TORONTO — It wasn’t the emotional rant of a frustrated GM who was at his wit’s end and yelling at the top of his lungs in order to make himself heard.
Instead, what Kevin Payne did was something entirely different, delivering a calm, calculated and direct warning to his players that roster changes are coming at Toronto FC. And it would appear that few on the team are safe.
An eight game winless skid (four losses and four draws) and one win in 10 matches to begin the MLS campaign means the Reds, with a 1-5-4 record, currently sit eighth in the Eastern Conference and are in serious danger of letting the season slip away before summer even gets here.
To that end, Payne, the club’s GM and president, signed New Zealand forward Jeremy Brockie and Scottish defender Steven Caldwell to loan deals last week as reinforcements. TFC now has 31 players – one over the roster limit for MLS, and two over if you consider the injured Danny Koevermans, who’ll soon return to the lineup.
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In order to become roster compliant, the team will have to release or trade players, and Payne revealed to a small group of reporters Monday morning that some moves will likely come as soon as this week.
“I would think our players would have to be pretty naive not to think they’re going to be some changes coming. When you look at this last stretch of games and the number of points we’ve left on the table, I don’t think it’ll be a big surprise to anyone when there are changes,” Payne said.
TFC could be higher up the standings, but individual errors and a penchant for conceding late has seen the Reds throw away nine points over the past seven games. That’s clearly not good enough for Payne, who said the club only has one or two players on the current roster who will do “whatever takes to get a result.”
“We’ve got guys who seem to think that it’s okay to play most of a good game and then take a play or two off. It’s just not. You get punished. We’ve tried to change that behaviour,” Payne stated.
“In the case of some of the younger players, we still are hopeful it will change and they’ll learn that lesson the hard way. But in the short term we said we have to make more changes in the roster and get some veteran players on the field.”
He later added: “We have done enough this year to be in a very good place in the East and instead we’ve put ourselves into a bit of a hole and now we have to recover. It’s a little bit of a fire alarm going off in our coaches’ offices and in the locker room, I hope. And we have to answer it.”
Payne describe Caldwell, a veteran defender with a wealth of Premiership experience, as a “band aid;” someone who can help the team in the short term, although the GM hopes to sign the Scot to a long-term deal once his loan expires on June 30 if he adapts to MLS.
In the interim, the hope is that Caldwell will shore up a defence that has conceded 15 goals through 10 games and that has looked very suspect at times this season.
“To be honest with you, we expected more out of some of our (defenders) than we’re getting,” Payne admitted.
Brockie likely won’t stay beyond his loan deal, as Payne explained TFC would have to acquire the Kiwi outright from his Australian club (pay a transfer fee) in order for him to stay full time.
As for Tal Ben Haim, Payne revealed that the Israeli defender might not actually end up playing for TFC, even though the MLS club announced last week it signed him to a loan deal.
“He’s loaned to us but we promised him he would try to negotiate a longer term deal with him,” Payne said.
“He’s got offers outside of our league that are lucrative. He obviously doesn’t want to jeopardize those (offers) for a two month loan with us. What we’ve said to him is that we’re fine with the idea that he’s not going to play for us unless we get a (permanent) deal negotiated.”
Though results on the field and the point total suggest this is a struggling team, Payne believes rookie coach Ryan Nelsen has done “a great job” since taking over the reins. Still, there’s room for improvement, which hastened the loan deals of Caldwell and Brockie.
“In some ways the team has made more progress than I expected, in terms of the way we’re playing and the way they’ve taken to what Ryan wants to do,” Payne opined. “But we’re pretty realistic and we have to recognize that it’s not been good enough.”
“Ryan has tried everything to prepare the group of players we have to deal with those situations and it just hasn’t improved. So the decision was made to bring in some reinforcements.”
While the team has made moves to tighten the defence, midfield continues to be a problem area. Payne conceded that the team has lacked creativity in that area of the field and that forward Robert Earnshaw has been asked to do a lot up front without a lot of midfield support.
But reinforcing the defence and providing the team with a more solid base was the immediate priority.
“We had to address the back line. Even with the challenges in the midfield, we still are among the higher scoring teams in the league,” Payne pointed out. “That’s not what’s cost us games so far. It’s not a lack of scoring; it’s our inability to make the simplest plays at the back when crunch time comes.”
That said, Payne hopes to sign one or two midfield creators over the summer
“That’s our target for the summer transfer window. We are looking at a couple of players that we think will make a very big difference on our team. They would be DPs, and they’re in that part of the field,” Payne promised.
Payne said that one of the two prospective midfielders is an older player who could be a “two and half to a three year solution” for TFC, while the other could be a “five or six year anchor for our team.”
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