Ok so one wing is Harrison. Villa up top, Pirlo middle.
Due to marketing and impact concerns any DP is going to play either midfield or forward.
We have GAM/TAM thank you ma'am, enough for a 500k-700k player, this guy should be a difference maker, but realistically won't be the spark in the team that a DP is.
Let's look at this logically.
1. CFG would like to have Jersey sales and butts in seats over average of a DP be enough to at least partially cover their league leading salary. This means older well known player.
2. The Yankee/CFG style is to win championships. Upper management would find it intolerable to have RB win a championship before we do. Anymore remember what the last chant of the season and the last chant of the post season was? I do, and the entire management team was there to hear it too, including the guys up the chain from Reyna. There is a branding requirement to be better than NJRB, it's basically how NYCFC management have positioned their brand. This means younger player with his legs still good.
3. On the part of us fans there is almost a reflexive terror about our defense.
The J. Garrett Lieb hot take is the following.
1. Keisuke Honda fulfills 1 well enough and 2 well enough. Perfect for neither, but he goes well with the club's stated desire to make the team younger.
1a. Ceteris paribus the club would prefer to have the player here for the full season, it takes about half a season for a foreigner to really "get" MLS. They need time to tell with the team and get used to the fact that our players will not be making the kinds of passes and runs they are accustomed to.
1b I can see various elements of the club pushing both ways in terms of wait for player or get player in the Jan window. Personally I think it's best for the team, and our standings, if we can have that player here for spring training. Games won in march and April do not have to be won in August and September. Also a winning team has more fans in their seats.
2. Assuming Harrison and Pirlo midfield in our preferred 4-3-3 we are left with one spot, the question being to DP or not to DP. I believe the answer is not to DP. But rather get a good younger player at the higher end of my discussed pay scale who can teach Harrison a bit about the wings and help run down the RedBulls midfield/move the ball forwards. Or same pay scale but in Iraola's DM position. Of the two it's probably going to be a good DM to cover our backline.
3. Backline trauma is real, Brillant/Chanot aka the maginot line, are a good CB duo, they just need time, but having a good DM means we can probably get our GAA down to where we're in the top half of the league.
4. Villa gets cold occasionally. Having Frank around when Villa was cold saved our collective asses, the reason we're probably targeting a foreword DP is that we cannot afford a cold Villa with no one else to pick up the slack, we won't win and we won't score.
5. As much as I like Iraola I think the best thing we can do as a team is let him go, or have him on the bench just in case our preferred DM goes down, he's lost too much pace to compete, regardless of whether he is more technically skilled than most of the league (he is).
So yeah, my bet is when Mix is gone we acquire a DM GAM player, and a DP foreword of some variety.
Or I'm completely wrong and the order of the day is dominate the midfield and we go with a DP mod in his late 20'a early 30's. And some 6'4 freak of a GAM player who's job is to put head in front of goal and wait for ball from Pirlo.
