Tuesday morning Frank Yallop gave his weekly conference call with Chicago sports media. He discussed team progress, the improvement of his new signings, and the effects of upcoming international call ups. One quote in particular stuck with many Fire fans, when he seemed to suggest Nigerian DP Kennedy Igboananike was under pressure to perform, and could be on the way out if results didn’t improve.
A 50% Success Rate? Chicago Fire Roster Turnover
“Obviously we want everyone to work out that we bring in. It’s not a slight on the guy that we did (bring in). If it’s not going to quite work out and you’ve got to make changes then you do it. In our league there’s about a fifty percent success rate for everybody. I’m hoping that we have one hundred percent. I said that a few weeks ago but usually there’s some guys that don’t quite (work) or take a while to get going, which is always a big thing for us.”
What I’d like to focus on here is the assumption he drops later in the quote – that fifty percent of all MLS signings are flops. This claim is probably closer to being true than false, but it’s something almost impossible to prove with certainty. Some players perform well in MLS but are locker room cancers. Some players are successful one year but bomb the next. Some players take months to acclimate to the long flights in business class. The yearly introduction of overpriced star players to the league during the July transfer window can make team chemistry a challenge for any MLS squad, let alone the Fire, who have made a habit of splashy midseason signings. Simply put, it is actually hard to make good signings in MLS. But that doesn’t mean there is an excuse not to.
It is still too early to pass judgment on this season’s additions. While there are groups of Fire fans already grabbing their pitchforks and torches, remember that three 90 minute soccer matches is simply not a large enough sample size to analyze a human being’s acclimation to a new environment. Shaun Maloney has taken weeks to settle in to every new club he’s ever had. David Accam has played 45 minutes this season. And while this campaign has started poorly, it’s too early to pass around blame or responsibility for the struggles unless you are one of the 18 men suiting up for game day at Toyota Park.
But we can analyze all of Yallop’s signings from last season. Yallop added 18 new players to the Chicago Fire before and during last season’s draw-addled campaign. They were signed in every way possible in MLS: Homegrown contracts, waiver drafts, free transfers, loans, weighted lotteries, trades, even short term contracts. Let’s see if he was over or under his estimate of a 50% success rate. We’ll look at some players who’ve stuck, some who haven’t, and attempt to label them as successful or poor signings.
The Good
Lovel Palmer – 12/13/2014: Acquired in a trade from Real Salt Lake. He’s been a fan favorite, winning Supporters’ Player of the Year and earning a new contract less than a year after signing. He’s locked down the right back position and has recently been deputized on the left.
Harry Shipp – 1/9/2014: Yallop doesn’t really get credit for this, since Harry was part of the team’s plans before he was, but Shipp signed his Homegrown deal under his watch, and it was Yallop’s job to make sure he fit in with the squad that he was building. Nearly won Rookie of the Year and is still trending upward.
Kyle Reynish – 1/10/2014: Signed on a free transfer from the NY Cosmos as cover for Sean Johnson. He was only traded to the Red Bulls because Jon Busch became available. Compared to other backups in the league, you could do much worse than Reynish.
Chris Ritter – 1/13/2014: Another Homegrown that Yallop can’t really take credit for, but as a young, cheap midfielder, Ritter has performed adequately most of the time. He still has time to flame out of the league but for now, he seems to be a decent squad player.
Matt Watson – 3/5/2014: Signed in a trade from Vancouver, he’s earned a role in midfield, despite criticism from many fans. Watson is not a star player but he can be effective in some matches and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here.
Grant Ward – 3/22/2014: Loaned from Tottenham, he quickly became a fan favorite on the right wing. The Fire wanted to bring him back this season but Spurs didn’t want to let him go. As one-season rentals go, Ward was a good one.
Razvan Cocis – 7/14/2014: After the flashier July signings of the past, many fans probably didn’t even notice Cocis at first. Many in MLS still haven’t noticed him due to his injuries so far. Still, he makes the success list because when he’s played, he has rarely put a foot wrong. Cocis is a Romanian international with experience at a high level, and offers technical ability that the other center mids on this roster cannot.
Robert Earnshaw – 8/15/2014: What’s he doing here? Signed as a short term solution up top, he did exactly what was needed. Earnshaw scored goals, brought good vibes in the locker room to a losing team, and did his best to earn a spot this season. While Yallop went in another direction with his forward line, bringing in three designated players, Earnshaw earned a spot on Vancouver’s roster for 2015.
The Bad, and the Ugly
Jhon Kennedy Hurtado – 1/15/2014: Fire fans would love to forget this one. Part of the high price, low impact rebuild of the backline last season. Acquired from Seattle in the Jalil Anibaba trade. He ended the season with Chivas USA.
Patrick Ianni – 1/15/2014: The other part of the Anibaba trade that Seattle won, in retrospect. Both Ianni and Hurtado cost too much, and performed too poorly in their time with Chicago. Ianni in particular had a run of embarrassing performances both at center and right back. It didn’t help that Ianni was brought in with Hurtado as trade material prior to the club dealing Austin Berry to Philadelphia.
Giuseppe Gentile – 1/24/2014: The Fire picked him up off waivers, and by the middle of the season he was gone. Saw no time in league play, and maybe one appearance in the Open Cup. Striker was a position of need last season and Gentile was not the answer.
Benji Joya – 2/5/2014: Signed on loan from Santos Laguna after the Fire won a weighted lottery. Although he should have been a great pickup, and scored the first goal of the season for Chicago, Joya seemed to deal with personal issues as the season wore on. His lack of work ethic (allegedly showing up late for practices and games) allowed Grant Ward and Chris Ritter to beat him out for spots in the midfield. After preseason stints with Colorado and Seattle and interest shown by D.C. United, Joya is back with Santos Laguna.
Marco Franco – 2/25/2014: First round draft pick, spent the whole season on loan. Currently with Indy Eleven after failing to cut it at the MLS level.
Greg Cochrane – 3/3/2014: Cochrane is still with the team. In fact, he’s the only one on this list who is. But he has rarely featured in the starting eleven, even in Open Cup matches. He has looked lost at left back when called on, and looked even more lost at left mid in preseason. Although he has earned a spot on the bench, he’s clearly not even the second choice left back, as Lovel Palmer has started two matches this season.
Matt Fondy – 7/5/2014: Nobody expected much, and he didn’t do much. It’s almost unfair to call him a flop when he was an emergency depth signing. Fondy is currently in USL-Pro, where he belongs.
Sanna Nyassi – 7/29/2014: Signed to help with speed on the wings in a season where Patrick Nyarko missed lots of action. He ended up starting games at striker due to the shocking lack of depth up top. Currently with San Jose.
Florent Sinama-Pongolle – 9/9/2014: The “French Freddy Adu” was signed on a short term deal to see if he could land a spot on the forward line this year. He didn’t succeed in that venture. He did score the game winning goal in Logan Pause’s final home match, heading home a Grant Ward cross and completing what will be the answer to a truly difficult Chicago Fire trivia question in about 15 years.
The final score
Based on Yallop’s own criteria, last season’s roster moves were not a success. If you’ve been keeping score, it’s eight “good” signings against nine “bad” signings or 47%. This success rate looks much worse when you realize that Ward, Earnshaw and Reynish are no longer with the club, and Shipp and Ritter were part of the Fire’s plans before Yallop was brought in.
The Chicago Fire brought in 12 new players this year, after bringing in 18 last year. Time will tell if more than half of these new players succeed in Chicago. Only three of them have MLS experience (Busch, Stephens, Gehrig) which will make it even harder to predict at this point. Victor Perez was just signed and he will most likely take even more time to gel with teammates. The early signs on Guly do Prado and Kennedy Igboananike don’t look good but it’s a long way until July. A must win match at home Sunday will tell us a lot more about which players could be gone this summer.
The worrying trend in all this is that while the Fire are rebuilding, and roster turnover is inevitable, more than half of last season’s 18 signings are no longer with the Chicago Fire. If something similar happens this year, expect Yallop to join the exodus out of Bridgeview.
Main Photo: BRIDGEVIEW, IL – JULY 26: Grant Ward #8 of the Chicago Fire moves the ball during the first half against the Tottenham Hotspur at Toyota Park on July 26, 2014 in Bridgeview, Illinois. Tottenham Hotspur defeated the Fire 2-0. (Photo by Brian Kersey/Getty Images)
