade from? Bradley, Curtis, Armas, Manning? When we achieved precisely nothing? I don’t care how great he supposedly is, this is a terrible hire

[ManUtd4ever]

I hear Ted Lasso's looking for work

I miss that show.

[Ultra & Proud]

Don’t care. Hasn’t been a GM in the past. We are test piloting someone yet again.

We should be taking the stance that we’re a big club and if you want to manage here, prove yourself elsewhere first or be a part of a group that has achieved success.

Who has Jason Hernandes learned his trade from? Bradley, Curtis, Armas, Manning? When we achieved precisely nothing? I don’t care how great he supposedly is, this is a terrible hire

I have no problem with this appointment. He was already moving in this direction before he came here from NYCFC and everybody has to start somewhere. One thing you do not do in MLS is hire some Euro or SA guy to be GM with no MLS experience. The league is too ridiculous to hire a regular football guy from elsewhere to run a team. How many actually ever worked?

Hernandez has MLS experience and there's really no one better currently available unless you think experienced GMs like Bocanegra & Klein are good bets.

[Areathrasher]

Didn't listen ..not sure I want to torture myself with that, to be honest.

But that sounds like lazy "Bez left and was never replaced" thinking extrapolated to be more...something MLS pundits do a lot - take one thing & then make it into a trend.

And the bit about people wanting to leave sounds like the athletic article read as fact where we know for certain Insigne, for one, isn't wanting to leave.

Bez did take quite a few front office folk with him to CBus tbf

[ag futbol]

I have no problem with this appointment. He was already moving in this direction before he came here from NYCFC and everybody has to start somewhere. One thing you do not do in MLS is hire some Euro or SA guy to be GM with no MLS experience. The league is too ridiculous to hire a regular football guy from elsewhere to run a team. How many actually ever worked?

Hernandez has MLS experience and there's really no one better currently available unless you think experienced GMs like Bocanegra & Klein are good bets.

We need to play bully and take someone else’s guy. That’s really the only acceptable way this works.

[jloome]

Don’t care. Hasn’t been a GM in the past. We are test piloting someone yet again.

We should be taking the stance that we’re a big club and if you want to manage here, prove yourself elsewhere first or be a part of a group that has achieved success.

Who has Jason Hernandes learned his trade from? Bradley, Curtis, Armas, Manning? When we achieved precisely nothing? I don’t care how great he supposedly is, this is a terrible hire

He's very highly thought of internally, at least in part because he was a voice of reason against a lot of the last two or three years.

In other words, by being sane enough to realize the problems in scouting and management, and by raising them, he gets defacto labelled as perceptive. I don't know if it's an accurate label or he was just politically astute enough to see what was coming.

TFC has become highly political internally, one of the consequences of Manning being largely focused on the numbers and the business side. He devolved responsibility to people and didn't stay on top of them. My sense is he got to his position by being largely the nice guy in the room; but a dude like that can be very easy to manipulate, especially when he'd prefer to pay attention to the business end, not the sporting end.

Really, they should've probably split his role up a long time ago and had several others there to help, as it clearly got away from him. Hiring a friend in Curtis was a massive, massive mistake, because Ali basically got him to agree to take a hands-off approach to football operations, which Bob also demanded.

Hernandez is the one dude who was pretty straightforward with him, as far as I can tell, about those internal problems. So he's giving him a shot to handle the main job.

Given that Manning probably knows a third bad coaching hire in a row is his end, he's hedging his bets by going with the person who was bluntly honest rather than who told him what he wanted to hear.

When Jack Dodd left, I understand Hernandez was asked his assessment of our use of the scouting department and how it was being utilized and he was pretty scathing.

So this might yet work out to be astute. It still strikes me as risky over getting in a more experienced front office guy.

[rydermike]

So for those who watched the press conference....anything interesting?

[jloome]

Bez did take quite a few front office folk with him to CBus tbf

The others didn't flee, either. They were here for years after the current regime took over. They were lured with better jobs and more money, basically. Dodd is an assistant GM now, Corey Wray has worked himself all the way up to assistant GM under Bez.

He was an intern, some of you may remember, who was nuts about footie stats.

So ... yeah, we've been heavily poached.

Manning's big mistake has been trusting people who took over those roles to handle both more responsibility and authority, and not really handling the sporting side of things himself. Plausible deniability is all well and good as a defensive strategy, but only when there are still others to blame.

And let's be frank, he's not the best judge of character. He accepted Dodd's chapter and verse for years before the lack of success in building a squad made him start questioning it... and his reward for that was Dodd almost certainly being the guy in the Athletic article saying Manning never listened to him.

But... that's the polar opposite of what I'm hearing happened, which is that he STOPPED trust his judgment, not that he never started. He thought Doyle had stopped casting any sort of wide net for talent and was only taking MLS recommendations and only looking at players he already knew well.

So some of the internal strife we're hearing is highly debatable office politics. Some of the people who left, we're probably better off for it. Their work spoke for itself, because outside of Bez's signings, nothing they suggested produced a winning roster.

Ultimately, I think Manning will lose the role. He's, to me, relying way too much on reading the person and going on character, rather than on rote track record and recommendations from respected outside sources. He's too susceptible to trusting peoples' confidence in themselves and their ideas. That's where all this starts, the buddy-buddy system.

To an extent, Hernandez is an extension of that. The upside is that he seems to be one who saw the problems internally and was at least attempting to raise them.

[ag futbol]

The others didn't flee, either. They were here for years after the current regime took over. They were lured with better jobs and more money, basically. Dodd is an assistant GM now, Corey Wray has worked himself all the way up to assistant GM under Bez.

He was an intern, some of you may remember, who was nuts about footie stats.

So ... yeah, we've been heavily poached.

Manning's big mistake has been trusting people who took over those roles to handle both more responsibility and authority, and not really handling the sporting side of things himself. Plausible deniability is all well and good as a defensive strategy, but only when there are still others to blame.

And let's be frank, he's not the best judge of character. He accepted Dodd's chapter and verse for years before the lack of success in building a squad made him start questioning it... and his reward for that was Dodd almost certainly being the guy in the Athletic article saying Manning never listened to him.

But... that's the polar opposite of what I'm hearing happened, which is that he STOPPED trust his judgment, not that he never started. He thought Doyle had stopped casting any sort of wide net for talent and was only taking MLS recommendations and only looking at players he already knew well.

So some of the internal strife we're hearing is highly debatable office politics. Some of the people who left, we're probably better off for it. Their work spoke for itself, because outside of Bez's signings, nothing they suggested produced a winning roster.

Ultimately, I think Manning will lose the role. He's, to me, relying way too much on reading the person and going on character, rather than on rote track record and recommendations from respected outside sources. He's too susceptible to trusting peoples' confidence in themselves and their ideas. That's where all this starts, the buddy-buddy system.

To an extent, Hernandez is an extension of that. The upside is that he seems to be one who saw the problems internally and was at least attempting to raise them.

Here is my 10,000 ft take: We hired a lazy salesman who has never been a real leader that has survived for the past 10+ years by essentially serving the leftovers in the fridge made by his processor. By the time he has to do his own cooking and everyone realizes it tastes like shit, he carpet bags it to the next town.

At this stage, after some negative Yelp reviews, word is out he’s a bad chef and has limited exit options. As such, the TFC fanbase is stuck with a bad case of Montezuma’s Revenge until our ownership group descend from their ivory towers long enough to clean house and we start again with giving someone too much power and latitude.

[los sonadores]

That’s what I thought too when I heard the tagline but it went way beyond that. They did talk about Bez and Jack Dodd obviously. Then mentioned Fraser and the people Bez took with him. And then they mentioned guys who I never heard of that ended up in some of the other clubs around the league. Made it sound like people knew we were onto something after 2017 and we got absolutely raided, never fought back or recovered.

It really put a lot of our current failures into context. Not only are the people we know not capable (Manning, Bradley) but the people we don’t know who work with those people are also underwhelming / inexperienced.

Between that and our cultural issues, it’s going to be a while before this club sees success again. There’s no coach Manning can hire that sees us out of this. The smart candidates will stay away, we’ll end up with someone inexperienced without credibility or past their best days like Bob or Paul Mariner.

It really needs to be a too-down rebuild to get us out of the woods here.

This is something not often spoken about on this board. Maybe because it’s about the interior workings which are normally out of sight to us. Even with the key people that Bez took with him alone there seemed to be no adequate replacements.

[JoesphNdo]

He's very highly thought of internally, at least in part because he was a voice of reason against a lot of the last two or three years.

In other words, by being sane enough to realize the problems in scouting and management, and by raising them, he gets defacto labelled as perceptive. I don't know if it's an accurate label or he was just politically astute enough to see what was coming.

TFC has become highly political internally, one of the consequences of Manning being largely focused on the numbers and the business side. He devolved responsibility to people and didn't stay on top of them. My sense is he got to his position by being largely the nice guy in the room; but a dude like that can be very easy to manipulate, especially when he'd prefer to pay attention to the business end, not the sporting end.

Really, they should've probably split his role up a long time ago and had several others there to help, as it clearly got away from him. Hiring a friend in Curtis was a massive, massive mistake, because Ali basically got him to agree to take a hands-off approach to football operations, which Bob also demanded.

Hernandez is the one dude who was pretty straightforward with him, as far as I can tell, about those internal problems. So he's giving him a shot to handle the main job.

Given that Manning probably knows a third bad coaching hire in a row is his end, he's hedging his bets by going with the person who was bluntly honest rather than who told him what he wanted to hear.

When Jack Dodd left, I understand Hernandez was asked his assessment of our use of the scouting department and how it was being utilized and he was pretty scathing.

So this might yet work out to be astute. It still strikes me as risky over getting in a more experienced front office guy.

This is a more positive take at least. My first instincts were "cheap" "low effort" and "likely will stay out of the way and not rock the boat". Hopefully it's less that and more than he has turned heads behind closed doors for the right reasons. The initial optics aren't great, though.

[OgtheDim]

Hernandez said the word analytics.

This is a shot at BB - good.

[ensco]

Goddammit. This makes me tear my hair out. WTF is “GM” vs “Sporting Director”?

Hernandez has to be interim! If he is not interim, and there is no Sporting Director coming, this is crazy to let Manning do this. This isn’t Leiweke promoting Bez because … wait for it … MANNING ISNT LEIWEKE

The new Sporting Director either is this person or makes this hire.

argh!!!!!!!!!!

[JoesphNdo]

^I just listened to it. I thought it was pretty bang on accurate.

Manning coasted on what Leiweke built until 2019, and has bungled everything since. Bang on.

The league has changed a lot, and Manning thinking he could copy the Leiweke/Gio signing, and thats it, is dumb. Bang on.

It is a full on 2013 type restart. Bang on.

Bob has flaws but it was a terrible situation. Bang on.

Bob’s signings (Diomande, Petretta, Rosted) are all on horrible deals and we cannot easily fix it. Gulp. Bang on

They are trying to figure out what is next by looking at unemployed managers on transfermarkt and sorting by Italians. Bang on.

Also just listened to this and agree, it was pretty much spot on. Only part I didn't agree with is they seemed to talk about roster construction as only partially Bobs fault when, outside of the DPs, it's entirely his fault. They also touched on how him taking over a team captained by his son at the age he was at was asking for issues, as many of us thought. I think all parties were blind to that part of it.

The rest is spot on and interesting to hear the claims that someone in the locker room as recently as last week said he wanted out to anywhere, doesn't care where, just can't be here anymore. That was new information.

[Mr. Inbetween]

Permission? Therefore domestic and under (still) contract? Therefore MLS? Perhaps other North American leagues? So... maybe Fraser, Vanney, Curtain, Herdman, Smyrniotis and hopefully Nancy?

Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/MichaelSingh94/status/1673716578750193665

[los sonadores]

Hernandez said the word analytics.

This is a shot at BB - good.

Maybe good but are more shots what we need and is analytics going to save us? I might prefer a clear eyed, not stat based analysis of not only what has been happening on the pitch but the entire management structure and personelle. There are tons of stats out there on us and they don’t look good… indeed, most stuff can be clearly seen to be amiss without recourse to stats. In principal, yes, we must use every avenue but I’m not sure that analytics is going to help us out of this mess.

Btw, I would like Richie to get out of this club. I’d like to see him succeed in Europe. And also, true, he’s been brilliant for us but should we be spending 1.2 million on a left back, (fill in) centre back? Now, if he is properly played at wing back and Bernie is moved out of his way and into the middle, I think we’ll get more production out of him. Is it worth 1.2 million in the context of MLS budgets and in particular our strained budget? Not sure.

As a close observer of the Nats and someone who saw him play under Vanney, Dunfield should know how to use Richie. Bob clearly didn’t, except in moments.

[JoesphNdo]

1.2 m plus transfer fee. I really don't know what to make out of a potential transfer, I want him to stay but is he the DP we need right now?

[Red CB Toronto]

Goddammit. This makes me tear my hair out. WTF is “GM” vs “Sporting Director”?

Hernandez has to be interim! If he is not interim, and there is no Sporting Director coming, this is crazy to let Manning do this. This isn’t Leiweke promoting Bez because … wait for it … MANNING ISNT LEIWEKE

The new Sporting Director either is this person or makes this hire.

argh!!!!!!!!!!

Who is Bill actually responsible to that actually knows a thing or two about TFC and thus would question, hold him accountable? Larry T. is likely the only one, does Edward Rogers think about this at all? I think the team presidents report directly to the board, even more with MLSE not having a president and CEO at the moment. To even compare the role of Bill to Tim L is crazy, one is a team president ie division head and the other ran the whole organization.

[los sonadores]

1.2 m plus transfer fee. I really don't know what to make out of a potential transfer, I want him to stay but is he the DP we need right now?

I wasn’t even thinking about what transfer fee would be required. Let’s hope the league exempts transfer fees from the basic budget cap or sorts that problem out one way or another. But I suppose a loan extension is what is required to keep him for the rest of this season.

Seems pretty clear we are desperate for a striker of the quality or near quality of the Italians. Certainly someone that they can work with. We have none of those now.

[ensco]

It wouldn’t surprise me if Richie is the guy who told Extratime last week “Get me out of here, anywhere but here”. I know nothing, but that is my guess.

[FiveThreeTwo]

All this feels hasty, and I don’t like the feel of it. Has the feeling of a Prez now using a snorkel to breath while he tries to stay above water and is flailing out at solutions.

I hope he realizes people wanted change, and the acts of redeeming himself included not being hasty and going into immediate firefight mode to panic fill gaps and have solutions ready in a couple weeks. We all want sustained success-not quick short term wins. That takes time.

Pump the breaks, breath and touch grass Bill. throw interim tags on everyone. Loop in consultants and technical brain power to help bring sporting/technical people where you can give them a general strategy or executive intent - then give them the season to analyze, scour the world, build a full plan/strategy and let em cook. Promoting Hernandez to clean it all up after sacking yesterday optically isn’t it.

Finalize a coach when the time is right with the above resources, and let dunny build positive morale with the squad for this season and make a crack at a playoff push for morale wins, and get back to basics. FK that we’d be burning a year of Insigne and berna. Having a shortlist of coaches and mandating permanent coaching hire 3-4 games from now when he’s barley had time to consult internal/external brains with our club is a mess is just hasty and dumb, unless those ppl are special. If manning had the balls, he’d have a community/SSH town hall to have a chat and get the pulse of the remaining fans that actually have a passion for seeing success. Sorry for the longer reflections - getting saltier as this develops lol.

[jloome]

Goddammit. This makes me tear my hair out. WTF is “GM” vs “Sporting Director”?

Hernandez has to be interim! If he is not interim, and there is no Sporting Director coming, this is crazy to let Manning do this. This isn’t Leiweke promoting Bez because … wait for it … MANNING ISNT LEIWEKE

The new Sporting Director either is this person or makes this hire.

argh!!!!!!!!!!

I suspect he has no real experience from RSL of having to handle so many hires and department heads. Before that, at Philly, he was a promotions and advertising guy.

And when someone doesn't have experience with that stuff, they handle it badly.

When Bob was hired, he became the GM. That's what "sporting director" meant, they just gave it a new title, probably to try and avoid internal criticism. Part of that deal -- which also should have been a non-starter -- was that the front office would be hands off and let him run his own show.

It's why they didn't replace Ali, and why Jack Dodd wasn't promoted... which led to internal divisions from people who'd waited to move up, then didn't. Just changing the name of the title wasn't enough; he'd effectively handed the whole thing over to Bob.

He made Jason assistant, split with Dodd, who left to take the job at Portland that he expected to get in Toronto, and now is bumping the guy he has faith in.

It seems too extreme a risk. He calls it "continuity" but its just trying to self-protect via loyalty, I suspect. Hernandez might do well but he's got very little experience, and we need to rebuild, again.

The only upside I take from that appointment is that one of the first things I heard from the front office -- fully a month before Manning seemed to accept it himself -- was that Hernandez was already making noise about the first team's performance, about the harmony, about the lack of scouting for outside talent.

The list of tasks he rattled off in that conference that have been solely his remit for most of the last two years was absolutely ridiculous. That's a job four guys should be doing, let alone having one person as the president of two clubs.

I don't think he has a realistic view of how much help he needs at the top. He runs on trust, and faith, and positive expectations, not fact and investigation.

They're all likable in someone you hang out with; they don't encapsulate the range of skill and behaviors needed to run a club this big.