Be careful to make judgements based on hindsight. People get things wrong, especially when you have all the pieces to put together.
It should be noted that after we picked Dunn, ELEVEN other teams passed on Marky Delgado. Sure, it looks bad now, but don't act like you knew back then what would happen. Also, don't over rate Delgado, who has scored two goals in MLS for Toronto this season.
I disagree with you about Alvarez, he has not impressed in his time and has had injury issues. While I won't argue for Ned, Mehdi Ballouchy was pretty solid in his last few appearances.
Facey is great, and now he has earned his spot. That is something that had to be figured out, and it got figured out.
Nemec was expected to be a solid striker at first, clearly we were proven wrong. Your pushing for Alvarez, mainly because of his pedigree I assume because he has not shown much here, but dispute starting Nemec with his pedigree.
While over the last month or so it has been a mystery, at first his Poku hesitation was clearly justified. If you saw him play in April and May, he did not have 90 minutes in him. In fact at times he looked gassed after 20' as a sub. He clearly has the fitness level now to play 90'. Another factor in that however is the management on the young guy's career. Sometimes it makes sense to make a guy work for his spot in the club and keep him working. Remember Poku came up from virtually nowhere very fast, that could get to a young kids head and stunt his development. At this point, Poku is a superstar and should play every minute possible, but his reluctance to play him early in the season made perfect sense.
I'm not saying that Kreis hasn't, and wont' continue to make mistakes. This is an expansion team with a bunch of players who were somewhere else playing with different players and under different systems last season. Not to mention during the course of the season we have picked up Pirlo, Lampard, Iraola, Angelino, Mena and others while having one of our key players (Mix) away with the nats for long periods of time. For these reasons, I've chosen to reserve any judgement on Kreis this season, instead of jump on him because the team looked like shit against Red Bull with 6 players in the lineup who were not with the team for too long.
The great managers around the world have a nucleus of players who have been with them for years, with constant tinkering of a new player here and there added into the mix. No Euro League managers have to put together an entire roster during the off-season with major constraints put on them by the league's awkward roster rules. Kreis is in a position that is difficult to deal with and has done just about as good as the other club in the same position (Orlando) despite having much less stability in his roster.
I think it's perfectly justifiable to point out the mistakes that have been made, but keep in context the situation. We are going to miss out on players in drafts and on trial. Hell, the entire world missed out on Poku! but we got him! It's also important to note that despite the hatred for Kreis on this forums, I have not seen any type of body language or heard any comments from players that would suggest that they have any disrespect for him. That's important.
Next season, we will have more stability. We will have a core of players who have been with the team (hopefully we can keep at least one of the ManC players) for over a season and the number of new additions and overall roster disruptions will slow down to a more manageable pace. If we are in a position like this next season, it will be easy to throw stones at Kreis, but it's unreasonable at this point in time. Especially after we win out the rest of the season and hoist MLS Cup!
#KreisIn
