2025 Roster and Transfer Discussion Thread
- Thread starter LionNYC
- Start date
ezbeezy214
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True that. Fair
Yeah, expect a news drop next week
Not even rebuilding. It's pre-rebuilding.
Exactly, see my post! Maybe it’s even pre-prebuilding.
Outside of 2016-2018, when for me it happened every year, how often have you thought NYCFC had a better roster than the year before as of season opening?
2019 - Villa gone, Mitrita in, but Heber did not arrive until a month later. I probably considered it a step back. Great season as it turned out. I probably thought the team was better as of a few weeks after Heber arrived but on opening day, no.
2020-2021 basically level (a very high level) with 2019 year to year
2022 maybe level to a bit worse with Shradi gone and knowing Taty was dead man walking.
2023 clearly worse.
2024 clearly better, though almost solely because 2023 was such a low bar. It was like 2016.
2025 worse again
I'm not sure what my point is. The run from 2018-2022 was exceptional, and focusing on a snapshot judgment as of Opening Day is not the best --or even a good metric -- to judge a season. But it is nice to start a season thinking "we should be better this year." NYCFC managed that 3 years straight after the very low base of 2015. Lee has very much bungled the progression from 2023 onwards in comparison.
I guess I figured out my point. That's why I write things sometimes.
2019 - Villa gone, Mitrita in, but Heber did not arrive until a month later. I probably considered it a step back. Great season as it turned out. I probably thought the team was better as of a few weeks after Heber arrived but on opening day, no.
2020-2021 basically level (a very high level) with 2019 year to year
2022 maybe level to a bit worse with Shradi gone and knowing Taty was dead man walking.
2023 clearly worse.
2024 clearly better, though almost solely because 2023 was such a low bar. It was like 2016.
2025 worse again
I'm not sure what my point is. The run from 2018-2022 was exceptional, and focusing on a snapshot judgment as of Opening Day is not the best --or even a good metric -- to judge a season. But it is nice to start a season thinking "we should be better this year." NYCFC managed that 3 years straight after the very low base of 2015. Lee has very much bungled the progression from 2023 onwards in comparison.
I guess I figured out my point. That's why I write things sometimes.
Well put. Even with that history, at the end of last season, the roster was so fundamentally flawed, I wouldn’t have believed that we could start the season so much worse than that. And without Sands and Santi, and without any depth to the bench, it is.
ZYanksRule
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I feel like "as of season opening" is a tough bar to crack considering how late we always make our signings. Give me until April. The 34-game season and incredibly forgiving playoff format give us some leeway to make moves in the spring and still be totally fine. I'm not nearly close to being ready to write off 2025.
But that's not true. Matarrita, Johnson, Herrera, Callens, Ring, Chanot, Shradi, Parks, Mitrita, Thorarinsson, Martins, Ilenic, Freese, Wolf, Ojeda. All signed by Valentines Day.
Also I acknowledged it's not a very good metric. It doesn't mean it is of no interest.
The conditions that allowed the 2014 Revs and 2016 Sounders to happen no longer exist, and hoping for a flukey run like the Red Bulls had last year is not a plan. It's excuse-making for a team that has forgotten how to excel.
This is at least the third or fourth time I have to remind people but:
The last time a team finished below fourth place in its conference and won MLS Cup was 2010. The extreme majority -- like 80% -- finish 3rd or higher. NYC finished 4 in 2021 but had a lot of bad luck in the summer and a lot of good fortune in late fall plus the entire year was still under a weird Covid atmosphere. And they still were in the "at least finish 4th to have any chance at all" slot.
"Just get in and make a run" almost never happens, but people won't let go of the dream. You need to be good all year. You need to be good at Home and you need to be better than average Away. And being really good 1 year is probably not enough. NYCFC was elite for 5 straight years IMO (2018-2022). They won once, and that's normal. If you want to win Cups, be excellent year after year after year and then hope you get lucky. Finish in the top 3 spots in your conference.
Plus, I'd rather have a team that gets 55-60+ points and does little in the playoffs than 40-50 points and lose in MLS Cup Final like the Red Bills did. It provides much more consistent satisfaction, and it is more representative of being a good team. I want NYCFC to be good, not a beneficiary of lucky timing for a win streak.
Right now, the hope that we finish top 3 in the East needs probably almost all of the following happen:
- Martinez suffers minimal or no fall off
- Malachi returns and has a season like his 8-game run last year
- at least 1 of Ojeda or Fernandez breaks out
- Maxi can play 80% of minutes in the first 20 weeks of the season
- Freese isn't sold
- O'Toole can play almost every minute
- Haak can fill in for Sands
- and pretty much no injuries anywhere because there is no depth
ZYanksRule
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I understand what you're saying. I agree with most of it. It's still too early to make this determination. If we're still talking in April about how we have 1 DP and 2 U-22 players and no signings, I'll be right there with you.
I'm not saying we can wait to the summer and try to go on a run. I'm saying we have six games to the end of March and 9 games until the primary transfer window closes. It's a long season and even if we get off to a slow start and don't reach full potential until May, all hope is not lost.
If we truly make no major additions until the summer, I'll be right there with you holding pitchforks and calling for David Lee's head. We're (allegedly) about to get a $17 million windfall. The team screwed up last time they got a massive outgoing transfer and might screw it up again, but for now there's reason to hope we will sign a big piece to replace Santi. Do they deserve the benefit of the doubt? Not really. But let's see what happens in the next month.
Yea agreed. The new strategy to get young players to develop has killed the possibility of that feeling ever happening again cause we simply don't know what we'll be getting cause we aren't signing proven players.
Based on him harping on this every interview he's done, I don't expect us to get an experienced and proven DP.. we are definitely signing a young dp.
ZYanksRule
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Our only hope is that they learn from mistakes and go from signing 18 and 19 year olds to signing 20 and 21 year olds who are more ready to compete at this level.
I just think (hope) much of the plan (at least initially) changes when we open the new stadium and you see some flashier signings. We are mostly in a holding pattern now and therefore are dug in even more with this extremely frustrating (success debilitating) pattern. With that said, we do deserve a more reasoned approach even for the time being as it wouldn’t take that much to improve the roster and appease (or at least not offend) the loyal supporters.
ZYanksRule
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I honestly don't think the organization is being cheap, I think they're misunderstood on the quality of the league and assigning players to us who don't make sense. I'm cautiously optimistic that the last two seasons of signings mean they're going to change for this year because I legitimately believe they want to win and want to be successful every year. I really don't think they're punting until the stadium opens.
I reserve the right to change my opinion after we see what they do with these openings.
Lee has said over and over the club's strategy is to sign promising players and develop them.
he has mentioned that if there is a proven player that makes sense for them from a business standpoint and everything else works, then they would go for it, but this hasn't happened yet. to me, this means his mindset is that if a proven player falls in our lap we'll take it, but we aren't going to pursue a proven player and would rather find prospects to develop.
I would love it for Lee to prove us all wrong, but for a few seasons now, he hasn't gone out and signed proven players. I think we got lucky with martinez. no one else who he went out and paid big bucks for has shown they can influence a game in any real positive way.
