The MLS Experiment: Summer 2010

Hello friends and welcome back to my latest update from the MLS Experiment featuring Toronto FC. Up until now we haven’t had much luck both on and off the field so lets see if things have improved over the summer months. I’ve broken this report into two segments those being competitions and player activity as this post is not a match by match analysis.

Competition:  MLS

We started off the summer portion of the season in terrible form throwing away games in the dying minutes and thus suffering a variety of 1-0 and 2-1 defeats which was disheartening to watch and also affected the player morale. With the training sorted out earlier in the month (Thanks Johnny) our fitness was beginning to improve however my 4-4-2 left flank tactic was still not showing any promise even though my players were well suited to it.

For the last game of July against Eastern Conference leaders Kansas City I decided to switch to a 4-3-3 set up and ended up trailing 1-0 at half time. “Oh you of little faith” I said to myself and went back to my familiar 4-4-2 after the interval and ended up 2-1 winners!! That was the confidence boost we needed and went on an unbeaten run through August with a victory and a draw against New York and finished up with another come from behind win at home to Salt Lake City.

Standings

Competition: Canadian Championship

In the Canadian Championship we ended a very poor showing with another loss to Montreal and finished bottom of the table without winning a single game which was quite humiliating for the club. The 18,000 fans on hand at BMO Field were left stunned by the lack of competitiveness not only in this game but the whole campaign.

Standings

Player Activity:

July 1^st was the deadline for waiving any players that we no longer required so I let two of our Mexican defenders go, those being Serrato and Gonzalez who never really fitted into the team. This brought my squad back down to 22 players and opened up two international spots.

Several of my players were attracting attention from Europe and in particular Dutch Clubs. I did manage to persuade DRC Nana Attakora to re-sign for us, but lost GK Stefan Frei to Heracles and DMC Nick LaBrocca will be off to the Mexican League.

I made three new signings before the August 15^th transfer deadline, the first Michael Harrington who had been released by Kansas City and looks ideal for my left flank tactic having some good pace and dribbling attributes. The second, Cameroon international Alain N’Kong who lacks in the tackling department but certainly makes up for it everywhere else and should be a solid midfield player. Lastly Canadian Kevin Harmse can play a bit of both midfield and defence and will therefore make a good utility player. The age of these players was a bit of a concern but finding non Brazilian youngsters for free has been a bit of a challenge. There are plenty of boys from Brazil to choose from but I’m trying to keep the squad more “North than South American” if possible.

Having said that it is Brazilian Moreno who heads up Toronto’s top 5 players over the summer though O’Brian White has suddenly found his form and the back of the net too.

There are just nine games left to play to complete the regular season so there’s still an outside chance of making the play offs but we will need to get off to a good start with wins over Dallas and Chicago before facing much stronger teams

That completes this update so thanks a lot for reading and as always I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment.