On Feb 1, Kevin Payne met with members of the TFC media. On that day he talked about a wide range of issues, including roster needs for 2013.
To that end he indicated that the club was working on “three different deals involving attacking players.” He went on to say that he expected a new player signing in the “next week or two.”
It’s now been 11 days. The only significant roster move made in that time was to ship out Eric Hassli. So, Toronto is actually down an attacking player.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
All of this comes on the heels of Payne making several moves that were all designed to bring in allocation money (along with the salary dump of Hassli). This supposedly frees up cap space so the Reds can start to fix their multitude of problems.
Yet, we still wait. And fans may need to wait longer still. Just four days ago he was already backpedalling from the Feb 1 statement when talking to Sportsnet.ca.
“We have spent a lot of time in the off-season looking at forward options and hopefully we can pull the trigger on something relatively soon,” he said.
No longer was the number three thrown around, nor was a specific time frame given. “Relatively soon,” was likely purposely vague.
Whereas most MLS teams have several players on trial right now, it appears that TFC has just one -- Argentine Nicolas Cabrera, who might be the attacking player that Payne talked about. However, the fact there is just the one in camp might mean that those other two attacking players are no longer interested/available.
Payne doesn’t seem concerned. In fact, he all but told Sportsnet.ca not to expect a full line-up on March 2.
“Nobody (wins) a championship in the first week of the season. So we would prefer to have our full team together when we open the season, but that probably will not be the case.”
He’s right, of course – championships aren’t won in the first week of the season. They can be lost then, however. So, it’s also a little bit convenient to suggest that it’s normal for teams to be bringing in the bulk of their discovery signings after the season has started. Here in Toronto we are used to bad management. As such, it seems normal to us that Dan Gargan is putting his boots on in a cab on the way to Crew Stadium (something that, sadly, happened in 2010).
Good teams don’t do that, however. Good teams use the pre-season to build familiarity and good teams don’t have to rush a full-back in from the airport to fill out the roster.
There are many fans right now that view criticism of Payne as being part of a vendetta by those who supposedly “supported” Paul Mariner and were angry about his firing. Some fans go so far as to suggest that writers such as myself were in Mariner’s pocket and are actively trying to discredit Payne as revenge. There is little point trying to argue with those who feel that way. Their minds are made up.
However, the majority of fans have taken a sensible wait and see approach with Payne. That’s the view of this space. It’s not even close to time to be actively asking for his removal. As fans of TFC we should give him a little benefit of the doubt.
But, that doesn’t mean we can’t critically evaluate the moves (or lack of moves) that have already happened.
So far, Payne has taken several known assets (the No 3 SuperDraft pick, Milos Kocic, Ryan Johnson and Eric Hassli) and made them into either gambles (Emery Welshman) or promises (future draft picks, allocation, cap space or roster/DP/international spots).
Payne has talked a lot about what he’s going to do with these new, future assets. But, he’s yet to actually deliver on any of that talk.
Reds fans may recall a previous manager of TFC that made a lot of trades, talked a lot of talk and consistently failed to deliver. I’m not suggesting Payne is Mo 2.0. just yet, but I am suggesting that the 2013 off-season has a lot in common with the 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 TFC off-seasons.
I’m also suggesting that evidence that Johnston wasn’t up to the task was already there by the end of 2007 and that MLSE doesn’t have a great track record in identifying bad management (at least until said management has driven the Raptors/Leafs/TFC into the ground).
Maybe it’s not fair to Payne that he doesn’t get a honeymoon period. He can blame ownership for that. Regardless, he needs to stop telling fans what he’s going to do and actually start delivering it.