Herdman new head coach

[Bigandy]

4 minutes ago, Cadeau said:

Fair. I should have reread. Sorry about that guys!

No worries. You're not the author. 

 

[Bigandy]

2 minutes ago, costarg said:

And Bahrain.  Those are 3 games we should have won.  

3 games out of 17 is not "many". Plus the bahrain game was literally to get our injured and out of form players a kick about. Its ludicrous to care about the result in that game. Youre grasping at straws to make the narrative more negative for no reason. If you claim we have had "many" ties that should be wins, you should be able to provide at least one example of our A team tying..... 

[BrennanFan]

Herdman is a good not great coach who achieved a massive accomplishment due to having the kind of talent previous cycles sorely lacked, while at the same time getting a much easier road to a more accessible final round of qualifying where 3 of the 8 teams independently imploded, most notably our arch nemesis Honduras.  We didn't qualify due to his genius.  We qualified because it was our time and things aligned for us. 

The time since qualifying has exposed him.  He's ok and that's it. 

More than anything Herdman is too much of a used car salesman for my liking.  The time is right for him to move on.   

 

[costarg]

12 minutes ago, Bigandy said:

3 games out of 17 is not "many". Plus the bahrain game was literally to get our injured and out of form players a kick about. Its ludicrous to care about the result in that game. Youre grasping at straws to make the narrative more negative for no reason. If you claim we have had "many" ties that should be wins, you should be able to provide at least one example of our A team tying..... 

Your goal-posts are strings in the wind.  9 guys who started that game were in our standard 18 from 2022, so that is quite a bit of our a-team.  But if that's how you wanna measure it, we'll need to remove the Japan win, since that was not their A-team.  If we go that route we can just eliminate over half of the results since hardly anyone had their a-team at the GC.

No one is grasping at straws, it's calling it like it is.  Watching the games and the stats are all you need.  

Bottom line: CANMNTs record is 7 wins, 3 ties and 9 losses in the last 20.  We're not overachieving and we're not even meeting expectations.  It's clear to everyone, several players weren't supporting Herdman since qualification, and the supporters and media don't believe in his tactics, he's clearly in over his head. 

He's gone now, super grateful for the ride, thanks for everything, but we're better off.  Glad it happened now before things got even worse and unrepairably ugly.  He still has a fairly good reputation, with visible flaws.  You can go on defending the mistakes and our losing record, but it won't change anything.

 

[dyslexic nam]

3 minutes ago, BrennanFan said:

…achieved a massive accomplishment due to having the kind of talent previous cycles sorely lacked, while at the same time getting a much easier road to a more accessible final round of qualifying where 3 of the 8 teams independently imploded, most notably our arch nemesis Honduras. 

That’s the part that bugs me about those who want to erect a JH statue and are already dismissing our chances of finding a decent successor.  So many commentators ignore context and the fact that our talent pool is unprecedented.  

[dyslexic nam]

As an aside, I am genuinely curious what he will be able to do with TFC. It is an absolute dumpster fire and needs substantial improvement in so many areas.  His ability (or not) to right that dysfunctional ship, and to sustain it, will be a major indicator of his abilities.  It will be an interesting couple of years for him.   

[costarg]

1 minute ago, dyslexic nam said:

As an aside, I am genuinely curious what he will be able to do with TFC. It is an absolute dumpster fire and needs substantial improvement in so many areas.  His ability (or not) to right that dysfunctional ship, and to sustain it, will be a major indicator of his abilities.  It will be an interesting couple of years for him.   

I'm fairly confident he'll do the same thing he did with CANMNT.  He'll improve the motivation and team.  He'll show intense displays of passion, red cards, arguments with refs and rival coaches. It'll improve the individual effort and performances, which will bring better results.  Until, it becomes entirely too predictable and you start seeing factions between his favourites and the others, and things will spiral out of control fairly quickly.  It'll turn political and he'll get into a spat with the TFC higher ups and it will all be played out in public.

[WestHamCanadianinOxford]

3 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

As an aside, I am genuinely curious what he will be able to do with TFC. It is an absolute dumpster fire and needs substantial improvement in so many areas.  His ability (or not) to right that dysfunctional ship, and to sustain it, will be a major indicator of his abilities.  It will be an interesting couple of years for him.   

They should sign Andy Carroll. Herdman and him, two south of the Tyne boys who support Newcastle would get on like a house on fire. 

Half joke to say that he's an interesting choice to get respect from the DPs there.  Which on the outside looking in, seems to be a huge problem.

If it signals a shift to maybe sign Canadian DPs at some point (not that I would want that) and work with the young Canadians he has had contact with, it would not be the worst thing, for them at least. 

(I haven't read any press releases about the mandate, by the way.) 

[dyslexic nam]

4 minutes ago, costarg said:

I'm fairly confident he'll do the same thing he did with CANMNT.  He'll improve the motivation and team.  He'll show intense displays of passion, red cards, arguments with refs and rival coaches. It'll improve the individual effort and performances, which will bring better results.  Until, it becomes entirely too predictable and you start seeing factions between his favourites and the others, and things will spiral out of control fairly quickly.  It'll turn political and he'll get into a spat with the TFC higher ups and it will all be played out in public.

That’s why I included the “and sustain it” in my post.  If he wants to known as more than a short term motivator, he has to prove he can not just elevate a team, but keep that higher level of performance going over time.  I guess being known as a quick fix will keep getting you job offers for clubs in need of overhaul but most clubs don’t want to hire a consultant - they are looking for a longer term solution.  

[Watchmen]

14 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

That’s why I included the “and sustain it” in my post.  If he wants to known as more than a short term motivator, he has to prove he can not just elevate a team, but keep that higher level of performance going over time.  I guess being known as a quick fix will keep getting you job offers for clubs in need of overhaul but most clubs don’t want to hire a consultant - they are looking for a longer term solution.  

If he can prove to be a "short term fix" guy, it could prove to be lucrative in the "teams desperate to avoid relegation" category. Not much help in MLS though.

But it will also be interesting to see how the remainder of this season goes vs how he does with a full off season/pre-season.

[red card]

12 hours ago, Cheeta said:

Did I hear right?  Ollie saying the CSA spent $50,000,000 over the past two years on both senior national teams? 

WCQing and the Finals has to be the biggest slice of that pie chart but Geez, does sound a bit steep.  Or maybe not, that's a lot of football when you think about it. 

Of course, that also means the CSA had $50M to spend.  Money came from somewhere.  No way the organization got that sort of clink from OTP. 

The over the top spending in the past 2 years has been underreported. All the focus has been on the revenue side with a disproportionate amount on the CSB given it only covers 2 of the 14 or so of the revenue drivers. It shows Canadian sports media isn't well versed about the industry of football, don't read financial statements or don't know to read them.

Other than 2 years around hosting WWC 15, the past 2 years have been the biggest spend years in Canada Soccer's history. In terms of spending on just the teams, the past 2 years saw the biggest outlays. They went from an org that spent conservatively or unambitiously for decades to trying to match Mexico/US as KJ noted. 

There was going to be cost increases due to covid protocols, playing first few WCQ outside of Canada and added security in Haiti. But the big picture ambitions of Herdman & Bontis also led to spending on lots of nice to haves that generated goodwil but little to no corresponding revenue. They also blew big money paying for Iran/Panama and paid all of Nigeria's expenses for Celebration Tour matches.

$33.5 million was spent on men and women's teams in 2022. $16.1 million in 2021. Or $30.5m for the men and $19.1m for the women.

 

 

[Bigandy]

1 hour ago, costarg said:

Your goal-posts are strings in the wind.  9 guys who started that game were in our standard 18 from 2022, so that is quite a bit of our a-team.  But if that's how you wanna measure it, we'll need to remove the Japan win, since that was not their A-team.  If we go that route we can just eliminate over half of the results since hardly anyone had their a-team at the GC.

No one is grasping at straws, it's calling it like it is.  Watching the games and the stats are all you need.  

Bottom line: CANMNTs record is 7 wins, 3 ties and 9 losses in the last 20.  We're not overachieving and we're not even meeting expectations.  It's clear to everyone, several players weren't supporting Herdman since qualification, and the supporters and media don't believe in his tactics, he's clearly in over his head. 

He's gone now, super grateful for the ride, thanks for everything, but we're better off.  Glad it happened now before things got even worse and unrepairably ugly.  He still has a fairly good reputation, with visible flaws.  You can go on defending the mistakes and our losing record, but it won't change anything.

 

What are you talking about? I never said the bahrain game was or wasnt our A squad. I was saying it was a game set up to get our out of season MLS players and injured players minutes..... not to win. Stop putting nonsense words in my mouth. 

Yes, I think we should remove all friendlies from counting. Lets remove the japan uruguay and bahrain game. Winning meaningless friendlies is not a criteria of success..... Use friendlies for other purposes that help win menaingful games. 

I can also support you saying that the GC is something we can eliminate from truly considering our success and/or the true quality of our squad. 

Since qualifiying:
Panama (L) - slightly underachived
Curcao (w) - met expecatiations
Hondourous (L) - slighty underacheived 
qatar/uruguay/bahrain/japan - friendlies and shouldnt count
Belguim (L) - met expecatations
Croatia (L) - met expecatations
Morocco (L) - met expecatations
Curacao (W) - met expecatations
Hondorous (W) - met expecatations
Panama (W) - met expecatations
US (L) - met expcatations
GC - I will leave this out like i did for friendlies.

Do you disagree with any of my expectations for wins and losses? Which ones? 

 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

2 minutes ago, red card said:

...But the big picture ambitions of Herdman & Bontis also led to spending on lots of nice to haves that generated goodwil but little to no corresponding revenue...

Such as?

[Ivan]

10 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Such as?

The Onesoccer roundtable listed a number of "such as's" like a bloated coaching, scouting and technical staff never seen before in Canadian soccer circles, lots of private chartered flights, having an astronaut with the team and sitting on bench to name a few that I can recall.

The OS crew also stated in counterpoint and in fairness that the spending prepared us better than most of our Concacaf rivals outside the US and Mexico so it worked in getting us the the WC!

[Bison44]

Such as the hiring of the 2 extra coaches (neville/shaw) just for the summer, right in the middle of the belt tightening and squabbling with the women over equal spending.  But remember, he didnt get the support he needed.....ahem.  Wait till October when Bernedesci and Insigne take turns being mysteriously injured, Bradley tries to run practices while refusing to ever be subbed off and the roster is so f#cked he'll have Gavran as his only healthy keeper.    

[red card]

13 hours ago, BearcatSA said:

Who and why?  Need some specifics here.

If a journo is going to put out there or at least heavily imply that Herdman was feeding the likes of Westhead, they can certainly provide some specifics.

Wheeler alluded to Davies muted social media reaction to Herdman leaving and Borjan leaving during Gold Cup.

Kloke also references Davies: After a disagreement between Herdman and star player Alphonso Davies over Herdman’s decision to deploy Davies in multiple positions throughout the World Cup, multiple sources with an understanding of the relationship between Herdman and Davies said that things broke down between the coach and the star player. 

And then Borjan: Ahead of a must-win final group-stage game against Cuba, Herdman wanted to turn to St. Clair. Yet that message wasn’t received well by Borjan. While Canada announced Borjan had left the team due to an undisclosed injury, multiple sources with an understanding of the relationship between Herdman and his players said Borjan left the team out of frustration due to a lack of playing time.

Kloke also says some players not happy with Herdman leaving but nobody is willing to be on record.

https://theathletic.com/4814263/2023/08/29/john-herdman-canada-toronto-fc/

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

John Herdman now unperson. We have always been at war with the Oceania confederation.

[red card]

30 minutes ago, Ivan said:

The Onesoccer roundtable listed a number of "such as's" like a bloated coaching, scouting and technical staff never seen before in Canadian soccer circles, lots of private chartered flights, having an astronaut with the team and sitting on bench to name a few that I can recall.

The OS crew also stated in counterpoint and in fairness that the spending prepared us better than most of our Concacaf rivals outside the US and Mexico so it worked in getting us the the WC!

Also can throw in player billboards, Canada House, doc series & enhanced family/friends package for both men & women World Cups. 

There was also quite of bit of extra Celebration Tour spends such as getting rings for the players. 

[InglewoodJack]

Realisitically, how many of these expenses would actually move the needle if you cut them and hypothetically funded a camp or a friendly or something? This feels a lot like "if millennials stopped ordering starbucks they could buy a house". The team still flew economy from Nations League back to Canada. Stuff like marketing, having a few good assistant coaches, having a world class (allegedly) training staff and facilities- which makes sense, since we're ostensibly a world class national team- those things don't cost the same as transporting 25 players to go play friendlies and fly home.

Yeah, you could have Liam Fraser mow the pitch lawn and David Wotherspoon sweep the dressing room after the game to save on hospitality and landscaping, but we're not talking about Herdman inviting a shaman to improve the lockeroom juju or paying $500,000 for a zero gravity chamber for the players to relax in or anything. These are all reasonable expenses that Herdman made because his job is to treat the team like the world class team we're supposed to be.

(Not personally opposed to the liam fraser lawn mowing idea, but less as a cost cutting measure for me)

[The Ref]

Is Mauro Biello an improvement over John Herdman who waves goodbye.

 

 

[Obinna]

10 minutes ago, The Ref said:

Is Mauro Biello an improvement over John Herdman who waves goodbye.

 

 

Hard to say. I don't expect a great deal of change now that we are seeing the dust settling on the Herdman era. 

[jonovision]

Interesting that, per Kloke, it was Herdman that insisted on Canada signing on with Nike as its kit supplier. 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

2 minutes ago, jonovision said:

Interesting that, per Kloke, it was Herdman that insisted on Canada signing on with Nike as its kit supplier. 

The CSA board or probably more accurately in de facto terms the top officeholders would still need to sign off on that though and presumably could and should have said no to him if they knew it was a bad deal financially. Probably an element of truth to that in other words but not the full story.

[Kadenge]

51 minutes ago, The Ref said:

Is Mauro Biello an improvement over John Herdman who waves goodbye.

 

 

Based on how Biello managed our U23 and U20, I would be inclined to say no

[RS]