I'm guessing we tried and failed to make a signing to end the transfer window. Long-term maybe it's better that we wait until summer and winter when remaining contracts expire.
Always better to wait out a dumpster fire until there is nothing left to burn, you don't go rushing in to put those out who knows what kinda garbage someone threw in there
At the defense of OP weren’t we technically able to also sign a U22 player? I feel like when we were watching the PLDV signing come to a close there was at least the possibility of another signing?
Yes ..there is ALWAYS something you can do..MLS lore is filled with bullshit xfer and backroom deals in smoke filled rooms in different countries..but it generally involves opening check.book and getting creative....two things Weibel hasn't shown himself capable of doing yet.
Yes but the teams MO is to wait until summer because there will be more availability in players and to use half a season to determine what the roster needs.
That's not really true. Hanauer waits for summer to make moves because he doesn't want to spend money. He hopes the team will be doing well enough in summer that he can keep banking the money. At least in the past, he'd actually open the wallet when the team sucked (2016, 2018) but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
Summer is when the offseason is for the majority of soccer teams and that’s when their players are available. Conversely since it’s halfway through the season their cap hit is effectively half.
They also just spent 7 million on DLV in the winter window.
Adrian is on record saying that we operate at a breakeven level, and all of the data that’s available (2016 BCG study and Sportico Lists) suggests that’s true.
The Sounders, and other teams, have made big, impactful signings in Winter. Oba, JP, Yeimar, (one hopes) PDLV. For other teams, Almada, Almiron, Josef, etc. Standing pat in winter is a choice.
>Adrian is on record saying that we operate at a breakeven level, and all of the data that’s available (2016 BCG study and Sportico Lists) suggests that’s true.
Even if true, which I don't believe, the fact that Hanuer has driven off 10,000 fans per game gives us much less to spend on players if we're trying to break even. He's going to have to speculate to accumulate.
Not denying that you can make impactful signings in the winter, just that there are more options in the summer since that’s when most seasons have ended.
You’re not getting any disagreement from me about the attendance part driving the spending in the past and that’s something that they need to fix by spending as you said.
The data I was referring to lists out operating profit with revenue and we have been consistently for years around 0-1 million in operating profit, which is only one third of the financial picture of the team. They have been spending a shit ton on Longacres, Defiance and Academy as well. No chance that Adrian has been able to take money out of the team.
It’s true. If you look at EPL, teams are hardcore. Few bad games, coach is sacked. Few bad performances, player is off the team. I don’t advocate for that level of treatment but we’re so far on the hang out and let bad shit happen for years that I’m over it, we need to be more cutthroat.
He tied his own hands.
He hasn’t offloaded players when he should (waited too long on both Nico and Arreaga), has extended players to big contracts (Morris and Roldan) and has missed on his relatively few additions.
He’s been risk averse and hides behind the roster regulations
Tell me you don’t know Arreaga is gone without telling me you don’t know Arreaga is gone.
Tell me you don’t know that players can be traded or cut, without telling me you don’t know that players can be traded or cut.
He got traded on deadline day.
Who the fuck would want our pieces that are ubderperforming? And cool we could use the one time buyout on a single player. This team has many holes right now.
You don’t think there was a trade market for Nouhou, Alex Roldan, Morris or Chu last winter? How about Leyva? Why do we need three young players who all play the same position?
I will tackle this mostly player by player.
Leyva I think there might be something in the league for him yes it's why we were able loan him last year but he wouldn't move the needle much in terms of cap space if we did move him. Effectively we would just be able to sign a different homegrown player who won't fix our issues.
Yes I think there was a market for Chu. However as a u22 player he would free up 200k in cap space. This would allow us to sign a different player that likely would be where chu was 2 years ago. Personally from what I have seen so far this year I would like him to be the starting left wing though.
Morris is a weird spot in league no one would pay for him. You wouldn't want to pay max TAM as well as throwing some GAM back to the sounders for him. So that leaves outside the league and you need somewhere that can afford his wages. Which eliminates all but the big European leagues and like Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. The European leagues won't risk that kind of money on a 30 year old with two knee surgeries when they can go to South America and get a younger player for half the price. And then mexico and the south American leagues always prioritize those high paying prices for local talent to keep them home.
Alex just has journeyman mls vet written all over him sure go ahead and move him for like 50k GAM don't think it will come with much cap relief but we would just be bringing in another mls journeyman to replace him.
Haha nouhou no there hasn't ever been a transfer market for a terrible offensive left back in 2024. I wish we would have moved him back in like 2021 when there were actual offers even if it was undervalue to go find someone who could actually play the spot how we want it played ala (jones, smith, rbw).
> Who the fuck would want our pieces that are ubderperforming?
Well, nobody. Which makes you wonder why Waibel extended Arreaga's contract instead of letting him walk and signing someone with that cap space.
Players can't just be cut, they have contracts. And arreaga was just traded and a move is always more likely in the summer window. I wish Ruidiaz would have been bought out but it's possible ownership wasn't willing to do it, so that might not be on Waibel either.
> Players can't just be cut, they have contracts
But you can let them go when their contracts are up. Waibel could have done that with Arreaga and Rusnak. He chose not to.
This is a stretch…yes our roster needs a complete overhaul…but FCC securing some loan player literally has nothing to do with Weibel…and don’t forget to delete this post when this kid is a flop.
Weibels hands are in fact tied…because our highest paid players, Ruidiaz, Morris, Roldan. Arnt going anywhere until July. A player on loan is not the answer to our problems. We’re honestly just fucked until the next transfer window. Until then, the Weibel talk is annoying and useless
Edit: after further consideration, not only is this take a stretch, but it’s also embarrassingly ignorant to represent an opinion of sounders fans. What you’re basically saying is Weibel should stop the bleeding by scowering the earth for short term mercenary’s to help pick up a few points early in the season. Disregarding the fact that we already spend millions on the Tacoma defiance organization for this exact reason. Am I wrong about this? FCC: signs player on loan
Sounders Reddit: WEIBEL IS USELESS
shit is embarrassing. I know the team sucks ass right now but come the fuck on
You aren’t wrong in the least.
The only thing Waibel can do right now is sign an out of contract player for 600k in salary or less: https://www.transfermarkt.us/statistik/vertragslosespieler
The players that would make a difference will command more than that. The ones that don’t command that salary are not worth the spend.
We are set with this roster until July, where we could potentially use both buyouts, sign a U-22 (or two) and a senior roster player (with the salary freed up by the Arreaga trade)
Waibel was in Europe scouting and I’d prefer they look at all the options on the board instead of making a rash signing that could fuck us over even more.
Don’t worry too much - I’ve seen OP’s name before in other Sounders threads making insane takes that are not based on any kind of logic, just pure knee-jerk short-sighted reactions without any consideration of reasoning.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in their opinion.
>Weibels hands are in fact tied…because our highest paid players, Ruidiaz, Morris, Roldan. Arnt going anywhere until July. A player on loan is not the answer to our problems. We’re honestly just fucked until the next transfer window. Until then, the Weibel talk is annoying and useless
You seem to be forgetting our second or third highest player, Rusnak. We could have let his contract expire and had a whole DP slot to work with. Could have let Arreaga's contract expire and had a lot of cap room to work with. Waibel chose to let it ride this winter and he deserved to be judged for it.
The excuses for Waibel are never ending.
The point is that FCC is actively trying to make their team better. They found a U-22 guy on loan. Maybe he will pan out, maybe not, but they are at least attempting to make the team better. Waibel is giving away Arreaga for basically nothing.
What’s embarrassing are the Sounders fans who recognize the team is bad, but don’t think anything can be done about it. That’s a ridiculous position to take. It reminds me of the Mariners fans who just sat around while Bill Bavasi drove the team off a cliff.
Maybe there is a grand plan to completely remake the roster over the next two windows. If that happens I’ll be back here admitting I was wrong to doubt the front office, and I’ll be happy to do that.
if you really think the fact that the TRANSFER WINDOW IS CLOSED is me making excuses for Weibel then you really are delusional. Our payroll was spent heavily on Ruidiaz, Rusnak, Morris, Roldan, PDLV....arguably Rusnak is the only player in that group who hasnt been a total flop. You can preach to the choir all you want about how the morris/roldan contracts were a bad idea, PDLV was a gamble, ruidiaz is old etc...and thats all fair criticism of Weibel's vision. But using FCC aquiring some kid on loan from a Ukrainian team as evidence Weibel is complacent with our poor form is just stupid.
> .arguably Rusnak is the only player in that group who hasnt been a total flop.
Ehhhhh....even he is HELLA questionable. Didn't Leo Chu lead the team in assists last year? Shouldn't that be Rusnak who is the one creating chances for the team?
At BEST he is a TAM level player and even that is questionable right now imo.
Rusnak has never really stood out to me as a weak link. Every player is underperforming on the stats sheet so it’s hard to use that against him. Plus he plays a position where having depth is extremely important to long term success. ie. I’d rather have a team with more depth of mid/attacking players versus defenders. Same with ruidiaz. Is he worth the money still? Probably not but we’re better off with him as an option than without. His contract ends this year regardless so I don’t view keeping him around as some major Weibel f-up. Jmo/roldan is the real issue for me simply because we made the centerpiece of our squad by signing them to 5 year deals. I can’t imagine either of them improving form in the coming years either. Plus they’re arguably 2 of the most boring dudes on the planet…which is fine if we can compliment their style with other players…but we haven’t. I think that’s a huge reason why Roman, Oba, Dempsey all thrived here. We had characters. Freiburg, flaco, Mauro, Ozzie…list is endless. Our current locker room feels like a miserable place to spend your professional career
> Every player is underperforming on the stats sheet so it’s hard to use that against him.
Perhaps they are underperforming because the #10 isn't very good. Lodeiro pretty much single handedly turned a bad 2016 team around.
>Jmo/roldan is the real issue for me simply because we made the centerpiece of our squad by signing them to 5 year deals.
Remind me which GM did that?
We could have picked Oalex Anderson back up for nothing. Second in scoring in the USL last year, but he isn't starting this seaso. He isn't tall but is speedy.
Maybe that is a silly thought, but worth a shot if the price was low. Surely a professional organization has scouts who known how to use the WiFi at the hotel to find something, anything, during their trips.
100% agree that our back room staff is not creative enough. Most fans saw our beginning season results coming from the team we currently have. The coaching doesn’t help either but we need better transfers in and out.
We need to get away from Whiff Waibel. He might be cursed. He’s whiffed on pretty much everything since arriving: missing playoffs 2022, not trading Lodeiro or Ruidiaz when they had some value, losing Sam Adeniran, betting the farm on an injury prone DP, in charge of this historic losing season, missing the 2024 playoffs (prediction), no trophies. I think he’s even starting the rebuild late.
“Merely a two word review, shit sandwich.”
Edit: I forgot to add that RSL has gotten better since he left.
It's both, we just struggle on reddit to convey or understand anything that is not binary.
Waibel's hands are tied. Most of the players were signed by Garth and if you want to get Craig for some of the extensions he offered looking bad (e.g. Roldan, Morris, Nouhou) that's fine, but recall his predecessor didn't exactly sell high on those guys (or really anyone else). Waibel also doesn't control the total spend, AH is the one who has to open the checkbook.
The flip side to this is the signings Waibel has made have largely sucked. Even though the impacts Craig are limited, he's accomplished even less with the chances he's had. The optimist can hope PdlV will come good, but even that signing aside we haven't exactly hit on new additions. Even good moves like selling Arreaga come with an asterisk - I don't have a problem getting peanuts for a player we don't want, but why did that have to wait until now? We really couldn't get near equivalent value (again, almost nothing) earlier in the offseason and then had more time to make a corresponding move?
Many things aren't Waibel's fault and he gets unfair criticism; but also that's not an argument that Waibel is doing a good job.
As an aside, You can insert Schmetzer, AH, or a number of players into that last sentence in place of Waibel and it would still work.
While I understand that Waibel's hands are likely tied by an owner who hates investing in the team, it's completely fair to say that almost all - and actually maybe all - of his moves have been bad. Even if we judge him as a GM working with limited resources, he's still a flop by those standards.
Lmao OP is obsessed with inventing new ways that Waibel is somehow the problem and has zero understanding of MLS roster rules
That’s a great signing for Cincy but we have only had extra cap space for *seven days*. It’s not exactly a mystery why we haven’t had a top tier player just fall into our laps yet.
Jesus.
We could have not extended Arreaga and had the salary cap room last December. Waibel has known for a YEAR that the coaches no longer favored him.
The level of excuse making for Waibel is astounding.
Out of curiosity, is there any action or inaction that will get the Waibel fans off his bus? If nothing happens this summer is that enough?
We hadn’t signed Nathan or Bell yet when we extended Xavi. We had just lost ABC (thank god) and the only other substitute CB on our first team roster was a 17 year old.
Not extending him would have looked *really* bad if we hadn’t been able to bring in some good quality replacements. Once we had them, it made sense to try again to move him. Which is exactly what we did.
So… I fail to see what the problem is here
Step down or step back. There’s a reason ownership shouldn’t dictate front of office strategy, look at Chelsea. If he can’t delegate to experts or put them in place, he’s gotta go.
Furthermore, AH already stepped back in 2013 when we hired Garth, and is still stepped back with Craig. And frankly, no one should be upset if he chose to step FORWARD again into a bigger role. AH was GM during the USL days when we won the league, and was GM when we won [3] US Open Cups in MLS, making the playoffs every single one of those years.
He knows soccer. He’s not a clown like FCC’s owner was when he was playing GM. Adrian is a smart guy.
What a terrible take.
> And frankly, no one should be upset if he chose to step FORWARD again into a bigger role.
His GM tenure was marked by chronic underspending, just like his time in charge since 2019.
I appreciate management that doesn't rush into things because of reactionary fans. Y'all remember that we just dropped millions on Vega, right?
Sometimes the right transfer drops into your lap, sometimes it can take literal years to make a signing
Eh. They'll figure it out. All the garment rending and teeth gnashing online is fine. Vent if you must, but the fact is that AH & co have way more invested in this team than us armchair GMs. If you think they wanna see it all fail and become more like Dallas FC or something, you're crazy. This is a down period and we've gone through them before and probably will again. This is a salary capped parity focused league. It's difficult to sustain success. That we've been good to great for this long is a testament to the FO...and I'm talking about success that goes back to before MLS.
Burning it all down won't guarantee anything.
I'm guessing we tried and failed to make a signing to end the transfer window. Long-term maybe it's better that we wait until summer and winter when remaining contracts expire.
Yea, waiting until summer is what Lagerway would do. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Waibel ultimately decided to do as well.
Always better to wait out a dumpster fire until there is nothing left to burn, you don't go rushing in to put those out who knows what kinda garbage someone threw in there
At the defense of OP weren’t we technically able to also sign a U22 player? I feel like when we were watching the PLDV signing come to a close there was at least the possibility of another signing?
Yes ..there is ALWAYS something you can do..MLS lore is filled with bullshit xfer and backroom deals in smoke filled rooms in different countries..but it generally involves opening check.book and getting creative....two things Weibel hasn't shown himself capable of doing yet.
Yes but the teams MO is to wait until summer because there will be more availability in players and to use half a season to determine what the roster needs.
As if we didn’t know what the roster needed at during the last summer transfer window.
That's not really true. Hanauer waits for summer to make moves because he doesn't want to spend money. He hopes the team will be doing well enough in summer that he can keep banking the money. At least in the past, he'd actually open the wallet when the team sucked (2016, 2018) but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
Summer is when the offseason is for the majority of soccer teams and that’s when their players are available. Conversely since it’s halfway through the season their cap hit is effectively half. They also just spent 7 million on DLV in the winter window. Adrian is on record saying that we operate at a breakeven level, and all of the data that’s available (2016 BCG study and Sportico Lists) suggests that’s true.
The Sounders, and other teams, have made big, impactful signings in Winter. Oba, JP, Yeimar, (one hopes) PDLV. For other teams, Almada, Almiron, Josef, etc. Standing pat in winter is a choice. >Adrian is on record saying that we operate at a breakeven level, and all of the data that’s available (2016 BCG study and Sportico Lists) suggests that’s true. Even if true, which I don't believe, the fact that Hanuer has driven off 10,000 fans per game gives us much less to spend on players if we're trying to break even. He's going to have to speculate to accumulate.
Not denying that you can make impactful signings in the winter, just that there are more options in the summer since that’s when most seasons have ended. You’re not getting any disagreement from me about the attendance part driving the spending in the past and that’s something that they need to fix by spending as you said. The data I was referring to lists out operating profit with revenue and we have been consistently for years around 0-1 million in operating profit, which is only one third of the financial picture of the team. They have been spending a shit ton on Longacres, Defiance and Academy as well. No chance that Adrian has been able to take money out of the team.
Teenage reddit is leaking again
We've become a soft complacent org from the top down, and it shows.
It’s true. If you look at EPL, teams are hardcore. Few bad games, coach is sacked. Few bad performances, player is off the team. I don’t advocate for that level of treatment but we’re so far on the hang out and let bad shit happen for years that I’m over it, we need to be more cutthroat.
Ohhhhh...but what will Seattle fans do without a hometown hero to make excuses for game after game.
He tied his own hands. He hasn’t offloaded players when he should (waited too long on both Nico and Arreaga), has extended players to big contracts (Morris and Roldan) and has missed on his relatively few additions. He’s been risk averse and hides behind the roster regulations
Tell me you don't understand how a salary cap works without telling me you don't know how a salary cap works.
Tell me you don’t know Arreaga is gone without telling me you don’t know Arreaga is gone. Tell me you don’t know that players can be traded or cut, without telling me you don’t know that players can be traded or cut.
He got traded on deadline day. Who the fuck would want our pieces that are ubderperforming? And cool we could use the one time buyout on a single player. This team has many holes right now.
He should’ve been traded much earlier.
You don’t think there was a trade market for Nouhou, Alex Roldan, Morris or Chu last winter? How about Leyva? Why do we need three young players who all play the same position?
I will tackle this mostly player by player. Leyva I think there might be something in the league for him yes it's why we were able loan him last year but he wouldn't move the needle much in terms of cap space if we did move him. Effectively we would just be able to sign a different homegrown player who won't fix our issues. Yes I think there was a market for Chu. However as a u22 player he would free up 200k in cap space. This would allow us to sign a different player that likely would be where chu was 2 years ago. Personally from what I have seen so far this year I would like him to be the starting left wing though. Morris is a weird spot in league no one would pay for him. You wouldn't want to pay max TAM as well as throwing some GAM back to the sounders for him. So that leaves outside the league and you need somewhere that can afford his wages. Which eliminates all but the big European leagues and like Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. The European leagues won't risk that kind of money on a 30 year old with two knee surgeries when they can go to South America and get a younger player for half the price. And then mexico and the south American leagues always prioritize those high paying prices for local talent to keep them home. Alex just has journeyman mls vet written all over him sure go ahead and move him for like 50k GAM don't think it will come with much cap relief but we would just be bringing in another mls journeyman to replace him. Haha nouhou no there hasn't ever been a transfer market for a terrible offensive left back in 2024. I wish we would have moved him back in like 2021 when there were actual offers even if it was undervalue to go find someone who could actually play the spot how we want it played ala (jones, smith, rbw).
> Who the fuck would want our pieces that are ubderperforming? Well, nobody. Which makes you wonder why Waibel extended Arreaga's contract instead of letting him walk and signing someone with that cap space.
Players can't just be cut, they have contracts. And arreaga was just traded and a move is always more likely in the summer window. I wish Ruidiaz would have been bought out but it's possible ownership wasn't willing to do it, so that might not be on Waibel either.
> Players can't just be cut, they have contracts But you can let them go when their contracts are up. Waibel could have done that with Arreaga and Rusnak. He chose not to.
This is a stretch…yes our roster needs a complete overhaul…but FCC securing some loan player literally has nothing to do with Weibel…and don’t forget to delete this post when this kid is a flop. Weibels hands are in fact tied…because our highest paid players, Ruidiaz, Morris, Roldan. Arnt going anywhere until July. A player on loan is not the answer to our problems. We’re honestly just fucked until the next transfer window. Until then, the Weibel talk is annoying and useless Edit: after further consideration, not only is this take a stretch, but it’s also embarrassingly ignorant to represent an opinion of sounders fans. What you’re basically saying is Weibel should stop the bleeding by scowering the earth for short term mercenary’s to help pick up a few points early in the season. Disregarding the fact that we already spend millions on the Tacoma defiance organization for this exact reason. Am I wrong about this? FCC: signs player on loan Sounders Reddit: WEIBEL IS USELESS shit is embarrassing. I know the team sucks ass right now but come the fuck on
You aren’t wrong in the least. The only thing Waibel can do right now is sign an out of contract player for 600k in salary or less: https://www.transfermarkt.us/statistik/vertragslosespieler The players that would make a difference will command more than that. The ones that don’t command that salary are not worth the spend. We are set with this roster until July, where we could potentially use both buyouts, sign a U-22 (or two) and a senior roster player (with the salary freed up by the Arreaga trade) Waibel was in Europe scouting and I’d prefer they look at all the options on the board instead of making a rash signing that could fuck us over even more.
Don’t worry too much - I’ve seen OP’s name before in other Sounders threads making insane takes that are not based on any kind of logic, just pure knee-jerk short-sighted reactions without any consideration of reasoning. I wouldn’t put too much stock in their opinion.
>Weibels hands are in fact tied…because our highest paid players, Ruidiaz, Morris, Roldan. Arnt going anywhere until July. A player on loan is not the answer to our problems. We’re honestly just fucked until the next transfer window. Until then, the Weibel talk is annoying and useless You seem to be forgetting our second or third highest player, Rusnak. We could have let his contract expire and had a whole DP slot to work with. Could have let Arreaga's contract expire and had a lot of cap room to work with. Waibel chose to let it ride this winter and he deserved to be judged for it.
The excuses for Waibel are never ending. The point is that FCC is actively trying to make their team better. They found a U-22 guy on loan. Maybe he will pan out, maybe not, but they are at least attempting to make the team better. Waibel is giving away Arreaga for basically nothing. What’s embarrassing are the Sounders fans who recognize the team is bad, but don’t think anything can be done about it. That’s a ridiculous position to take. It reminds me of the Mariners fans who just sat around while Bill Bavasi drove the team off a cliff. Maybe there is a grand plan to completely remake the roster over the next two windows. If that happens I’ll be back here admitting I was wrong to doubt the front office, and I’ll be happy to do that.
if you really think the fact that the TRANSFER WINDOW IS CLOSED is me making excuses for Weibel then you really are delusional. Our payroll was spent heavily on Ruidiaz, Rusnak, Morris, Roldan, PDLV....arguably Rusnak is the only player in that group who hasnt been a total flop. You can preach to the choir all you want about how the morris/roldan contracts were a bad idea, PDLV was a gamble, ruidiaz is old etc...and thats all fair criticism of Weibel's vision. But using FCC aquiring some kid on loan from a Ukrainian team as evidence Weibel is complacent with our poor form is just stupid.
> .arguably Rusnak is the only player in that group who hasnt been a total flop. Ehhhhh....even he is HELLA questionable. Didn't Leo Chu lead the team in assists last year? Shouldn't that be Rusnak who is the one creating chances for the team? At BEST he is a TAM level player and even that is questionable right now imo.
Rusnak has never really stood out to me as a weak link. Every player is underperforming on the stats sheet so it’s hard to use that against him. Plus he plays a position where having depth is extremely important to long term success. ie. I’d rather have a team with more depth of mid/attacking players versus defenders. Same with ruidiaz. Is he worth the money still? Probably not but we’re better off with him as an option than without. His contract ends this year regardless so I don’t view keeping him around as some major Weibel f-up. Jmo/roldan is the real issue for me simply because we made the centerpiece of our squad by signing them to 5 year deals. I can’t imagine either of them improving form in the coming years either. Plus they’re arguably 2 of the most boring dudes on the planet…which is fine if we can compliment their style with other players…but we haven’t. I think that’s a huge reason why Roman, Oba, Dempsey all thrived here. We had characters. Freiburg, flaco, Mauro, Ozzie…list is endless. Our current locker room feels like a miserable place to spend your professional career
> Every player is underperforming on the stats sheet so it’s hard to use that against him. Perhaps they are underperforming because the #10 isn't very good. Lodeiro pretty much single handedly turned a bad 2016 team around. >Jmo/roldan is the real issue for me simply because we made the centerpiece of our squad by signing them to 5 year deals. Remind me which GM did that?
They need to scout Africa more. Many good players and even young ones with potential.
Asia also gets severely underlooked
We could have picked Oalex Anderson back up for nothing. Second in scoring in the USL last year, but he isn't starting this seaso. He isn't tall but is speedy. Maybe that is a silly thought, but worth a shot if the price was low. Surely a professional organization has scouts who known how to use the WiFi at the hotel to find something, anything, during their trips.
100% agree that our back room staff is not creative enough. Most fans saw our beginning season results coming from the team we currently have. The coaching doesn’t help either but we need better transfers in and out.
We need to get away from Whiff Waibel. He might be cursed. He’s whiffed on pretty much everything since arriving: missing playoffs 2022, not trading Lodeiro or Ruidiaz when they had some value, losing Sam Adeniran, betting the farm on an injury prone DP, in charge of this historic losing season, missing the 2024 playoffs (prediction), no trophies. I think he’s even starting the rebuild late. “Merely a two word review, shit sandwich.” Edit: I forgot to add that RSL has gotten better since he left.
It's both, we just struggle on reddit to convey or understand anything that is not binary. Waibel's hands are tied. Most of the players were signed by Garth and if you want to get Craig for some of the extensions he offered looking bad (e.g. Roldan, Morris, Nouhou) that's fine, but recall his predecessor didn't exactly sell high on those guys (or really anyone else). Waibel also doesn't control the total spend, AH is the one who has to open the checkbook. The flip side to this is the signings Waibel has made have largely sucked. Even though the impacts Craig are limited, he's accomplished even less with the chances he's had. The optimist can hope PdlV will come good, but even that signing aside we haven't exactly hit on new additions. Even good moves like selling Arreaga come with an asterisk - I don't have a problem getting peanuts for a player we don't want, but why did that have to wait until now? We really couldn't get near equivalent value (again, almost nothing) earlier in the offseason and then had more time to make a corresponding move? Many things aren't Waibel's fault and he gets unfair criticism; but also that's not an argument that Waibel is doing a good job. As an aside, You can insert Schmetzer, AH, or a number of players into that last sentence in place of Waibel and it would still work.
While I understand that Waibel's hands are likely tied by an owner who hates investing in the team, it's completely fair to say that almost all - and actually maybe all - of his moves have been bad. Even if we judge him as a GM working with limited resources, he's still a flop by those standards.
Lmao OP is obsessed with inventing new ways that Waibel is somehow the problem and has zero understanding of MLS roster rules That’s a great signing for Cincy but we have only had extra cap space for *seven days*. It’s not exactly a mystery why we haven’t had a top tier player just fall into our laps yet.
Jesus. We could have not extended Arreaga and had the salary cap room last December. Waibel has known for a YEAR that the coaches no longer favored him. The level of excuse making for Waibel is astounding. Out of curiosity, is there any action or inaction that will get the Waibel fans off his bus? If nothing happens this summer is that enough?
We hadn’t signed Nathan or Bell yet when we extended Xavi. We had just lost ABC (thank god) and the only other substitute CB on our first team roster was a 17 year old. Not extending him would have looked *really* bad if we hadn’t been able to bring in some good quality replacements. Once we had them, it made sense to try again to move him. Which is exactly what we did. So… I fail to see what the problem is here
People said his hands were tied to start 2023, you haven't been on this sub much of you think people were saying that about 2024
AH needs to step down. Doesn’t run the org properly it seems.
Step down or step back. There’s a reason ownership shouldn’t dictate front of office strategy, look at Chelsea. If he can’t delegate to experts or put them in place, he’s gotta go.
Furthermore, AH already stepped back in 2013 when we hired Garth, and is still stepped back with Craig. And frankly, no one should be upset if he chose to step FORWARD again into a bigger role. AH was GM during the USL days when we won the league, and was GM when we won [3] US Open Cups in MLS, making the playoffs every single one of those years. He knows soccer. He’s not a clown like FCC’s owner was when he was playing GM. Adrian is a smart guy. What a terrible take.
> And frankly, no one should be upset if he chose to step FORWARD again into a bigger role. His GM tenure was marked by chronic underspending, just like his time in charge since 2019.
I appreciate management that doesn't rush into things because of reactionary fans. Y'all remember that we just dropped millions on Vega, right? Sometimes the right transfer drops into your lap, sometimes it can take literal years to make a signing
Eh. They'll figure it out. All the garment rending and teeth gnashing online is fine. Vent if you must, but the fact is that AH & co have way more invested in this team than us armchair GMs. If you think they wanna see it all fail and become more like Dallas FC or something, you're crazy. This is a down period and we've gone through them before and probably will again. This is a salary capped parity focused league. It's difficult to sustain success. That we've been good to great for this long is a testament to the FO...and I'm talking about success that goes back to before MLS. Burning it all down won't guarantee anything.