NYCFC Players Wanted Thread

To us mortals, yes. But we were sold a bill of goods about CFG Funny Money, I'm not saying spend $80mm. But I feel like $6-$12 is not a crazy difference on what would be our best player, when they would shell out $100mm+ for big brother.

It reminds me of the old Churchill joke:

“Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?" Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... "
Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?"
Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price”

Haha, yes! Reminded me of this quote of his:

Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea.
Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.
 
This is absolutely not true.

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Fastest man is the world is a giant compared to others.

“If”
 
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You made an account just to post that????

The word “if” doesn’t change that fact that the statement was flawed and false. Height does not directly have a bearing on speed, fast-twitch muscles govern sprinting speed as does power to weight ratio.

However a lack of height definitely plays in to the chance of success on aerial balls and NYCFC has universally been atrocious at scoring off crosses with what is thought to be a comparatively short group of attackers. The sentence should have read, “ a lack of height could even be argued as a minus if it keeps the person from heading the ball first.”
 
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Is it just me, or are the prices that we mention in this chat in euros. Where 6m euro is actually closer to 7m USD. I think im lost in translation
 
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i get what you're saying, just that so many times whenever we were down or tied and went for it, cross were flying from everywhere to the middle only to be headed away from defenders. unless we completely change the strategy this year.
I've never really been a fan of the change strategy at end of game approach. If the thing you are good at for scoring goals is moving the ball on the ground I don't see why you suddenly improve your chances by lofting balls in for a header to a guy who just came on and hasn't been in the flow of the game for 85 minutes.

I'd rather see the team pour more numbers forward and keep the tactics they practice 99% of the time.
 
Eight million is the same number that Torino reportedly balked at for Mitriță. Does seem high. But the fact that we're circling the same guy as Josef Martínez's old club just goes to show that the "lesser league" snap judgments don't tell you much.

Perhaps what may ease many minds would be if Torino snatched him up, have him sit on the bench for a year, then we dive in with the same offer.

Everyone will call him the next Josef Martinez
 
I've never really been a fan of the change strategy at end of game approach. If the thing you are good at for scoring goals is moving the ball on the ground I don't see why you suddenly improve your chances by lofting balls in for a header to a guy who just came on and hasn't been in the flow of the game for 85 minutes.

I'd rather see the team pour more numbers forward and keep the tactics they practice 99% of the time.

true but thing is that many times when they did all these crosses, they tried everything else during 85 mins of game and didnt work, so they get desperate and try flying passes in hoping for something to happen a bounce a deflection something. its more frustration than anything.

also this team went back to the 2015 syndrome of not wanting to shoot for some reason.
 
There could be some selection bias here. Tall players might be able to get away with being a little slower since they bring the separate advantage of height.
There’s a lot of selection bias in that graph as it’s *only* meta data. The original premise was that being tall would hurt being an attacker if it slowed them down - this graph shows zero about how effective any of these players are - just simply height to speed (what about body composition- I said power to weight ratio is key), and perhaps some of these short/fast guys aren’t very effective, and Footy’s premise was talking about effectiveness. The first player is 157cm tall which is 5’1” - how good of an attacker is he? 180cm is 5’9” which is pretty standard for the low end of effective attackers (Villa is 5’9” Agüero 5’8” Salah 5’9” Vardy 5’10” Rashford 5’11” while Aubameyang 6’2” Ibra 6’5” Kane 6’0” Leroy Sané 6’0”).

Unless the graph shows these short player are actually effective, as opposed to meta data to own a discussion, then the Outliers have to be tossed, chopping off the ends. Also chop off the Defenders because part of being an effective CB is having a high mass to hold position when defending - that will also slow the player down.
 
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There could be some selection bias here. Tall players might be able to get away with being a little slower since they bring the separate advantage of height.

Sure, I think that's as good an explanation as any for what we're seeing here (another is "FIFA player ratings are trash"). But given the benefits of short quick strides and a low center of gravity*, I've never been all that convinced that height is an advantage in soccer. Maybe I just watch too much Barcelona.

*Worth noting that the relationship between height and dribbling ratings looks similar to height and pace.

dGDGMnd.png
 
i get what you're saying, just that so many times whenever we were down or tied and went for it, cross were flying from everywhere to the middle only to be headed away from defenders. unless we completely change the strategy this year.
My guess is that successful corners and those nail-biting passages of play at the end of matches tend to figure larger in our memories than they do on the scoreboard.

Here is a pretty comprehensive take on corners: https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/6nuk85/so_ive_scraped_statistics_for_about_11000_matches/

I took 5 or 10 minutes to try and find some data to interrogate my hunches on how often those Hail Mary crosses at the end of matches tend to succeed, but that will probably take longer.

I didn't look deeply into the methodology of this study, but it supports the idea that taller players score more headed goals, shorter players score more non-headed goals, and that overall, there is no correlation between goals scored and height: https://www.slideshare.net/kristian...ague-strikers-height-and-the-goals-they-score. It's a small dataset (strikers who played > 10 games in the top 12 teams in EPL in 2013/14), but its conclusions seem intuitive enough.

Given that one of the motivations for playing a shorter passing game is the philosophy that the best way to defend is to control the ball, I'd be curious if there is any correlation between goals conceded and height. But overall, one of my takeaways is that you ultimately want a striker who fits your system. If you want to dominate possession, maybe banking on marginal plays to tall strikers for headed goals isn't the best idea. That doesn't preclude being able to change up for specific situations (the end of games, for example), but I don't know that we'd want our big money striker acquisition to optimize for chasing a goal in the last 10-15 minutes of matches or low-percentage corners.
 
true but thing is that many times when they did all these crosses, they tried everything else during 85 mins of game and didnt work, so they get desperate and try flying passes in hoping for something to happen a bounce a deflection something. its more frustration than anything.

also this team went back to the 2015 syndrome of not wanting to shoot for some reason.
I get the desperation that leads to 85th minute strategy changes. I just wouldn't do the same. If lobbed balls into the box create maximum likelihood of a goal, then let's do that from the beginning. If our team is good with balls at their feet then let's whip it in on the ground. If we want to adjust let's push another body forward but stick to what we do best.

Just my view.
 
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I have no data to back this up, but based on observations, when the opponent packs the back/parks the bus/solely want to counter the opportunities to walk/pass the ball in to the net are infinitely smaller that crossing the ball in. Keeping the ball on the ground requires a string of passes to either all be successful in unison or catch a lucky bounce while threading such passes through a focused logjam of players/legs - we saw last year how hard it was to break down a packed box.

The flip side is the aerial cross that bypasses the congestion and only requires connection with the end target (and being on goal to an open area) as opposed to connecting multiple times. That’s not to say crossing/heading is simple, but the probably of making contact with Target1 is better than first having to be successful passing to Links1-3..... I’d rather take a chance rolling a 6 on a die once than rolling a 6 four times in a row.

This is less applicable if a team doesn’t park the bus, and is deployed higher up the field, as passing into the box has fewer defenders collectively to break down. Unfortunately, last season we saw a lot of teams either pack the box as a game tactic or was dedicated to always getting players back after a turnover (hence the same thing).

Our players are just not good enough to always walk the ball in/create their shot in the box - we saw that last season when theyd get to the 18 and look lost.
 
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Midas Mulligan Midas Mulligan thoughts on Lazar Markovic for us?
Ha! I mentioned him somewhere last year as someone we should have taken since Liverpool were offering to pay more or less his entire salary for anyone just to get him away.

He's not terrible, honestly. He's fast as hell, but he isn't technical enough for Liverpool. Basically, they've been golden handcuffed together.

He'd be alright. Not a DP or anything, but I wouldn't be shocked if someone told me he turned in a few all star seasons in MLS.

If you got him on a free and paid him less than 400k, you would probably get your money out of him in production. Crazy thing is he's still young enough to have some value if he put in a couple of good years.

here's a good run-down on his situation. Neil Jones is rock solid for LFC stuff.
https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/the...ry-lazar-markovics/1q77bry5geweq1dg5gbya72pgd
 
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The rumor is a few mls teams went in on him this window but he appears set to join Club America.
 
I have no data to back this up, but based on observations, when the opponent packs the back/parks the bus/solely want to counter the opportunities to walk/pass the ball in to the net are infinitely smaller that crossing the ball in. Keeping the ball on the ground requires a string of passes to either all be successful in unison or catch a lucky bounce while threading such passes through a focused logjam of players/legs - we saw last year how hard it was to break down a packed box.

The flip side is the aerial cross that bypasses the congestion and only requires connection with the end target (and being on goal to an open area) as opposed to connecting multiple times. That’s not to say crossing/heading is simple, but the probably of making contact with Target1 is better than first having to be successful passing to Links1-3..... I’d rather take a chance rolling a 6 on a die once than rolling a 6 four times in a row.

This is less applicable if a team doesn’t park the bus, and is deployed higher up the field, as passing into the box has fewer defenders collectively to break down. Unfortunately, last season we saw a lot of teams either pack the box as a game tactic or was dedicated to always getting players back after a turnover (hence the same thing).

Our players are just not good enough to always walk the ball in/create their shot in the box - we saw that last season when theyd get to the 18 and look lost.
This is the conventional wisdom, and I get the appeal. I'm curious about the statistics. In the same way that conventional wisdom feels like man marking on corners should be better, but I believe, statistically, zone defense on corners is more effective. So I'm not sure that you are correct that crossing for a header requires one 6 on a single roll of a 6 sided die while a ground game requires 4 rolls of a 6. I'd be curious to see data.