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dummyrun
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Alas, my sweet Carlitos, how soon we forget you and your matador celebration.
2019 Roster Discussion
- Thread starter NYCFC_Dan
- Start date
Alas, my sweet Carlitos, how soon we forget you and your matador celebration.
Didn’t we make a move for Giuseppe Rossi and were rebuked because he wanted to stay in Europe before flirting with LAFC?
We didn't hear it, but the club was looking at striker DPs, but decided to sign Mitrita.
Was thinking it looked like our back line a lot of the last game especially when the cards came out.
Known NYCFC transfer striker targets:
1. Mackay-Steven
2. Carlitos
3. Ola Kamara
4. ?
5. Heber
1. Mackay-Steven
2. Carlitos
3. Ola Kamara
4. ?
5. Heber
I just want to say that I'm cautiously optimistic that the player is coming from Croatia. The Croatian domestic league cannot be elite, the clubs cannot be super rich or have huge stadiums because the country only has 4 million people, but it has reached Euro finals, WC semis, etc. It's like getting somebody from the Uruguayan domestic league. His club is currently 2nd place, and he's the top scorer. Replace that with Peñarol or Nacional, and you would be excited. The guy has to be at least passable to be a starter considering the kind of domestic talent the Croatians churn out.
Does Mackay-Stevens even count as a striker? Isn't he a half decent Scottish winger?
As the 5th choice, and having had more than minor recent injury issues, and his China transfer falling through, and he hasn’t played in a while (fitness or ability or the team shelving him?), and taking his physical in Manchester as opposed to at our medical partners, what are the chances that something borderline medically red-flag-worthy is overlooked and he’s processed as fit to play, because let’s face it, a number 5 signing is desperation....
And this isn’t an accusation, just speculative opining. We know CFG cheats financially, that’s not in question and is a fact, so would they ethically sign off on something that probably shouldn’t go through because of the necessary optics the signing would provide? I’m genuinely curious about this because so much control over the process is taken away from NYCFC and placed in the hands of CFG/MCFC when medicals are performed at their facilities and not at NYP.
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dummyrun
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Nope, I was wrong, it was Héber's Croatian club that confirmed he went to Manchester. Congrats to NYCFC's communications team on another day of successfully fighting off the urge to communicate.
This seems like the trouble in this debate. We don't really know if the team is doing exactly what you asked for - have a plan A, B and C. Or had no back up and ended up in a mad scramble.
Isn't it possible the team had a first choice, let's say Carlito. They can't get that deal, for whatever reason. Then they have a number of options still on the board, the best of which is Kamara. They pursue him but can't compete with Chinese dollars without going DP and they aren't willing to do that. So he falls through. Now it's late in the window, but they still have their list, the best of which at this point is Heber. They go for it and get him.
They did exactly what you are asking for. Maybe there was even overlap in the negotiations with the three players. Maybe there were 10 other players in negotiation that we are now walking away from as Heber comes through. They had a plan A, B and C, and they executed on that. But from the outside we are calling it a panic buy.
I find that at least as plausible as the claims here that they had no plan B and started over from scratch at each stage.
Most signs pointed to his agent drumming up interest that wasn't there I believe.
Yeah, and he was rumored to come on before Mitrita did. I don't think the club saw him as a striker at all.
I would counter your (good) argument with the fact that Heber wasn’t playing and his club seemed to want to move him since his China move fell through, so if he was being looked at concurrently by CFG/NYCFC, and not serially, then it’s baffling that a little extra gas wouldn’t have been mixed to speed the negotiating process up (how dug in would Heber’s club have been?). We’re 3 games in with no CF and he’s likely not to be available until game 5 (I guess he could come off the bench this weekend if he arrives with zero assimilation to the team). Add to that what the three evolving talking points on our CF search, and it’s hard to believe Heber was part of a planned shortlist, or at least hard to believe they didn’t wait to initiate the acquisition.
Or they could have had dozens of targets and made (unsuccessful) offers to many, which is par for the course for teams during the off-season/transfer windows. Add in the fact that this is MLS, not La Liga, so it's not so easy to successfully attract talent or seal the deal, especially when we are talking about a below-DP contract. I hope that this was the case.
However, whether or not that is or is not the case, the timing suggests that we may still underestimate the difficulty, do not cast the net far enough, and/or take our time to our detriment. It's probably a combination of standard practice, and some weaknesses in approach.
Yeah, Gaz is a straight up winger. Dynamite bombing down the left with his jinking runs and, at least when he was playing for United, slightly lost and out of his element when cutting in from the right. Which doesn't auger too well given how we play.
You said it much more coherently than I was attempting to. I don't know why we always assume the worst with this team's player acquisition methods, especially considering the talent they've been able to bring in the last few years. They've missed on some guys, every team does. But the vast majority of signings have been good ones. We really should have more faith in what they're doing, all things considered.
I think there are three reasons for this right now.
- We're not winning.
- We're not winning.
- We're not winning.
ETA: 4. Medina.
My complaint isn't with the end result, I think the FO deserves credit for bringing in a number of high quality players. We have some misses but all teams do. My criticism is the timelines with which they do things for both player acquisition and even simple information dissemination seem to take considerably longer than other team in the MLS. At times it puts us at a competitive disadvantage like when we added Maxi late into camp or this year when we started the season without a single CF on the roster. If most other teams in the MLS can have their players signed and their rosters set earlier in the offseason preferably before the start of camp I think it's reasonable to question why our FO consistently fails to do the same. That's before we even touch the information piece where we seem to be last to release every piece of information that other mls teams seem to have no problem getting out well before us.
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