I went back and took a look myself. You're absolutely right. I had forgotten that CFG made Kreis do a six month apprenticeship at Man City. I also keyed in on a specific phrase, the CFG style of soccer.
The CFG style of soccer is the ManCity/Barcalona soccer possession based style with lots of those passing triangles. I went back and looked at the stats/style of our most recent game and I saw that exact style being played. Looking at some of the older games, this last game was the first time I'd really seen that possession style really show itself.
Besides the victory I can see the management being ecstatic that NYCFC is finally able to play the soccer style that CFG wants it to play. There is a CFG soccer brand and, even in Australia, we all try to play the same soccer style.
I doubt Kreis has to make the playoffs this year to keep his job safe as long as the starts playing more of the possession based game that CFG want it to play. The fact that this style of game is highly likely to let us win anyway is just icing on the cake.
Realistically our long loosing streak where we were playing with no DP's because of Lampardgate and Villa's injury allow Kreis a massive degree of slack.
CFG may be pissed/annoyed if/when we don't make the playoffs this year, but they will understand why we did not. A first year team played without any of its DP's for 7 games, while a bunch of its other well paid players were injured, and simply dug itself into too deep of a hole to get out of. Fine, injuries happen.
Next year though, you can bet the bare minimum expectation is a playoff berth.