Contending in 2018
- Thread starter Fake Jew
- Start date
Sounds like a good plan to me I doubt he does it because PV is stubborn when it comes to his system but this team is begging for 4-4-2. Villa needs a partner. Harrison and Wallace have such a heavy defensive assignment they are already essentially playing as LM and RM. Both Harrison and Wallace are more than capable and willing defenders with high work rates. Both had troubles finishing in the second half of the season. Seems like a good solution to me, grab a target forward to share the scoring burden, let Jack join the attack from a deeper RM position with Villa and the other forward occupying defenders and maybe he will have more room to operate. At LM you could swap in Mata as well if he's around because it's clear he should have no part of being on the back line.
The other obvious one is a 3-5-2 and I think we're only one player away from making a seamless transition there
Jack Harrison scored 10 goals this season. He was 27th in the league in scoring.
We're arguing for HELP for Jack and Villa, not a replacement for him. Is he limited? Sure. Does he make 1/10th of what Maxi makes? Yes. Is he a steal production wise in MLS? Absolutely. 10 goals with no budget charge in MLS is insane. 10 goals at what Wallace gets paid is still good value.
Need to look at these things through the lens of MLS Roster rules. Jack making $200k next year is incredible. Maxi making $2 Million/DP Salary is Pirlo 2.0 for the production.
I agree with most of everything that's been said so far here. However, in defense of Maxi, he was 6th in the entire league in Key Passes per Game this season. He can't score his own assists. People have been hinting at that point here, but nobody presented that stat.
I think Maxi is an ok-ish #3 DP. He's only going to be as good as the players around him, but he's good enough to make other players better. He'll never be a good DP because his production could be obtained with TAM, but he does make our team much better. He's developing into a lightning rod for criticism, but that's just because we've grown tired of discussing and found consensus on our actual #2 DP, Pirlo.
Reyna's signings have been a mixed bag and Maxi has been underwhelming, but the only insurmountable error is Andrea Pirlo.
I think Maxi is an ok-ish #3 DP. He's only going to be as good as the players around him, but he's good enough to make other players better. He'll never be a good DP because his production could be obtained with TAM, but he does make our team much better. He's developing into a lightning rod for criticism, but that's just because we've grown tired of discussing and found consensus on our actual #2 DP, Pirlo.
Reyna's signings have been a mixed bag and Maxi has been underwhelming, but the only insurmountable error is Andrea Pirlo.
This is the entire point we're trying to make. We're not anti Maxi. We're anti-Maxi if he's a DP.
I'm walking that back slightly. You can't expect a 100% hit rate on DPs, or any players really. If Maxi is our third best DP, that's probably OK. The problem is when he's your second best DP and your third best DP is so bad he doesn't play. Fix Pirlo, and the Maxi criticism largely goes away too.
I say this even as someone who was against the Maxi signing from the start, saying it would only work out optimally if he could be bought down with TAM.
I see your point and it's a good one. I still disagree though because of the position he plays.
I remember when the team first launched and we talked about how to spend the DP allocations. We went back and forth talking about how it was silly to spend DP money on a CB or a GK. When you look at the depth of the #10 position in MLS, combined with the introduction of TAM, I think spending DP money on a #10 is probably silly from a roster construction standpoint right now.
Toronto probably comes the closest to properly using DP and TAM allocations and it's no wonder they had the best record in MLS history this year.
Agreed. And they hit spectacularly on all of them. They have the best DP3 in the league and one of the best TAM players in the league. All play up the middle and in the attack.
That's fine, even with the walk back you made below. The issue is Pirlo was a known quantity, which makes Maxi a bad choice from the start. I didn't know enough about Maxi to understand that when we signed him, but I do now after watching him for a season and seeing his output. Reyna should have known this back then. He should have known Pirloo was done, and didn't fit, and we lacked any solid scoring options after the captain. Maxi's not a horrendous player, but with all that he was a horrendous signing.
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In a 4-3-3, I don't think people realize how much having shitty outside back play affects the wingers. Remember when Wallace was good, even great at times? He had Mata. Remember when Jack was dominating bitches? Chanot was healthy, allowing average to bad right backs a chance to push up the field. Jack has been manning the right flank by himself. I can't tell you how many times the first half the season we saw Jack interchange with White or Allen which allowed Jack to get into space and allowed those guys to send in a cross or play a crucial pass in setting up an assist. We haven't seen ANY of that the last half of the season. Literally a dimension of the game is gone.
A perfect non-NYCFC exmaple is looking at Pulisic with the USMNT against Costa Rica and Panama. Against CR, his RB was Graham Zusi, and Pulisic looked like TRASH. Against Panama, the RB was Yedlin, and Pulisic looked like an all world player.
Can Struna be our RB? Maybe. But I think investing in a player like Afful, Lawrence, or Powell would make Jack the best RW in MLS.
A perfect non-NYCFC exmaple is looking at Pulisic with the USMNT against Costa Rica and Panama. Against CR, his RB was Graham Zusi, and Pulisic looked like TRASH. Against Panama, the RB was Yedlin, and Pulisic looked like an all world player.
Can Struna be our RB? Maybe. But I think investing in a player like Afful, Lawrence, or Powell would make Jack the best RW in MLS.
I think the answer is pretty simple. Maxi wasn't the first choice. Not even close. We whiffed. He was signed two weeks before the season started. And the team decided that the only thing worse than taking a risk on Maxi was not signing anyone at all.
Here's a question for you - who do you think is their DP3? I bet our answer and TFC's answer are different
I swear I'm not just saying this because of the USMNT struggles, but I never saw what everyone else did in Bradley. (And I decided I was right when he turned it over in the 90+2' against Portugal last World Cup.) And I always liked Altidore slightly more than most, as he seemed to be the fall guy for a lot of USMNT fans.
1. Gio
2. Altidore
3. Bradley
I bet TFC would flip them if you asked. But that's how I would list them also
Was that something you/anyone suspected at the time or in retrospect. Makes some sense. I remember most everyone was signed pretty late. What I don't remember is any significant rumors about any DP targets earlier.
That also makes Villa very happy. We can't discount that in the slightest. We don't want him getting upset with the talent around him (and no one else scoring any goals) after crashing out of the playoffs two years in a row. (well crashing out last year, and coming close to it this year; we could get a miracle).
I think I would tend to defend Maxi a little bit more than others, based on at least 3 other factors:
1. How horrible, clogged and out of sync we've looked without him, and how quickly he got the keys to the team, to run the show, so to speak. That speaks to an intangible leadership with his teammates and coach.
2. To say that you could get his production with TAM is true but not typical. VV is the newcomer of the year, fitting into a well-oiled machine as Toronto, with the deepest bench. Literally a perfect complimentary piece in a team with no obvious weaknesses and that was not a work in progress.
3. Maxi is not a flop DP but more a meh DP (like Blanco in Portland, for example) and in that sense we need to overcome the sticker price shock because once you've entered DP territory it doesn't make much of a difference whether you're paying 1.2, 1.5 or 2 million.
1. How horrible, clogged and out of sync we've looked without him, and how quickly he got the keys to the team, to run the show, so to speak. That speaks to an intangible leadership with his teammates and coach.
2. To say that you could get his production with TAM is true but not typical. VV is the newcomer of the year, fitting into a well-oiled machine as Toronto, with the deepest bench. Literally a perfect complimentary piece in a team with no obvious weaknesses and that was not a work in progress.
3. Maxi is not a flop DP but more a meh DP (like Blanco in Portland, for example) and in that sense we need to overcome the sticker price shock because once you've entered DP territory it doesn't make much of a difference whether you're paying 1.2, 1.5 or 2 million.
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