57 minutes in to sour on the new coach! Dutch coaches are accustomed to both winning and selling players. Jansen made the semis of the Conference League then sold 4 players for €100mm. Both can happen at the same time. Cushing didn’t do either.
Pascal Jansen Named NYCFC Head Coach
- Thread starter LionNYC
- Start date
the current team is not set up to win any competition. but then again that is more on FO and Lee more than coach tbf.
I think there's a lot of truth in this. And I'm cool with it. I'd rather we cycle good young talent through and sell on and be profitable -- hopefully, with the low ticket prices that would, or should, entail -- than be a retirement home for overpriced names.
As long as we win. If we become a mid-table development squad which just stays good enough to make the playoffs every year, I'm going to be pissed.
But I don't think that's the plan.
We've been a middle-of-the-table development squad that is just good enough to make/just miss the playoffs for 3 years. Since missing the playoffs 2 years ago the only investments they have made have been in young development players. How many years do they get?
I’m hopeful that this hire and the change of coaching can inspire and give motivation to the young guys. Watching them on the bench they seemed less and less engaged as the season went on. I think that comes from knowing they weren’t getting on the pitch for any meaningful time if they were getting on at all.
That’s the long way of saying that I do have some level of faith that we do have most of the right players there to actually be a very good team. I don’t think they were being utilized or coach correctly to get up to that point.
That’s the long way of saying that I do have some level of faith that we do have most of the right players there to actually be a very good team. I don’t think they were being utilized or coach correctly to get up to that point.
None, now. We signed a trio of guys, they didn't see the pitch, and (presumably) thanks to that fact we have a new gaffer.
I've made an argument, repeatedly, about the last couple years being a transition period into a new model. You may not agree with that argument, and that's fine. But with everything I've heard today, I can't help but conclude Nick just didn't execute the strategy the way it was mapped out, and now it's Jansen's job to do it.
I don't think winning and player development are in much tension with each other. You can't sell a player unless he's performing on the pitch.
I just think Cushing is getting a bum deal in this and people are pinning a lot on this new coach in his ability to develop and play this young trio that did nothing last season. Cushing had no problem turning Jones loose the moment he started showing his ability. If one of the three expensive guys had shown as much promise as Jones Cushing would have played them, but he tried and they looked terrible so he gave up on them. If the new coach is here to play the young guys and they look just as ineffective as they did last season, how many games do they get to take min from capable players like Maxi and Wolf in they name of their development? If Jones looked as ineffective as Fernandez or Ojeda last season in his first couple of appearances Jones would have played with NYCFC 2 for the rest of the year but everyone thinks the expensive guys should just be handed time regardlessly of how poorly they show.
And we just lost our most dependable safety net in Sands. If our only move this season is to hope that PJ can improve the kids, we are in for a challenging season. Maybe he is the magician Cushing wasn’t. But I would hope we would want to really put him in a position to succeed, which has to be more than losing Sands and resigning an aging Maxi. Maybe we will, but that probably isn’t the plan.
I think that framing you're using is that Pascal was brought in to not care about results, which I firmly do not agree with.
We had a disappointing end, but this team made it to the league's final eight last year. We were three wins from a trophy and the coach was still fired.
This team wants to win. Pascal has won at a high rate in both his previous stops. He is not here to lose games.
In 2022 we made the conference final! That's not a mid-table team!
In 2024 we made the conference semifinal.
I really think we are being overly harsh on the team's ambitions. The team wants to win with young players and believes it can win with young players. That belief may be wrong, but they want to win.
So then the question becomes, did those players not play well because Cushing didn't do a good enough job of developing them, or would no coach have gotten it out of them last year?
Coaches should unlock the players who underperform. Nobody can explain how this works but when a player improves with a new coach or different team you can say the coach unlocked him.
The mystery is why a coach unlocks some players but not others. Or a coach unlocks players at one team, moves to a new job, and doesn’t unlock anyone there. Maybe he forgot how to unlock. Then you need to fire him.
Nobody can predict unlocking in advance, at least not consistently. Unlocking is best identified after the fact.
Hopefully he can improve or “ unlock “ some of the guys already here but it would be irresponsible to not give him a few new players to work with . Even league winning teams usually try to improve personal and not sit still .
Side note apparently Robbie Keane has taken his old job in Hungary .
Side note apparently Robbie Keane has taken his old job in Hungary .
Agreed. This team ain’t winning MLS Cup unless our younger players develop
I wouldn't leap to this particular conclusion, and I definitely wouldn't say everyone. Views are a lot more nuanced and not everyone is saying just play the kids and let things go as they will.
But I will say this: I don't think we saw enough to make a considered judgment, especially in Jovan's case. And I don't think they played enough during the season when the opportunities were there (recall me saying Jovan should have gotten a string of starts during Leagues Cup) to be ready to contribute late in the year.
It's entirely possible Nick simply concluded they're just not very good. He may be right. We'll know soon enough. But if Trapito, Julian and Jovan were brought in to play, and Nick was part of that decision-making process and then didn't play them, it's no mystery why he's out of a job.
Seriously. We basically had one bad year, and it was a transition year. We were on our way to having a very good year this year before the late season stumble -- which may have been the proverbial straw -- and ended up doing pretty well overall. At times this season we were downright stellar (we'll always have Tigres, my friends).
But I never felt we were contenders. Maybe it would have been different had Malachi not gotten hurt; we were on the trajectory to becoming a very, very dangerous side the last third of the year. In the event, though, we just weren't quite there.
This year should be different.
Last edited:
For how many times you’ve referenced this game, I guess I really need to go watch the Tigers game lol
We were so good. Blazing with energy, on the front foot the entire match, organized, focused, cohesive. I was like, "Yeah man, give me some of this good stuff, we are ballin' tonight."
Ironically I think it was also the game where Cushing realized his best chance of winning was to play the veterans and give up on the young guys. Presumably because of the pressure and high-profile nature of the game Cushing slotted Maxi in at CAM, slid Santi out wide, and went with all of our most experienced players and we looked amazing. Cushing rode that lineup from that point on out.
- Maxi had started in only 2 of his 8 appearances up until Tigres, after that game he started 10 in his next 15 appearances.
- Fernandez started 6 games pre-tigres and never started again after Tigres
- Ojeda had 9 starts pre-tigres and 2 starts post-tigres.
