So we have talked about all the roster moves that TFC has made in the past month or so and there were a lot of them. To be honest I am not even sure if Winter is all done making moves even now so who knows what else could be in store. Last week though we got the chance to see this very changed TFC side in action twice after a fairly long layoff and sadly all we got as fans was a lot more of the same.
Against FC Dallas Winter put in 6 of the new players for the starting lineup meaning that the club eclipsed the 100 players all time mark and then some. They also had more then half of their starting 11 players being fresh faces which was almost certain to result in a bit of a settling in period. I won't be getting in to the actual match but the fact of the matter is that you could see the need for yet more patience. The team still had a fair few areas that are in clear need of improvement and if not for an impressive effort from Frei things would have been a lot worse then the 1-0 final score. The other thing that struck me was that Koevermans clearly had not played in a match of late and seemed to lack sharpness in front of goal. Training can help a lot but for both Danny and Frings they went from being in their offseason to jumping straight in to the middle of a season so it might take them a while to get up to pace. Speaking of Frings though he was one of the best players in the game for TFC. He provided a sharpness and edge to the midfield and his passes were instrumental in almost all of the chances that TFC did manage to create.
On the weekend things looked a whole lot worse for TFC as the team continued to defend terribly and this time Frei was not able to stand on his head and keep the scoreline close. An awful stretch of around 10 minutes saw the team conceding goals like it was going out of style. The 3 goals in 9 minutes was more then enough to sink Toronto on the day and made sure that new comers Koevermans and Ryan Johnson picking up their first goals for the club was not enough. In the end the score was 4-2 for Kansas City and for TFC it was the 4th straight defeat and 6th in their past seven matches. There is no point in trying to sugar coat it at this point as we can all see that TFC are struggling and have a long ways to go still before they are really competitive in the MLS. The problem is that no one on the team seems to know how to defend properly. It is not just the back 4 that are to blame for this, but they do get their share of the blame, but also includes the midfield who seem lost more often then not when they are trying to track back and cover. There is a part of this that has to be attributed to the coaching of the team as they do not seem prepared to defend properly and are often looking unorganized. The other half of the problem is that the personal to play defense are just not their with all the injuries. The team added Iro which is a plus and gives them another decent defender but they need at least 4 of them and they are well short of that number right now.
The problem that I see for TFC is that they do have some good defenders who are out for the season the most notable of them is Adrian Cann. So if they were to go out and make trades to bring in more quality defenders then they would have a bit of an overload come the start of next season when everyone is fit. So if you are planning for the long term you might just have to kiss any sort of playoff push goodbye and just make due with what you have and then work to improve things for the next season when you know who will be fit. I personally think they will not make a lot more changes this season in the back line but I hope that they do bring in a top class centre back. Not someone of Iro level but instead someone who would be among the best defenders in the MLS. The club needs to make a big move in the back line but now is not the ideal time to do that barring De Guzman moving back to Europe.
So we have our first two games for the new look TFC in the books and it is clear that they still can't defend and that the wins are not just going to start pouring in now. The club still has a long ways to go but at least as these players all settle in I expect the team to only get better. In fact I would still say that despite continuing the losing ways TFC are better now then they were before all the roster moves.
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