Not a flop IMHO, big reason why our defense has been amongst the leagues best the last couple months. Some injury issues and got beat out by Haak. Seems like it is time to move on, and the new guy from Brazil seems to have a lot of upside, but our team would still be very solid defensively if Birk was still here.
Sands masked a lot of weaknesses on the left side last season. Risa, meanwhile, is the third-highest paid player on the team and cost $1 million in transfer fees. For that level of investment, on a team that, according to both Lee and Sims, "has to operate like a business," his performance and availability simply haven’t measured up.
Lee’s track record on players acquired for over $1 million is consistently dismal. Fortunately, the club has managed to stay moderately successful thanks to contributions from the academy, SuperDraft picks, savvy free transfers, and a few key holdovers from the pre-Lee era. But it’s hard not to wonder how much more competitive this team could be with a GM who had even a slightly better hit rate on high-fee signings.
Instead, we’ve seen major investments go sideways, players sent out on loan (Jovan, Magno), others likely to be sold at a loss after minimal impact (Risa, Bakrar), and supposed development projects who, two years in, still show little progress (Fernandez, Ojeda). It's an expensive pattern of underperformance that the club can’t afford to keep repeating.