Contending in 2018

canchon said:
Tyler Adams wasn’t a lock starter for RBNJ at the beginning of this year either. Need to play Sands, but not necessarily have his name written in ink on the team sheet.
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of course, in soccer nothing is certain. we could start him and he could be an instant hit for all we know. but, I'm mostly just reiterating that putting a 17 year old to start against grown men isn't exactly the recipe for success... and expecting it to work is just insane.
while I agree that he could and should absolutely be involved. I do not agree that he should be a starter unless by some miracle he's capable already.
 
Tyler Adams starting as a RWB for New Jersey is a lot different than James Sands starting as the string puller for New York City. There's an adage that you take your fastest guys and put them on the wings and hope they make something happen. Adams has done that, and more. But it's also New Jersey and they weren't going to spend the money to find a RB or RWB this season, even after they sold Dax.

You should expect this team to invest in the Central Midfield to replace Herrera. We're not New Jersey. And that's why Sands won't start.

But to my original point, why can't he be phased in next season as the the Pirlo deep bench option? I don't know how many minutes Pirlo played this season, but I see no reason why Sands can't replicate his production coming off the bench. Play him midweek and in the US Open Cup
 
Kjbert said:
You should expect this team to invest in the Central Midfield to replace Herrera. We're not New Jersey. And that's why Sands won't start.

But to my original point, why can't he be phased in next season as the the Pirlo deep bench option? I don't know how many minutes Pirlo played this season, but I see no reason why Sands can't replicate his production coming off the bench. Play him midweek and in the US Open Cup
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precisely. give him his minutes, more importantly being if he has earned the right to play these minutes. Vieira see's these players every day whereas we see them once a week. Unless he's the second coming of Messi, he should be as limited as possible
 
Kjbert said:
Tyler Adams starting as a RWB for New Jersey is a lot different than James Sands starting as the string puller for New York City. There's an adage that you take your fastest guys and put them on the wings and hope they make something happen. Adams has done that, and more. But it's also New Jersey and they weren't going to spend the money to find a RB or RWB this season, even after they sold Dax.

You should expect this team to invest in the Central Midfield to replace Herrera. We're not New Jersey. And that's why Sands won't start.

But to my original point, why can't he be phased in next season as the the Pirlo deep bench option? I don't know how many minutes Pirlo played this season, but I see no reason why Sands can't replicate his production coming off the bench. Play him midweek and in the US Open Cup
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Spot on.
 
Kjbert said:
Tyler Adams starting as a RWB for New Jersey is a lot different than James Sands starting as the string puller for New York City. There's an adage that you take your fastest guys and put them on the wings and hope they make something happen. Adams has done that, and more. But it's also New Jersey and they weren't going to spend the money to find a RB or RWB this season, even after they sold Dax.

You should expect this team to invest in the Central Midfield to replace Herrera. We're not New Jersey. And that's why Sands won't start.

But to my original point, why can't he be phased in next season as the the Pirlo deep bench option? I don't know how many minutes Pirlo played this season, but I see no reason why Sands can't replicate his production coming off the bench. Play him midweek and in the US Open Cup
Click to expand...

On only a slightly related note Adams is a petulant hot head just waiting to get a red. Every time we play RB from here on out we should make a point of having our players intentionally push his buttons to see if we can get him to lose it and get tossed.
 
Ulrich said:
Sacha ain’t so level-headed either.
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Yeah but Sacah got wound up because he wanted to protect Adams, still think you go after Adams. Adams is a wannabe Felipe without the composure to not get emotional. I can't think of a player I despise more than Felipe, his antics have no place in the game IMO but he knows exactly what he's doing, stays composed and plays his game. Adams tries to play the game but also gets emotional about it which I think can be exploited.
 
We earned the bye notwithstanding our poor form for much of the season, terrible luck with injuries to key players, including a hobbled Villa for the latter part of the season, finishing yips reminiscent of a kids rec league team, an officiating bias (or at least some poor/uneven luck in this department) and some baffling game management by PV, among other things. That suggests to me that we are not very far off. And that the MLS parity/product is exploitable. If we don't fuck up DP3, and we do not get really unlucky with exits, there should be no reason or assortment of reasons why we shouldn't run away with a bye next season.
 
JayH said:
We earned the bye notwithstanding our poor form for much of the season, terrible luck with injuries to key players, including a hobbled Villa for the latter part of the season, finishing yips reminiscent of a kids rec league team, an officiating bias (or at least some poor/uneven luck in this department) and some baffling game management by PV, among other things. That suggests to me that we are not very far off. And that the MLS parity/product is exploitable. If we don't fuck up DP3, and we do not get really unlucky with exits, there should be no reason or assortment of reasons why we shouldn't run away with a bye next season.
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Go out and get a difference making DP like Atlanta did and next year we win the Cup. You slot Josef Martinez or Almiron into this line-up and we're better than Toronto.

Big winter for our boys. How big is the budget?
 
mgarbowski said:
So. You know me. I started this last night.
  • Maxi did not have an off year. Here are his stats from whoscored. I don't know why the 2017 numbers differ from MLS but this is what we have:
View attachment 7719

  • Maxi 2017 is exactly Maxi every other year. Actually better than some. There's no reason to expect a jump up next year.
  • Again. Maxi does lots of great things that don't get him a goal or an assist, but he cannot be our 3rd highest goal scorer and 3rd highest paid player.
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Coming in very late – this was a really comprehensive post, but after reading the stuff quoted above, I remained curious what historical whoscored.com stats looked like for the players you were comparing Maxi to. I think it's true that his stats this year are on-par with his career stats, but I would have expected them to improve by more given the relative quality of Serie A and MLS.

Player, pre-2017 whoscored.com average (massive caveat, this was not weighted for minutes played) rating, 2017 whoscored.com rating, % increase:
  • Maxi, 6.84, 7.11, +4%
  • Villalba, no previous year stats, 7.15, n/a%
  • Vazquez, 6.67, 7.22, +8.3% (excluded the year he made one sub appearance for Barca).
  • Almiron, 6.69, 7.39, +10.5%
  • Blanco, 6.46, 7.01, +8.5%
  • Royer, 6.45, 6.96, +7.9%
Given that Maxi's key-pass per 90 min stat went from 1.82 pre-2017 to 2.6 in 2017 (+43%), I think it's reasonable to suggest that his production (and his whoscored.com ratings) would be much higher if we had better goal-scorers around him. Wallace's and Harrison's injuries/ slumps in the 2nd half might explain that alone, but also Camargo never got to show what he had to offer for us, and arguably neither did Lewis.

You and others made similar or proximal points in subsequent posts (I'm not gonna trawl through all of them because it was an extended sub-thread), but I don't think it's cut-and-dry that this was a disastrous signing (I think the FO would have had good reason to believe that the pieces around Maxi would perform better), and I do think there are reasons "to expect a jump up" if we can finish more effectively or consistently going forward.
 
Christopher Jee said:
Coming in very late – this was a really comprehensive post, but after reading the stuff quoted above, I remained curious what historical whoscored.com stats looked like for the players you were comparing Maxi to. I think it's true that his stats this year are on-par with his career stats, but I would have expected them to improve by more given the relative quality of Serie A and MLS.

Player, pre-2017 whoscored.com average (massive caveat, this was not weighted for minutes played) rating, 2017 whoscored.com rating, % increase:
  • Maxi, 6.84, 7.11, +4%
  • Villalba, no previous year stats, 7.15, n/a%
  • Vazquez, 6.67, 7.22, +8.3% (excluded the year he made one sub appearance for Barca).
  • Almiron, 6.69, 7.39, +10.5%
  • Blanco, 6.46, 7.01, +8.5%
  • Royer, 6.45, 6.96, +7.9%
Given that Maxi's key-pass per 90 min stat went from 1.82 pre-2017 to 2.6 in 2017 (+43%), I think it's reasonable to suggest that his production (and his whoscored.com ratings) would be much higher if we had better goal-scorers around him. Wallace's and Harrison's injuries/ slumps in the 2nd half might explain that alone, but also Camargo never got to show what he had to offer for us, and arguably neither did Lewis.

You and others made similar or proximal points in subsequent posts (I'm not gonna trawl through all of them because it was an extended sub-thread), but I don't think it's cut-and-dry that this was a disastrous signing (I think the FO would have had good reason to believe that the pieces around Maxi would perform better), and I do think there are reasons "to expect a jump up" if we can finish more effectively or consistently going forward.
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Good work on the rating and key pass info. I'm not sure it alters my opinion though. Somewhere in the discussion I looked up and posted how Wallace had an above average year in both goals and assists based on 8 years of MLS stats. You can't measure the same way for Harrison, but his goals per minute went up 42% over his abbreviated rookie season. So what was the reasonable expectation then? Was it fair to expect Jack's goals per minute to increase by 60%? 70%? Was it reasonable to expect Wallace to have a career high in goals? Because that's what it would have taken, more or less, for the team to have matched it's 2016 goals scored total unless Villa made it up singlehandedly, or unless the 4th , 5th and 6th top scorers on the team made up the slack.

Put another way, if Jack scored a similar goal total to the average of the other top playoff teams second scorer, and Wallace was in the middle of the pack for a 3rd goal scorer, then they both had standout career years. And if Maxi got most of those extra assists then he has a career year also. It's not Maxi's fault that Wallace did not set a personal best, or that Jack didn't improve even more than he did. But why would anyone predict that Maxi, Wallace, and Harrison would all have a blowout career year simultaneously? You can't build a team on that sort of expectation. It's dumb planning. Signing an actual goal scorer instead of Maxi who could be expected to score 10-15 goals based on his record is much more rational.

Related: I think we're making a mistake when we look at the different half season production of Wallace and Harrison and assuming the second half was some anomaly. Wallace is a 0-7 goal guy over 8 MLS years with an average of 3. Just because he scored 4 in the first half is no reason to expect 4 in the second. That would have been an outlier. He has never done that. Sure, it could happen, but it probably won't. It's odd that all 4 goals were all in one half but clusters happen. In 2015 he scored just once in 32 games, so a half season with 0 goals is not unexpected. A 0 goal second half was always more likely than getting another 4.
And Jack, well, we don't know who he is yet. Even if he improves that doesn't mean he should have done better this year. Maybe he really was a 10 goal guy this year, and 7/3 split between halves was just how it happened.
 
mgarbowski said:
Good work on the rating and key pass info. I'm not sure it alters my opinion though. Somewhere in the discussion I looked up and posted how Wallace had an above average year in both goals and assists based on 8 years of MLS stats. You can't measure the same way for Harrison, but his goals per minute went up 42% over his abbreviated rookie season. So what was the reasonable expectation then? Was it fair to expect Jack's goals per minute to increase by 60%? 70%? Was it reasonable to expect Wallace to have a career high in goals? Because that's what it would have taken, more or less, for the team to have matched it's 2016 goals scored total unless Villa made it up singlehandedly, or unless the 4th , 5th and 6th top scorers on the team made up the slack.

Put another way, if Jack scored a similar goal total to the average of the other top playoff teams second scorer, and Wallace was in the middle of the pack for a 3rd goal scorer, then they both had standout career years. And if Maxi got most of those extra assists then he has a career year also. It's not Maxi's fault that Wallace did not set a personal best, or that Jack didn't improve even more than he did. But why would anyone predict that Maxi, Wallace, and Harrison would all have a blowout career year simultaneously? You can't build a team on that sort of expectation. It's dumb planning. Signing an actual goal scorer instead of Maxi who could be expected to score 10-15 goals based on his record is much more rational.

Related: I think we're making a mistake when we look at the different half season production of Wallace and Harrison and assuming the second half was some anomaly. Wallace is a 0-7 goal guy over 8 MLS years with an average of 3. Just because he scored 4 in the first half is no reason to expect 4 in the second. That would have been an outlier. He has never done that. Sure, it could happen, but it probably won't. It's odd that all 4 goals were all in one half but clusters happen. In 2015 he scored just once in 32 games, so a half season with 0 goals is not unexpected. A 0 goal second half was always more likely than getting another 4.
And Jack, well, we don't know who he is yet. Even if he improves that doesn't mean he should have done better this year. Maybe he really was a 10 goal guy this year, and 7/3 split between halves was just how it happened.
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I’m not disagreeing with anything you wrote.... but I’d love to be at the next table when you open your fortune cookie and analyze it.
 
mgarbowski said:
Good work on the rating and key pass info. I'm not sure it alters my opinion though. Somewhere in the discussion I looked up and posted how Wallace had an above average year in both goals and assists based on 8 years of MLS stats. You can't measure the same way for Harrison, but his goals per minute went up 42% over his abbreviated rookie season. So what was the reasonable expectation then? Was it fair to expect Jack's goals per minute to increase by 60%? 70%? Was it reasonable to expect Wallace to have a career high in goals? Because that's what it would have taken, more or less, for the team to have matched it's 2016 goals scored total unless Villa made it up singlehandedly, or unless the 4th , 5th and 6th top scorers on the team made up the slack.

Put another way, if Jack scored a similar goal total to the average of the other top playoff teams second scorer, and Wallace was in the middle of the pack for a 3rd goal scorer, then they both had standout career years. And if Maxi got most of those extra assists then he has a career year also. It's not Maxi's fault that Wallace did not set a personal best, or that Jack didn't improve even more than he did. But why would anyone predict that Maxi, Wallace, and Harrison would all have a blowout career year simultaneously? You can't build a team on that sort of expectation. It's dumb planning. Signing an actual goal scorer instead of Maxi who could be expected to score 10-15 goals based on his record is much more rational.

Related: I think we're making a mistake when we look at the different half season production of Wallace and Harrison and assuming the second half was some anomaly. Wallace is a 0-7 goal guy over 8 MLS years with an average of 3. Just because he scored 4 in the first half is no reason to expect 4 in the second. That would have been an outlier. He has never done that. Sure, it could happen, but it probably won't. It's odd that all 4 goals were all in one half but clusters happen. In 2015 he scored just once in 32 games, so a half season with 0 goals is not unexpected. A 0 goal second half was always more likely than getting another 4.
And Jack, well, we don't know who he is yet. Even if he improves that doesn't mean he should have done better this year. Maybe he really was a 10 goal guy this year, and 7/3 split between halves was just how it happened.
Click to expand...
Agreed with your general points on whether we should be expecting more from Wallace and Harrison in relation to their career bests (as you note, Jack is a tough on here). But, it would be interesting to see, especially in Wallace's case, what is xG was in his previous MLS seasons versus this year. If there was a dramatic increase this year, then I may slide more towards it being a somewhat reasonable expectation for him to have a career year.
 
I wonder if everyone's stats would be better if Maxi was actually a threat in and around the box, thus making defenses focus on him.

We had a 2 v 1 in Montreal where Maxi and Villa looked like they would create a goal. The defender, wisely, went with Villa, leaving Maxi open for an attempt on goal. Maxi passed the ball to Villa.
 
Kjbert said:
I wonder if everyone's stats would be better if Maxi was actually a threat in and around the box, thus making defenses focus on him.

We had a 2 v 1 in Montreal where Maxi and Villa looked like they would create a goal. The defender, wisely, went with Villa, leaving Maxi open for an attempt on goal. Maxi passed the ball to Villa.
Click to expand...

i always think that its because of how PV wants them to play...give it to villa....so many times i see players pass rather than shoot in or near the box.
 
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