So, what exactly is the roster-building plan?
Granted, 7 consecutive seasons of mediocre or downright bad play is enough to erode any fan's hope or enthusiasm. But it would be a little easier to endure if we could at least see a clear plan for turning it around. Unfortunately, I can't see it at all.
Case in point:
* We currently have 8 central midfielders who have played this year (Alexey, Miggy, Sanchez, Fortune, Reilly, Muyumba, Alzate, Amaro, and even Suarez-Couri) and are apparently about to add 1 more (Alarcon), yet we have only 2 wingers remaining that have seen any time (Fafa and Brennan) whereas Fafa has probably played more mins at striker than winger. Because of this severe imbalance, we're constantly playing both Alexey and Miggy out of position and relying on a 18-year-old in his first MLS season to be our starting CAM. * Despite knowing that our DP striker had turned out to be a bust, we let Thiare walk in the off-season, leaving us with no one that could score a goal when ELL's struggles continued. * After loaning Latte Lath, yet missing on a trio of key striker targets (Embolo, Nunez, and Lukaku) Tata lobbied to use the DP slot temporarily on a winger (kinda a big need right now) and bring Josef back through the sprint season to fill the hole at striker. But Columbus will apparently be doing that instead. * We just sold a prime-age player who was arguably the best FB on the team, Amador, who was on a salary of just $257K, so that we could make Baez our regular starter even though he gets burned routinely in 1v1s and can't deliver a cross to save his life. * When Guzan retired, we had a promising young GK on the roster that could have taken over. Instead, we acquired Hoyos who, despite having the 3rd worst goals conceded in the entire league, has continued to start over Hibbert, thereby thwarting the development of what could be our GK of the future. * What was the point of acquiring Galarza on loan if keeping him beyond his loan would require a DP slot? * We sold two starting-caliber, homegrown, domestic CBs and replaced them with expensive, international CBs whose goals conceded have been worse. One of those CBs was gone in under a year. * We spent $1.7 million to acquire Alzate, singed him to a 4-year contract, and continue to pay him over $1 million in salary, yet even when we have injuries and international duty in the midfield, he never plays. He's never on the injury report, yet doesn't even train with the rest of the team, just working on his own. I know his time in ATL hasn't been great, but it might be worth it to get a little more of a sample size to see what we've have given the investment we've made in this guy. After all, you can't even sell someone that never plays. And consider that the guy we sold to acquire Alzate (Slisz) was arguably the best player on the team up to that point. And consider what we paid to get Slisz here. We had to use a DP slot for awhile to cover the transfer fee, then spent a fortune in TAM to convert him, then continued to pay him $870K in salary. Yet as soon as he started playing at a level worthy of that investment, we sold him and replaced him with an expensive guy who never sets foot on the field. * Likewise, after failing to retain Miles Robinson, we used a DP slot to acquire Gregersen, then spent a fortune in TAM to convert him, and continue to pay him nearly a million dollars in salary, yet he never plays either. And somehow, we've now spent even more to bring in yet another backup CB in Diaz. The millions upon millions of dollars that we've spent on CBs in recent years, not to mention the international roster spots we've had to allocate, just to acquire guys that have been no better than our dirt-cheap homegrowns, has been staggering. * And regarding the current summer transfer window in particular, we don't have anyone on our roster that can score goals, yet we are once again rebuilding the "spine" of the team with guys that don't appear to be any better than the ones they replaced (hopefully, Amaro will be the lone exception, but we'll see).
WTF are we doing? It's like we have no plan at all. We're just assembling random dudes with no consideration for how they fit together, how they fill key needs for the club, or whether it makes any business sense. After inheriting a ton of bad contracts from the previous GM, we've somehow replaced those with even worse contracts. And we certainly don't appear to have a plan for how the roster will be sustainable year after year.
I really WANT to have hope, but I just don't see where that hope is supposed to come from when the club I'm rooting for has unfortunately proven to be among the worst-managed franchises in professional sports.