Am I wrong in saying that we have regressed each year and our inaugural season was the best product we’ve put on the pitch? Let’s make ourselves miserable and be a hypothetical GM. What do you do to “fix” Orlando City?
Thankfully Orlando residents REALLY want City to work out and soccer people are more loyal than others. But yea they need to at least get into the freaking MLS Playoffs soon. It's ridiculous.
There seem to be two main issues: 1) Lockeroom issues 2) Defense is worst in MLS history I would focus on those 2 issues. Remove the cancers and shore up the D. Focus on inside MLS for D if possible as bringing in outside the league on D tropically works our poorly. Offense seems good enough if the team didn’t give up 66 goals in 28 games. 2.4 goals a game.
A dumpster fire actually has some observable foundation and structure We’re like the contents of the dumpster got overturned in a thunderstorm
I’ll take a run at my hypothetical: Leitao steps down Budalic is fired by new CEO JOC gets contract canceled end of season Go get someone like Caleb Porter Slew of guys up for contract renewal this year: GK Stajduhar, Edwards, Grinwis DEF Spector, Tarek, Sutter, Ascues, Allen MID Powers, Laryea, Higuita, Rocha, da Silva, Lindley, Yotun, Villareal FWD Mueller, Pinho I’d try to make Ascues a permanent signing, renew Stajduhar, Higuita, Yotun, Lindley, Mueller, and Pinho. Let the rest jog the fuck on. Contracts up in 2019: GK Bendik DEF Toia, Schuler, PC MID Johnson Cut Bendik, PC, and Johnson. Other players: DEF O’Neill, El Monir, Sane MID Colman, Kljestan, Rosell FWD Dwyer Try to get any fee for O’Neill, Colman, and Kljestan. That frees up 2 DP slots and a lot of money. Leaves us with the following to build around: GK Stajduhar (HGP) DEF El Monir, Sane, Toia (HGP), Ascues, Schuler MID Higuita, Lindley (HGP), Yotun, Rosell FWD Dwyer (DP), Mueller, Pinho Make Yotun a DP, buy down Dwyer’s contract to non-DP level, bring in a proven GK, scour MLS for young defenders, sign a DP in midfield, and sign a DP up top. Preferably Mexican or South American since there seem to be plenty of successful young South Americans that Europe hasn’t scouted yet.
I don’t see how you can really rebuild well with those contracts. The only player of importance that get paid any real amount of money and/or are any real asset are Spector and Yotun. Yotun is legit good and worth keeping, so Spector is the only player who deal expiring frees up anything. The rest are back half of the roster types and on small deals where finding better replacement for the money would be difficult. Perhaps you can move Kjestan for some TAM, but he is paid a lot, which makes moving him difficult. Not sure why anybody would want Coleman perhaps a loan back to Latin America to free up some cap? Doesn’t look good to me. Think you are going to have to get lucky on the scrap heap and hit big time on the 2-3 TAM level signings that you can make and then hope team improves and stays healthy. If you can move Coleman and free up a DP slot, which is a big if then you got to go huge with a surefire DP like an Almiron or Vela type that you know won’t be a bust.
We really can’t get worse. Why then would we have to make a single lucky signing? 15 teams manage to put together at the very least a middle-of-the-road squad. We should be able to and it will require a vast overhaul of the shit that has gotten comfortable at the club and that had already been poisoned by the past.
The goal is to get significantly better and a lot of the players coming off the books are low and mid-priced players and you are not going to make big improvements shuffling the back half of your roster without getting lucky and finding a guy that is a quality starter for a relatively low MLS salary. This leaves hitting on the few TAM signing. Basically in place of Meram, Spector and Johnson. Hitting big on TAM signing has been pretty spotty across the league overall, so got to hope you do better than MLS average. Buying down Coleman if possible and going all in on a DP is probably your best bet for a quick turnaround.
Making the playoffs should be the very first goal. It won’t happen this year. It is an attainable goal for any club in the league to go from nothing to playoffs in 12 months with the amount of parity that MLS has had for 2 decades. The support and excitement in Orlando would be back to the level it was the day Kaka scored the very first OCSC MLS goal. Unfortunately, the “back half of the roster” guys you’re talking about have all played significant roles in losing matches for this club. Maybe they are good enough to be on an MLS squad but most shouldn’t be seeing meaningful playtime. We have too many fans that think “wow we’re really talented on paper” which we quite frankly aren’t either. Leitao’s bullshit “win with what you have” philosophy is a disaster for an unseasoned coach like JOC. Kreis turned over a bunch of shit Inchy brought in and replaced it with lateral shit.
Did ownership blow their load on Kaka? Is there any money left? What was he making, $7 million a year? My suggestion. Burn it all down. Take half that Kaka sum and go get Big Phil. Take the other half and get 3 young Brazilian DPs. Get a few TAM level brazilians. Fill the roster in with replacement level MLS players. That should be a playoff team.
I feel like we stand to lose a good portion of our fanbase to Miami when they start play. That’ll be good to weed out some of the toxicity but I hope it isn’t a huge chunk of the base. We were officially eliminated from playoff contention with the loss to FCD over the weekend. Seems all but a done deal that we’ll break the dubious record for goals allowed in a season. That stands at 70. We’re at 68 with 4 matches to play. I hope JOC is sensible enough to throw the younger guys in and quit defaulting to the Will Johnsons of the squad as his starters. I’ll try to watch the last 4 matches and hope to see a semblance of progress or hope.
I didn't even realize we were still in the playoff race technically. Almost as surprising as when my phone flashed the score update and I was like...shit the season is still going on?
7 points from a possible 72 1 win since May 6th Finally broke our 500 minute goal-scoring drought Most goals allowed in a season 2 more matches to put that dubious record further out of reach At what point do we start our #SaveTheLions campaign? SugarShaun please advise Kudos to NittanyKnight for continuing to attend matches. I love this club and always will but holy shit, do we have a problem. Especially if the rumor of Will Johnson blaming it on the young guys is true.
I will be there Sunday. If only to absolutely boo the shit out of Meram for quitting on us/being a locker room cancer and well Ohio sucks.
Well, he was completely useless and a cancer in the locker room. That’s on him. Not you. We’re happy your club got saved but we still hate them.
Oh I get the Meram hate. It was the Ohio sucks that really drove the knife in Also, I expect everyone is happy to get back to hating us
With Meram you guys were above the playoff line, without him you put up the worst stretch in MLS history just saying. Spoiler I know he wasn’t good there but wanted to grind some gears
Wait a minute. Are you suggesting they *not* raise season ticket prices? I’m glad our front office doesn’t understand something as simple as supply and demand. They can definitely be trusted with player evaluation.
Are they losing season ticket holders? As bad as the team is, the idea of the team is still in high demand I would think. I honestly don't know.
Today should immediately rule GB out of any discussion for NT coach. Got tactically beat by a coach that hadn't won since July 14. By the 15th minute anyone with any knowledge could see we were ripe to be picked off on the counter. It was still a horrible perfromance overall and accurate representation of the season. One more left in this putrid season. Viva la off season.
Rumor has it the waiting list is no longer needed. We will know soon if season tickets are available after relocation is completed.
They are going to do a full Spain 2018. Remarkable that they would confirm the news before the end of the season.
Think I can speak for all and say thank fuck this season is over. Time to look towards what will be a very interesting offseason
anything to get away from the stupid whites that we are stuck with for another season. No truth to the rumor that we are going to release a training cone lookalike as the home kit.
I just have nothing good to say after the news that we inadvertently triggered Will Johnson’s 2019 option because nobody bothered to familiarize themselves with the contracts of players being paid well above their value to do less than the bare minimum. The feeling of excitement and ambition that the FO brought from before the MLS announcement to well into the second season is all but gone. They’ve hit rock bottom and found the strength to dig deeper.
Progress. He’s fluent in 5 languages. Instrumental in bringing Mauro Diaz, Michael Barrios, and Gruezo to FCD. Is this to replace Budalic or someone else?
Acosta is the best LB we’ve ever had. Not sure what our plan is with Moutinho at that slot as well. Akindele is pretty useless from all I’ve seen of him. Not sure what to make of Mendez but I’ll take as many young South American guys as we can get. Big fan of the 2 Louisville USL guys.
Guys......we actually looked decent last night. Fuck it Iam going to talk myself into having hope again only to get crushed when we win 1 match from May to September.