Our next five league games:

Sorry, I'm not suggesting that 7 points over the next five games would get us back on a playoff pace for the year. Realistically, it'd probably leave us right where we are: six points back. It'd be a reasonable step forward though and would stop the whole year from being a waste. Keep earning points at a regular playoff pace for the rest of the year, with no dips in form, and all it will take is one run of above average form to be right back in it.

What I'm suggesting is that it's not unreasonable to benchmark Winter against a playoff pace just for those five games.

No CCL. Frings back. Mostly mediocre opposition. This isn't a particularly high bar. It's what we'd need to do, in a regular year, over an entire season to meet the minimum threshold of success that qualifying for the playoffs.

The really hard decision will be if we only get 6 points over the next five games. Any less than that and it's hard to see Winter surviving. One win in your first 10 games of your second season in a league designed for parity is absolutely shocking. But if we get a win and a three draws? Or two wins? Tricky. Still not good enough to make the playoffs even ignoring the pointless start. Enough to get you fired when you're the figurehead of a long term organizational overhaul though? Maybe not.

We all know that this team is better than their 0-5 record and is under-performing. My first question is just how much do we think are they under-performing. Are we an under-performing good team or an under-performing mediocre team? Is the team that started 2012 better than the team that finished 2011?

The team the played from July-October last season was better than the team that played from March-July but even then that team extrapolated over an entire season would not have been good enough to make the play-offs. I've seen it said here and there that we had a strong finish in 2011. I don't think we did finish that strongly, it was just better than our poor start.

To make the play-offs this year we already needed to be better than we were in the last three months of last season. After this start we'll need to be even better than that.

The way we played those 2 games vs LA and then the first 3 half against Santos Laguna I expected big things from this team in league action. I think we have the ability to be a way better team than we've been so far. Doing it is another story.

I thought the same. I just wonder how many of our players also thought the same thing and got lost reading up on the accolades praised on them by the press and supporters before things even got started.

The only thing still bothering me is that, even though we are 0-5 and scored 2 goals so far and none at home, most interviews I read/hear have the players going on about playing good football, deserving the win, and sort of seeing it as a fluke that they lost. What does it take for someone to stand up and call it what it is and get some desperation going in the squad.

What does it take for someone to stand up and call it what it is and get some desperation going in the squad.

Its the Smythe curse Im telling you...

0-6...

From a purely mathematical point of view, there seems to be a 96.2% that we're missing the playoffs this season.

http://www.sportsclubstats.com/USA/TorontoFC.html

what in the flying fuck.....how in the hell do you read that shit! :suicide:

what in the flying fuck.....how in the hell do you read that shit! :suicide:

There's alot of stuff there but the only thing you really need to look at is top center of the page:

This post has been edited by jaahuuu on Apr 19 2012, 08:39 AM

Well, what do you expect it to say, when it bases the stats on a 0-5 record? :P

what in the flying fuck.....how in the hell do you read that shit! :suicide:

There's alot of stuff there but the only thing you really need to look at is top center of the page:

I don't know whether I should laugh or cry after reading this mathematical analyses! The only math we should be concerned with right now is 1, score 1 more goal than the Fire on Saturday and all of the other numbers will become much more favourable for us!

I thought the same. I just wonder how many of our players also thought the same thing and got lost reading up on the accolades praised on them by the press and supporters before things even got started.

The only thing still bothering me is that, even though we are 0-5 and scored 2 goals so far and none at home, most interviews I read/hear have the players going on about playing good football, deserving the win, and sort of seeing it as a fluke that they lost. What does it take for someone to stand up and call it what it is and get some desperation going in the squad.

Of course we were better in CONCACAF but I think some people might over-estimate how much better we were. At the end of last year we faced a Dallas team concentrating on getting into the playoffs; then we played a Galaxy team that has been really struggling. We out-played Santos Laguna for 3/4 halves but they seem to have a pattern of being outplayed by teams from the US/Canada and then really turning it on for that final half.

I do think that in our first five games we've only played really poorly in one of the games and that was San Jose at home. In Montreal we were sluggish playing an early game on a Saturday after playing Wednesday night in Mexico and then travelling. The other three games we have not been all that poor overall.

Still, however you get to 0-5 it's still 0-5 and if playing too many games each week was part of the reason May will offer little relief.