I talked to some of the players about the scheduling flip too and the consensus seems to be that they would all like to see the schedule flip. I asked Freese about the cold and he was like yeah but we have to play in Texas during the summer.
2025 Roster and Transfer Discussion Thread
- Thread starter LionNYC
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correct. so perhaps he has cold feet in spending because of the other three signings or CFG is telling him no, dont spend it.
The one thing that we really don't know (and this has been emphasized before) is how much authority rests with David Lee and how much is back in Manchester.
The scouting is done in Manchester. Lee may find out about interesting players, but I have to believe that discovering players and evaluating players is either mostly or wholly done via CFG.
But who decides which players to pursue? Who decides how much to spend? Who decides the strategy (younger DPs or older, etc.)?
Does Lee have the authority to sign a player he wants? Does he have authority up to a certain price? or no authority?
How about funding and staffing the academy and signing academy players?
I suspect that overall strategy is knocked out by both sides discussing and coming to agreement on the best way forward. I suspect Lee has some freedom to make decisions on smaller signings and academy signings, but that CFG gets involved on bigger signings, not just to approve them, but in conception, targeting, negotiating, etc.
If true, that would slow down the process, and perhaps even leave us hanging at times if Manchester is distracted. On the other hand, we have the best talent evaluation and acquisition system in the world working on our side. You have to take the bitter with the sweet.
The scouting is done in Manchester. Lee may find out about interesting players, but I have to believe that discovering players and evaluating players is either mostly or wholly done via CFG.
But who decides which players to pursue? Who decides how much to spend? Who decides the strategy (younger DPs or older, etc.)?
Does Lee have the authority to sign a player he wants? Does he have authority up to a certain price? or no authority?
How about funding and staffing the academy and signing academy players?
I suspect that overall strategy is knocked out by both sides discussing and coming to agreement on the best way forward. I suspect Lee has some freedom to make decisions on smaller signings and academy signings, but that CFG gets involved on bigger signings, not just to approve them, but in conception, targeting, negotiating, etc.
If true, that would slow down the process, and perhaps even leave us hanging at times if Manchester is distracted. On the other hand, we have the best talent evaluation and acquisition system in the world working on our side. You have to take the bitter with the sweet.
2023 - misses playoffs
CFG: David these results are unacceptable
Lee - Well you didn't give me money to add players
2024 - spends $21M on Jovan, Bakrar, Fernandez and Ojeda
CFG: None of the attackers you picked made a difference
Lee: Well Cushing didn't play them or develop them
2025 - fire Cushing add Janson
CFG - no more excuses show us you pick good players
Honestly do we really want Lee picking more big $ signings for us. In addition to the $21M spent on the under productive attackers. He spent $1M on Risa who seems to have lost his spot to Haak and he burned $4M on Martins to stick us with a DP CB for 4 years. At this point I'm starting to think we might be better off punting the season if it means Lee is gone and someone better at player selection is picking our next wave of DPs and U22 players.
CFG: David these results are unacceptable
Lee - Well you didn't give me money to add players
2024 - spends $21M on Jovan, Bakrar, Fernandez and Ojeda
CFG: None of the attackers you picked made a difference
Lee: Well Cushing didn't play them or develop them
2025 - fire Cushing add Janson
CFG - no more excuses show us you pick good players
Honestly do we really want Lee picking more big $ signings for us. In addition to the $21M spent on the under productive attackers. He spent $1M on Risa who seems to have lost his spot to Haak and he burned $4M on Martins to stick us with a DP CB for 4 years. At this point I'm starting to think we might be better off punting the season if it means Lee is gone and someone better at player selection is picking our next wave of DPs and U22 players.
I think the club has autonomy for the most part. Lee has the power and authority to pick and choose players and sign them. Perhaps he has a set of guidelines he has to abide by and make special requests if he wants to spend over any thresholds put in place. I do think Lee is responsible for most of the signings. But like any subsidiary or branch, they have to report their numbers back to the mothership and make it all make sense.
In any case, we can all just speculate all we want. The reality is we don't have a complete roster, despite what Jansen and Lee may say. All I know is, I'm looking across the league and other clubs are able to bring in players and some of those players are making big impacts. All the while, we have radio silence. All that talk of "we are looking to make a few signings" turned into "we have a complete roster" way too quickly for my liking.
In any case, we can all just speculate all we want. The reality is we don't have a complete roster, despite what Jansen and Lee may say. All I know is, I'm looking across the league and other clubs are able to bring in players and some of those players are making big impacts. All the while, we have radio silence. All that talk of "we are looking to make a few signings" turned into "we have a complete roster" way too quickly for my liking.
Sims praised Lee in his recent interview and credited him with developing the current roster model and convincing him we should switch from the older DP style players to this younger development model. That doesn't give us the full answer on the selection responsibility but it certainly paints the picture that Lee has a considerable amount of autonomy with regards to shaping the roster and deciding what types of players the team signs.
That was exactly the article I thought of when I typed that out.
ZYanksRule
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Plus the fees from the Santi sale. We should be, overall, in the black between Taty, Gabi, and Santi sells vs Jovan, Ojeda, Fernandez buys. We have room to make moves if we choose to while staying in the black.
Only if staying in the black applies solely to player costs. I had always assumed it worked roughly as you described, but given how much Sims emphasized the need to operate like a business, I wonder if player sales are expected to cover not just player costs but also a portion of operating expenses. Also, we paid a release clause for Pascal—does that come out of the same budget?
It seems crazy to even propose this, but that's how small market MLS teams operate, and NYCFC is acting like a small market team right now.
ZYanksRule
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I would hope operating expenses are paid for by ticket/merchandise/TV contract money and sporting money stays with the sporting department, but who knows.
That being said ... I'm not necessarily asking for only DPs. I'm asking for depth. This is the kind of signing we could (and should) be making. Where were we on this? A good player who was out of contract/had zero transfer fee.
I'm not asking for us to buy a $20 million player. I'm just trying to find depth that allows us to not put Drew Baiera on the bench every game.
I'm with you, but I don't think they care. A team with any ambition wouldn't have gotten this far into the season with a roster like this.
Not only do we get virtually no stadium revenue (I don't know the numbers on concessions, but I assume it's not all that much), but we pay rent 17 times a year. At least. Which is the point Brad was making in the early season interviews.
That's something I've been thinking about myself as we go through this tortuous window: in a lot of ways, we are a small-market club, because we have a small-market club's finances.
That is fine but if we have limited resources, they shouldn't be gambling over 85% of the total transfer spend of the last 5 years on 3 very unproven 18-year-olds. What is David Lee the guy who can't make rent but spends his entire paycheck on scratchers?
Well, I don't think he expected things to go the way they did with Jovan. In fact, I don't think anyone did. David was the one who got his wanker caught in the wheel, but it could have been anybody.
The jury is still out on Ojeda and Fernandez, especially Trapito. He barely had time for a cup of coffee with Racing before we picked him up.
But point taken. The strategy could have gone the other way and we could have built a roster of proven talents instead. No argument there.
It doesn't matter if a few other big clubs reportedly liked Jovan too. Any 18 year old with less than 30 games is a massive gamble. If we are truly small market levels of cash strapped due to our stadium there is no way we should be spending that much money on players with that high of a risk profile.
Fair enough. I thought the number was eye-popping myself.
Of course, had he really been the second coming of Wayne Rooney -- as so many believed -- we all would have been ecstatic about it and called Lee's move a masterstroke despite the big upfront investment. It looks horrible only because "I score many goals for you" ended up a cruel joke.
In retrospect.
Anyway, this is the time to find some young but experienced players to fill us out. I get the necessity of not blocking a path for the Great Cadre of Promise to earn their places in the first team. But as a few people have pointed out, it's a lot to ask the supporters to spend their hard-earned money to come out and support a mediocre product.
It's time to win some damn games.
ezbeezy214
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ZYanksRule
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And that's exactly the point. It is reasonable that for the next few years the Club needs to be frugal. Stadium is costing $780 million, operating gameday costs are sky-high, and this is ultimately a business that needs to make money.
But if we do need to operate that way, then we can't be taking such wild swings. The best way for a frugal team to win is to make low-risk signings, even if the ceiling is a little lower. Instead, we have swung for the fences on major high-risk signings Jovan, Talles, Ojeda, and Fernandez, and find ourselves with no ability to improve the squad when those risks blew up.
