Can we be absurd for a moment?
You're not going to hear anyone associated with TFC say this out loud because they realize it would get them laughed at. TFC fans likely haven't considered it even a possibility. And, the rest of MLS stopped thinking of TFC at all about four years ago.
The media that covers the team has reached a level of cynicism that hasn't been seen in Toronto since the days of Harold Ballard.
The end result of all this is that no one is asking new management what their actual goal is for 2014. There has been vague promises of "turning things around" and a promise by Tim Lieweke that the playoffs will happen, but no specific performance goals have been stated.
In the past we had 5-year plans and 3-year plans and all kinds of plans that tried to defer expectations as long as possible.
New management isn't doing that. They could. Toronto fans understand rebuilding plans. They'd fully accept it if Lieweke came out tomorrow and said he wanted to see a 10 point improvement next year and 15 the next and so on. It would seem reasonable. It wouldn't really excite them, but the loyalists that remain would soldier on.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
So, when you don't see management self-handicapping, and you start to evaluate the moves that they are attempting to make, it starts to dawn on you. New management isn't trying to put together a mid-table roster aimed to squeak into playoffs and build on for future.
Despite what past management has tried to make you believe, putting a roster together that competes for lower playoff seeds isn't all that hard. The league is designed to make it easy to be average. TFC 1.0 was a special case. The Reds of 2007-2013 were fully and completely incompetent. What we experienced here wasn't normal.
If you believe the new management is normal -- and there is evidence they are -- then becoming a dead average MLS team should happen by default. Go out and get 2-3 MLS vets, add one scorer (and with TFC's money they can easily do that) and BAM! you're in the playoff hunt.
It may seem flippant to suggest it's that simple, but, again, the league is set-up to make that easy. There are several MLS teams that work off a model that aims to keep them at that level consistently. It's a conservative strategy that reduces risk and takes advantage of MLS' playoff structure. They know they'll never be poor enough to alienate their fan base and that having a payoff structure gives you the opportunity to do something unexpected once every 5-years or so.
See: Rapids, Colorado -- 2010 for an example of this model. The Rapids have never been great, but they have been champions. By doing that they have created a stable, if uninspiring, club that gives fans just enough hope to keep coming back.
For the first seven years of TFC this level of mediocracy has been held up as the Holy Grail. That they were as terrible as they were is a reflection of just how clueless they were, not of the difficulty of the task.
In fact, the best evidence of the relative ease of staying in chase for playoffs can been seen in TFC's own history. Despite being utterly uninspiring, for first three years of TFC the league's pull to the middle was actually evident. Mo Johnston was not a good manager, but he understood enough of the way MLS worked to keep TFC at a level where they could stay in race late into seasons. Had the club not self-imploded in New York on final day of 2009 season they might have continued down that path. They were only a point out, after all.
Instead, TFC moved off script. They completely blew the team up to change directions. In truth, Preki simply created another middling line-up that was pretty much the same level as before. It was a pointless move, but it would have been (just) fine if they had stayed the course. Sadly, this is when the club lost the plot.
A player revolt lead to both Johnston and Preki being shown the door. That was fine. Johnston was never going to turn TFC into a championship team and Preki was basically an even more arrogant and angry version of Paul Mariner. The problem was they had no plan to replace Johnston and no one in the front office with even a basic mastery of MLS team building.
As insane as it is to think back on now, Johnston, for all his many faults, was actually the safety valve that prevented TFC from being abysmal. His failing was he was happy just middling around. He had a good gig going in Toronto and --read between lines-- keeping arrangements was what motivated him. He didn't want to be fired so he wanted a competitive team, but the type of risks needed to truly go for it were never going to happen.
He utilized his arrangements to build a slightly below average team that may have eventually grown into a simply mediocre team. Actually, if he had been working under the current domestic quota rules his arrangements might have been just enough better that TFC may have found a way to sneak into playoffs and, possibly, he'd still be here leading the Reds to 4th to 7th place finishes.
Thank God that didn't happen. Yes, in a perfect world, the next three seasons don't have to play out the way the did, but that pain did accomplish something. By slipping to insanity levels it demonstrated, without a doubt, that the entire front office at TFC was fully and completely out of their depth. Danny Koevermans summed it up: the worst football club in the world.
It damn near destroyed the entire fan base. It was horrible. I wouldn't wish it on anyone (save maybe Manchester United, but that's just me and my comfortable level of pettiness...I digress).
The abject failure left no other option but to go nuclear. It was drastic and confusing for fans when it happened (firing Payne so soon seemed like more of same when it was really start of a totally different direction), but without a cleansing of that type this team would have been moving to St Louis within 5-years. No hyperbole.
That history lesson brings us back to the topic at hand. The current management and what their goals are. The new management is unlike anything TFC fans have seen, so it's a bit shocking. We don't know if they are any good yet, but we do know that they aren't trying to be average.
As said off the top, TFC will not admit this, but the moves they are trying to make are the high risk, high reward moves that a club trying to build a championship team makes.
Like, now. TFC is trying to put a roster together that will challenge for the MLS Cup. In 2014.
Stop laughing.
Again, they could play it safe. I have very little doubt that they could find themselves in that high 40 range playing games that matter down stretch. The instinct of fans is to assume that's a necessary step to take in a slow build to a eventual title bid sometime in an undefined future.
What TFC fans have consistently failed to appreciate is that MLS doesn't need to work that way. It's a league where worst to first not only happens but is fairly common.
Above we touched on the stay-average-and-hope-for-a-magical-run strategy of winning in MLS. Although still common there is an increasingly more common approach of going for broke. Ironically, teams that finish low in the standings are best equipped to try for the home run than those middling teams. They receive more allocation, first shot at big domestics and high draft picks. Going for it requires big international signings and not all work out. In fact, about half of MLS discovery signings are failures. Signing college players is much safer.
So, a good amount of clubs fail miserably when they go for it. That's what makes the conservative approach attractive to so many teams. That's especially the case when you factor in the cruel nature of the playoffs. Some clubs really do nail it, but are still viewed as unsuccessful because a hot striker from a team 17-points behind scored from 35-yards to eliminate them in playoffs. In the end, no matter how much a minority of fans wish it wasn't so, the measure of success in MLS is winning the MLS Cup.
It's easy to understand why it might be appealing to play the waiting game and not take risks. It's absolutely understandable how it would make perfect sense for Toronto to approach 2014 like that. This market has been abused so much that a single playoff game would be viewed as a remarkable accomplishment and it would likely buy the new management a couple more years of faith.
But, they really aren't doing that. Instead, they are looking to add 3-4 elite level starters to the roster. The targets are known and they are audacious. If they all come and work out to maximum potential then TFC could be an elite team with a legitimate shot at winning the MLS Cup next year. Really. The players being talked about (especially if allocation is used on Laba to get rid of his DP status) come in and perform to their historic expectations TFC will be unrecognizable next year. Add a healthy, motivated and revitalized DeRo (as is being widely suggested will happen) to that group and you could be looking at a 35 point improvement.
The other side to this approach is the Englishman could come in arrogant, the Italian could pout, the Brazilian could be homesick and leave in July and the Canadian could lead a dressing room revolt that ends with yet more turnover. These are all risky moves. Any or all could blow up in new management's face and drive another nail into the club.
The truth is the chance of the signings failing is better than it is they'll succeed. Probably not at the extreme level suggested above, but at a level that would still leave a bitter taste in the mouths of a fan base that is damn close to walking away for good.
But, it might work. And, if it did the magic that seemed endless in 2007 could come back. The fans that came out in 2007 and have since left would come back at a hint of something special.
It's unclear if they'd come back at the hint of average. It could be that new management understands that, which is why they are willing to take the risk they are.
It might be the only chance TFC has left. At this point, with all the negativity that surrounds the club, you might as well give it a try. It can't really get worse so why not see if you can bring back the joy that made BMO Field such a special place to be seven (long, painful and frustrating) years ago?