Defensive deficiencies could cost TFC’s Vanney
A once-in-a-generation schedule, TFC’s own ignominious history, two extra MLS playoff spots, a front office loathe to make another change in the coach’s box and the league’s general parity has afforded Greg Vanney relatively easy sleeps in 2015, but those days are pretty much over.
Amid a tidal wave of Jays blue, the hunt for a first Red October begins now for Toronto’s other playoffbound club, with four games remaining starting Saturday that will tell not only the tale of this TFC season, but also go a long way toward determining if Vanney is the man for the next one.
And this being TFC, where head coaches have come and gone like kindling to a fire, let’s just pencil it in for the early days of the next one.
For now, Vanney has a club that has pretty much everything in its favour, including a relatively healthy roster and, most importantly, Sebastian Giovinco, the MLS’s leading man in a No. 10 shirt.
Giovinco has bounced back from that injury scare of a month ago and each time out now shows something new in the league’s record books and on the field. There is no record, for example, of winning corners without actually having the ball in your possession, but Giovinco did it not once but twice on Saturday. His harrying and out-thinking of Chicago centre back Daneil Cyrus was enough to force the set pieces, which he took, of course.
On the second, off Damien Perquis’s header right back to him, there ensued a sidefoot lob of the keeper that was so exquisite it took the league a full extra day to award Giovinco the goal.
That’s 20 for the year (and up in our Section 209, another log on the raging Donaldson-or-Giovinco debate for citywide MVP honours).
For all of those moments, though, with Giovinco taking part in an MLS record-breaking 35 of Toronto’s 52 goals, they can’t yet say they’re into the post-season, even with three games of the four coming up on the trot at their home BMO Field ground. They should get there, but Vanney and his coaches’ great failing this season has been getting them to play anything resembling dependable defence, and Giovinco’s exploits up front have masked some dreadful play in behind.
TFC’s 1.73 goals-against mark is far and away the worst defensive record of any MLS playoff team in over a decade, going back to the league’s free-scoring early days — in a global context, only a handful of teams in the world’s top leagues leaked goals at such a rate last year, and none of them finished anywhere near the top half of their leagues (in the U.K.’s four top leagues, for example, only last-place clubs QPR in the Premier League and Blackpool in the Championship were worse).
Looking at the prospects, they should get to the playoffs.
A finish as high as second place, while attainable, would require them pretty much running the table.
Face-planting might also make them miss out entirely, but with the whole group operating in the MLS’s usual accordion-shaped fashion and separated by a mere six points top to bottom that seems equally unlikely.
It’s a fascinating league of parity and form in that regard, but dead serious for TFC in that how it all shakes out will mean the difference between a home playoff game and opening on the road — and given the money MLSE has spent on this roster, scraping in at the lower end of the playoff table and missing out on an extra BMO Field gate would be a strike against the entire group, save for you-know-who.
Vanney’s to-do list, then, remains familiar: getting Jozy Altidore some shots; finding a healthy and dependable right back; and actually beating a good team, with TFC having won just two games of 12 against top-four teams from the league’s two conferences, and the schedule has them playing three of those East rivals to finish.
But mostly, Vanney’s message has to be simple: Get Gio the ball and, for heaven’s sake, somebody stop someone.