I'm sorry but unless Findley is taking a 60% pay cut, retaining his services would be a very poor decision. Addition by subtraction really. I truly feel that TFC would have gotten better output from Lovitz.
I'm sorry but unless Findley is taking a 60% pay cut, retaining his services would be a very poor decision. Addition by subtraction really. I truly feel that TFC would have gotten better output from Lovitz.
A thousand times this.
If we're going to keep Perquis as CB, would pairing him up with Attakora be a good choice? He and Cann were the best CB pairing that we've had to date (albeit in Prekiball terms) and for the money he'd cost, he could be used as depth if we find someone better before the season starts.
I bet they only keep him because of Jozy and Bradley. I remember Bradley talking about how special it was they they had been part of a World Cup starting team as if it didn't matter that it had been 5 years ago .
Wonder if we'll start to bring Gio's friends. They surely can't be worse.
Gomez was on that team, too. Maybe they brought him in because they thought they needed a positive voice in the dressing room.
Too incestuous, having Vanney coaching all these U.S. nat dudes. We need a coach who is distinctly in charge of his player base, maybe.
Maybe Orlando will trade us Larin for Bradley and Altidore. We could give Larin a young DP deal and go out and use the saved $1.5M from getting rid of Bradley, Altidoire, Findley, Perquis and Kantari to build a defense and find some dependable talent.
The tap ins rap is slight hyperbole but it's still hitting on the fact he is under active out there and is living off pretty good service. You can't seriously be touting his "bull rush" runs, those were probably even less than his shots on net during the season.
The guy didn't look to goal enough and his inability to create his own shot is beyond worrisome.
Logic says you can't continue to be as efficient as he was this year while being very inactive.
Seriously, the team will improve when four defenders and a keeper are brought in who are at, or above, MLS calibre. None of the current defenders meet that standard. Teams are getting better at creating and scoring goals, hence TFC needs to vastly improve defensively to counter this. And, despite an occasional decent save, our keeper let in far too many soft goals this year.
This is the problem right here. I've been keeping my eye on a few numbers throughout the season and Jozy's shot attempts + key passes per game reflects the eye test that says he's not very involved.
Over the long term, shots are the best indicator for goal scoring. If you don't shoot a lot you will probably not score many goals, and if you shoot a ton you are likely to score more. This is so obvious it sounds like it's not even worth mentioning, but it's important for predicting long term & future success. If a player is averaging a high number of shots and scoring a lot of goals, you know that trend is more likely than not to continue (Giovinco, Kamara, Villa, Drogba). If a player is averaging a lot of shots but not scoring many goals, he's either unlucky and you'd expect him to score more in the future (Valeri probably the best example of this for this year) or he has poor finishing (Accam). If a player is scoring more goals than you'd expect with a small number of shots, he's probably getting lucky or he has excellent finishing.
With a full season of watching him now Altidore certainly seems to fall into the last category. He averages 1.4 shots per game, making him & Charlie Davies the only players in the top 20 goalscorers this season with under 1.5 shot attempts per game. So was he lucky or is he just a good finisher? I don't think he got any luckier than the average guy over the course of a season. I think it's pretty clear Jozy finishes chances at an elite rate by MLS standards, the problem is he doesn't get himself many chances.
Add key passes to shots and you get a good idea of how involved a player is in the attack. Jozy averaged 0.9 key passes per game. That's not bad for a target striker, in the same realm as, for example, Kamara at 1.1 (also I wouldn't expect Jozy to post another goose egg in assists next season based on his performance in this area this year - I'd expect him to pick up about 3 assists next year). But it's a problem when you're only averaging 1.4 shots. It means Altidore is creating just 2.3 shots per game. I'm not going to add all the numbers again, at least not right now, but this puts him somewhere around the 60th most dangerous player in the league in terms of shot creation.
I think the most likely thing that happens next season is Altidore produces at basically the same rate. He had bad luck with other players finishing his key passes this year, so he'll pick up a few assists, and he'll live off his 3 shots every two games and his finishing ability will push him to roughly the same amount of goals. That's most likely. If he hits a bad run of form and he starts missing some of those shots, he might get 8 goals. If he catches fire and buries every chance, he might get 18. But if you're building a team you have to build it on the assumption that the most likely outcomes occur, so the question is if Jozy scores 14 and gets 3 assists next year, is that good enough?
Personally, I think not. It's a respectable number but you want more out of a DP. Ideally, you want a striker who makes everyone around him better. Aside from a dummy and a couple of fluke back heels, he didn't do that. And he certainly wasn't helping during the quarter season that he missed, for various reasons. Combine the 9 games he missed with the 5-6 that he was invisible/unfit for, an MLS club gave a player (who didn't really need an adjustment period) about $5m to play well in slightly better than half his games. That isn't great value in this league.
(Great post by the way. )
Last edited by Bobo; 11-01-2015 at 05:34 PM.
There are obvious balance problems with defense with Jozy and Seba playing together so I don't it matters how many numbers he puts up. I think it's a definite that he will be moved.
Altidore, has to stay unless TFC is getting someone more high profile. I dont put too much importance on his numbers. There's a need for 2 DP strikers.
Team needs:
GK- Definite need.
CB- 2 centre backs, maybe one of them can be Johnny Leveron.
RB- Obvious need since the spring.
CM- Cheyrou, has the right stuff, but his legs are definitely gone.
RM- How about someone that can cross the ball to the DP?
LM- How about someone that has a left foot on the left side that can cross?
If we get a proper a DM with Cheyrou and Bradley imagine that midfield three honestly might be one of the best in the league depending on who we get and you could have Osorio and Warner off the bench
Last edited by portu; 11-02-2015 at 01:22 AM.
or Jozy needs to learn to play more D, track back to the half and move all over like drogba (minus the silly antics drogba plays)
and heres an idea, play with some freakn passion and confidence, he didnt try to "will" a game in his favour at all this year'
How can someone be so big, strong and quick and be so irrelevant
It is a fair discussion whether JA is as productive as we need him to be for our current squad but as DPs go, he is above average. There have been a lot of busts.
Remind me again (I think it was discussed earlier), what was the conclusion on Dan Kennedy, an upgrade compared to our current guys or not so much?
Jozy is playing more D but our midfield is being overrun consistently, partly because of Cheyrou's not recovering and the other is that we are being outnumbered.
Vanney's not stupid and he knows he needs more bodies in the middle to play his high pressing, possession playstyle. That could mean 4-1-4-1 or 4-2-3-1 going forward, in the end it's going to be one striker.
We don't need a keeper in his prime, just a placeholder until Roberts is ready. Someone who is 34 should be okay to hold the fort for another 2-4 years until Roberts is ready to start. I don't think Bono is the one, though.
Just on Kennedy
Here are his save % stats over the last few years. Also bear in mind he lost his job to a 20yr old this season at Dallas.
Year, Save %
2010, 71%
2011, 70%
2012, 65%
2013, 63%
2014, 60%
2015, 62%
I'd rather not go for Kennedy. You could get better for less elsewhere.
If Vanney is still here next season (big if) then he and Bez need to get their ish together and find players that suit a style. Players were played out of position WAY too much this past season to be successful. The closest thing to a real setup was the narrow 4132. His 4231s were an absolute joke.
How so? We had one of our best performances of the year lined up in a 4-2-3-1.
It's funny any way I think that could be an ideal way for us to line up doesn't really suit playing Altidore and Giovinco together.
I wonder if Earnie Stewart could be tempted to taking Jozy again when he starts his new gig with Philly. If he can get the owner to stump up of course.
Which performance, the one where it took two red cards to beat a terrible defense and morally deflated team? They had done little up to the first sending off. Strikers as mids, centre-mids out wide, Seba as an isolated target man; setups started getting downright silly.
Last edited by Bobo; 11-02-2015 at 04:31 PM.