You've judged him trash on 250 minutes of playing time, which seems unwise.Originally Posted by Mikmacdo
You've judged him trash on 250 minutes of playing time, which seems unwise.
Last edited by jloome; 10-24-2023 at 09:11 AM.
He has 250 minutes of playing time with zero team chemistry and no service.
He's a decent striker, and has shown it on a better team than this one.
But it's pretty hard to judge a striker who hasn't played, effectively, and barely saw the ball in that 250 minutes.
Last edited by jloome; 10-24-2023 at 09:18 AM.
I love to dunk on the Italian performances as much as anyone, but Jiminez regressed to form. His career stats, and how much he absurdly outperformed his xG in that stretch, told us that goalscoring run was a freak run. He's a support forward, 1 in 3 is a good season type forward, not a goal a game guy. Italians or no Italians, his goals were going to dry up and that output was unsustainable
Owusu is an interesting one, way way too early to call him bad, but his goal scoring record is...pretty awful, there is no track record there that screams 'just wait, he'll turn it around'. I don't see it based on that and what I've seen so far, he's a worker but I don't see quality, but he needs more minutes before writing him off. My guess is he is gone by this time next season, but it's a guess, and he should be given time to prove himself - nobody here has seen enough to really know for sure
You can't go on his total appearances there. He got junk minutes for three straight years before last season. If you add it up, it averages to less than 15 minutes per game.
When the striker ahead of him got injured last year, he came in late in the season and scored 7 goals in his last 10 starts.
Basically, they bought him pretty young as a good prospect to have stepped down from the Bundesliga, and then he got benched behind more experienced and consistent players.
A fan told me he had a shot to start at the beginning of the season, didn't score for a few and lost his confidence. Then the injury gave him a shot at redemption and he was their strongest player down the stretch.
I agree he's not a dead cert, but it's way too early to judge how he can do in this league.
Last edited by jloome; 10-24-2023 at 09:23 AM.
For sure, not a write off, but looking at career goals vs games does not paint a pretty picture - it amounts to one decent stretch. So I get the skepticism, and I share it. The flipside is he was getting alot of games despite his record, so he was presumably bringing something to the table.
But there's always caveats and none of us here were monitoring his career enough to know for sure. Like I said, if I'm guessing, I think he's not an MLS quality striker. But that's a guess. I still want to give the guy time to prove himself. I definitely don't agree with writing him off at this stage at all, somebody obviously saw something in him.
Basically, I don't think he's the guy, but nobody here has seen enough to know, and I wouldn't judge his output harshly based on minutes on this absolute dumpster fire.
Last edited by JoesphNdo; 10-24-2023 at 09:28 AM.
Which is sensible, as we've hardly seen him.
Sapong was pretty easy to judge, because we'd seen him for years (mostly as a winger; he only converted to striker at SKC). And Sapong was a terrible striker.
Owusu's movement alone suggests he's better than that. He also presses more than Sapong bothered to do (and well more than Kerr; Kerr's defensive work rate isn't great, goal scoring notwitstanding.)
i don't know how, but we need to get rid of the italians.
nothing will improve, or the improvements will be severely limited if we don't do that.
Demote to TFC2 and eat the money until the Italians decide the embarrassment of flying coach (force it) and taking shitty buses to places like Tacoma to play on a baseball diamond isn't worth the remaining money on the contracts.
if we had 2 DPs contributing at a high level this season we genuinely could have been a good team.
first half of the season we weren't giving away many goals, but barely scoring.
so many ties should have been wins with contributing DPs.
get them out and let sean rubio pick the next ones.
Im definitely in the camp of giving the striker role the benefit of the doubt including Owuso because our entire system was trash tier for strikers under Bob and even armas lol.
Service was trash, systems and movement from team mates were greedy and unconventional for most strikers. Italians only wanted to support themselves around the box, yelled at every other player why they weren’t wiping their asses in the build up.
Ex. - There were times where the striker should have run into a back/near post run to get ready for a winger/FB cross because the play was developing down the wings Into what looked like an overlap/under lap situation, and most the team mate movements suggested that. Instead insigne/berna would cut inside, and start stomping feet and get mad why the striker isn’t there beside him playing hold-up tiki taka one/twos so he can evade a defender and do a 5% success tiragiro shot lol and the play would usually die. And the odd chance the striker did come deep to be that hold up guy, there were no attacking finishing options even if the Italians got past 1-2 guys lol because the striker was so deep, and other Italian just walking around. Not even adding the lack of dummy runs or team mates helping pull defenders away from #9
even the midfields were directed to pass the ball to the Italians before any sort of killer pass to a striker. So Ima give that position benefit of the doubt, with a real clusterfuck in lack of clarity of what their role should have been. Nobody scored in that striker role this season
Last edited by FiveThreeTwo; 10-24-2023 at 10:25 AM.
If MLS rules had any logic to them we should be able to buy out the Italians and spend the difference on new DP’s.
So as an example. If we normally pay Insigne $16 mil in salary and his new contract only pays him $5 mil. We (in theory) pay him the difference of $10 mil and then have $5 million of our own to spend on a new DP.
It’s probably just too embarrassing for Manning to get it authorized from the board to see it happen.
Getting rid of both Italians in this coming window would be a massive accomplishment and probably a task too tall. Focus on getting rid of one this window and the other the next.
i believe bernardeschi's contract is moveable with minimal loss.
insigne's is the one that is borderline unmovable.
we have looked way better with just insigne on the pitch, tbh.
if we can move on bernardeschi and bring in a DP striker with the $$ that would go a long way imo.
Last edited by leedsandTFC; 10-24-2023 at 11:10 AM.
I am somewhat hoping Insigne just takes what he's earned and cuts his losses. Knowing the fans have kind of turned on him too. He would get the unfortunate blite of being known as the worst DP ever in MLS, but it is what it is.
He's earned that tag.
Anyone know when locker cleanout day is?
I think that’s a bit of revisionism based on his mostly terrible and worse play with us. I did see him play better with others. All but his first match here when he looked good, scored a goal and worked well with the Italians (if not up to their usual standards of teammate). His combination play with Insigne in particular looked very workable. Together they should have had three that match. After that I suspect mistakes/inconsistency and a toxic room contributed to his downfall. Yes, he won rookie of the year as a winger and was converted a few seasons later but he played much longer as a striker and scored 12 in 2021, 13 in 2019, 16 is 2017. Let’s see if Prince can do that.
Pretty much everything that entered our orbit this season turned to shit. But I’m guessing Prince is not the striker Herdman would have gone out and found. I don’t see anything special there at a position we have desperately needed something special for an absurdly long time.
^ I am skeptical of Hernandez. So far he gets one “F” and two incompletes on his player acquisition work. Nothing has been a sure fire hit.
I don’t see any vision behind what he’s doing worth following. Let’s hope he just takes his orders from Herdman or someone else more seasoned.
Okay, he's been a striker a little longer than I thought. But he had three-double digit seasons in 13 years in the league (and a whole lot of those SKC goals were back post taps ins. )
He had three shots on net for us, Los. Three. Not three goals, three shots.
He was abjectly awful.
Nashville fans had long given up on him, and it wasn't a smart signing.
He's never looked particularly convincing as a target striker. He's just a poacher, and now he has no speed. His runs were awful, often being nowhere near any of three danger zones, and when he got ahead of the ball, he had no idea what do to.
I'll give you that his defensive work rate was better than most, and he did okay at winning the central ball and holding it.
As for Owusu, it's too early to judge. He's played 250 mins on one of the worst teams in league history, nearly all junk at the end of the game. To my memory, he's had three chances. One header was saved, one he put over the bar, and the third he scored but had leaned offside on the build up.
So, early days on him. Same with Mailula. Haven't seen either enough to judge.
Last edited by jloome; 10-24-2023 at 03:19 PM.
JJ also was less then useful this season at Dallas.
Totally fair. My take is his form dipped, we dented his confidence with a lack of service, and the trade set him back further in that department.
If memory serves he’s always been hot and cold. The initial run was overstated and really Pozuelo driven.
Overall, I’d say he’s maybe a 8-12 a season guy if he gets his head right. But it’s a risk nonetheless.
He came with the nickname "Il Magnifico" any ideas on what it is now. "Il Toxico"?
He was injured for some of it. Broke a bone (wrist?) about three weeks in.
I maintain he'd proven himself a good striker in Poland (he'd only been a striker for three seasons, so his numbers were skewed by that) and he was good for us for half a season.
We change up the team, get rid of the Spanish guy supplying him goals, and he dries up. Well, that's because he's pretty one-dimensional. But he's a good finisher, and that's a rare quality.
If he'd actually gotten decent looks, he might've scored two or three more, at which point he'd be a 12-13 goal striker. We haven't had those too often.
But Dallas immediately moved him to the wing, where he was less effective before coming here.
One-dimensional players can be really valuable (not $1M a season valuable) if they're used in the same way all the time. He hasn't been.
I remember JJ getting cold while Poz was still here - really only decent the first 1/3 of the season - his finishing went cold and his positioning got worse - like he was told to hang back and not go in. He played off the shoulder which was fine - not hold up play though - like none.
Yeah, in no way am I suggesting it was a good acquisition (when the hell have we last have one of those!). But three double digit seasons in the six before us (including setting Philly’s record for most goals in a season) and a rookie of the year is not bad. And as you said he could hold the ball up for real (not usual a winger’s skill). We should have gotten more out of him. But we got nothing much out of everyone, of course.
I still think we go for Kai Kamera as a 80th minute forward backup.
I think, for $45M, he’ll stick around and take his lumps
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Yeah, probably, though what in the world could anyone do with $45M except give most of it away? This (the money) is certainly where world football becomes weird and grotesque. Would we had better things to do.
I suspect he'll stick around for 1 or 2 more years then he'll either find a solution or have one provided to him.
BTW, he's nowhere near the worst DP ever in MLS. And he is by no means hated by fans in the stands - he's annoying but not hated.
He is by far the worst when the contract is considered. I mean, sure, Denilson or Sean Penn were worse, by Insigne is costing 75x what they cost.
When you think about what the amount spent on our two DPs could have bought, if spent even halfway reasonably…
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
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