Lagerwey has given up.

I’m not sure I can point the finger at AH when it’s Lagerwey’s job to make the decisions. But we can all unload our feelings about Hanauer in a thread of its own later (haha).

Lagerwey does shit that is questionable a lot of times IMO. The biggest issue for me is his hubris. Dude fancies himself a shrewd negotiator, but he is just a cheap asshole. We’ve lost a couple players, potential signings, and talented staff because of, in part, his attempts to play hardball and pinch pennies.

We lost one of the best scouts in the league in Chris Henderson—who’ve we brought in since he went to MIA? -An overpaid, redundant, DP who’s being played out of position, signed from GL’s former employer; and a question mark of a young guy with far less skill than speed in Chu. We lost excellent coaching staff in Gonzalo Pineda, Ezra Hendrickson (“we” meaning the organization, in his case), and Djimi Traore. While their departures were likely inevitable, let’s not forget Lagerwey tried to lowball all the coaching staff below Schmetzer, but the gaffer went to bat for his guys. Oh and the VP of Analytics & Research, Ravi Ramineni bolted but not before High-Performance & Technical Advisor Adam Owen left.

Lagerwey runs his mouth about Sounders are “alone at the top of the mountain” after winning CCL, and he decides to celebrate the banner not at the last home match of the season or first next season but midseason against or oldest rival. SMDH

All the bullshit time off the starters were given after winning CCL, all the boasting and crowing, all the ego…it comes down from Lagerwey. The writers at MLS ate it all up and puked it up at GL and he lapped it back up with glee. He gets to play like he is a genius, take a job elsewhere for bigger bucks, all the while knowing he has handcuffed us for at least this and another year to come.

It’s the same shit that happens in higher education: the higher admins get huge salaries, take credit for the work being done by the profs and their students, run amazing staff and profs out, fuck shit up for everyone, and then get fancier titles and higher salaries elsewhere. All the accolades with none of the bruises—that is the Lagerwey way (not an echo).

The main thing I don't agree with from OP is it implies Lagerway is self aware enough to understand he's failed in delivering his vision and I'm not sure he is. I do believe he's looking at his next job more than this one now, but suggesting it's been like that for a few years I don't really agree with.

I think I'm most excited to hear what he promises in his new role with a new team. When he joined here, it was sort of "look at RSL, but add money". Going forward it will be...?

I think he knows his brief and executed it about as well as anyone could have.  The brief is: make the playoffs while spending as little as possible, and only make a major investment when things are in danger of falling apart.  It's not a vision I agree with, but he's done a good job with it.  The method was:  
  
1. Keep a DP slot open (or as an "accounting gimmick") in the winter window as a "break glass in case of 2016 form" emergency option for the summer.
2. Sign some international free agents in the winter window to bolster the team without breaking the bank (Goose, Kim-Kee Hee, Eikrem).
3. Fill out the roster with MLS veterans who can contribute (Shipp, Bruin, Jones).
4. Add some international quality in the summer window for the late push (Torres, Leerdam, Smith, VRod).
5. Break the glass if things go to shit (Ruidiaz, Lodeiro).

That stopped happening around 2019.  That year the MLS trades got shittier (Jonathan Campbell? Abdul-Salaam?), the DP slot was pissed away on a terrible player in May (Arreaga), and the summer reinforcements were baffling (I forgot Luis Silva even existed, and I honestly suspect there was something crooked about the Emanuel Cecchini deal).  We also started to see the first signings of Lagerwey's sub-par academy products.

2020 continued to get weird, even before COVID really hit.  The bizarre structure of Joao Paulo's deal locked him in as a DP from the beginning of the season when he could have been a TAM guy with a more conventional deal.  A $2m transfer fee for Yeimar, an average CB in his late 20's, was a strange departure from when we got similar players like Kim or Goose or Torres or Marshall for free or fake money.  The other moves were stale re-treads (Roman again, Brad Smith) or sub-standard (Medranda, Ibarra, O'Neill).

2021 continued the collapse.  JP remained a DP for no good reason.  Montero was a good deal, but Benezet was uninspired and Kelyn Rowe is a terrible soccer player.  And Leo Chu . . . again, that move was so bad that it actually smells kind of fishy.  2021 also saw the UNPRECEDENTLY BONEHEADED decision to turn down a permanent transfer with real money for Morris in favor of sending him on a loan to the Championship with NO LOAN FEE, only to see him tear his other ACL.  

And that brings us to 2022, the worst season for transfer business since Hanauer was GM.  Rusnak was signed immediately on another fishy transfer deal that locked him in as a DP, with no possibility of a TAM buy down and thus eliminating two U22 slots, for three years, even though our captain who plays the same position was committed through 2023.  The only other business was bringing in Defiance and Academy players, all of whom are bad.  And it doesn't look like we have the cap room or the desire to right the ship in this window.

I think I've fairly conclusively demonstrated that something has gone horribly wrong with Lagerwey's strategy since 2018.  I offered the suggestion that Hanauer's perennial cheapness might have been exacerbated by the financial fallout from the lockdown policies his brother endorsed, but the rot predates COVID by at least a year.  

If we identify 2019 as the year Lagerwey stopped giving a shit, it raises interesting questions.  It seems unlikely he would just check out mentally three years before his contract was up.  So what was it about 2019 that caused the change?  The answers, I think are probably in this interview from March 2019 about the academy.  This is where Lagerwey said "We’re in year four now of the program and we think by year five or six, we think we’re going to have some kids, at least some of them, starting for the first team."  He had to know that was bullshit, and that there were no Aaronsons or Ferreiras or Sloninas in the pipeline.  His imminent failure will only have been confirmed by Tacoma's continuing inability to make the USL playoffs and subsequent step down to the third tier.

I'm guessing that setting up a functional academy was a serious directive, and having manifestly failed in that duty, Lagerwey knows his days are numbered.  Perhaps screwing Schmetzer over by taking away DP slots and U22 slots was a last desperate gamble to force Brian to play the kids in a vain hope some of them would come good.  But whatever the roster structure, the likes of Ragan and Dobbelaere still suck.

I'll conclude by emphasizing that I can't help but wonder if something untoward is going on.  In Lagerwey's first four seasons in charge, 2015-2018, I can't really find any transfer deals where I would say "If it turned out Lagerwey took a bung for that deal, I wouldn't be surprised."  Since 2019 I count at least five - Arreaga, Cecchini, Yeimar, Chu, and Rusnak - that are so bizarre and out of character that they don't quite pass the smell test.  So maybe GL has some skeletons and he's hoping to get a new deal at a new club before they are discovered.

I don't think those guys are comparable to what's happening now.  Valdez had over 70 caps for Paraguay, a distinguished record, and was actually pretty key in the run to the 2016 Cup; we certainly could have been more ambitious with that DP slot, but it wasn't a terrible signing.  Eikram was a free transfer and a full international on a reasonable ~$500K.  Thomas and Correa makes $110K and $60K respectively, so no big deal, and it's worth noting Thomas had the EXACT number of MLS goals and assists in 547 minutes as Rusnak has in 1,745 minutes.  Herc made a paltry $60K, and Alvaro, Francis, and Farfan were on standard MLS veteran deals.  

The transfers I'm talking about are just bizarre. Yeimar and Rusnak aren't as strange as the ones that are coming next, but neither is any better than a $500K MLS veteran, with no $2 million transfer fee or DP slot needed.

Arreaga.  The obvious point is that he straight up sucked for years, and has only now reached mediocrity.  I'd have to go back and check but off the top of my head I don't the Sounders had EVER paid $2m or more for a guy who wasn't a slam-dunk DP.  On his first contract he got $500K in guaranteed compensation, which was $150K more than club legend Stefan Frei.  And again, he sucks.  He was so shitty that when he wanted to miss the MLS CUP FINAL in 2020 for the birth of his child everyone was like "and nothing of value was lost."  Think about how much was invested in him and let that sink in.

Chu is another fucking bizarre signing.  The guy has no track record or pedigree, but was immediately given a $550K contract, again, more than Frei.  Schmetzer obviously has no use for him but he's sucking up wages and a U22 slot that could be better spent on almost anyone.  

But my nod for the weirdest - and most suspicious - signing in Sounders history is Emmanuel Cecchini.  The MLS records indicate he was paid an eye-watering $790K during his stint.  During said stint, he played . . . wait for it . . . 155 MLS MINUTES, meaning he netted a whopping FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS per minute he was on the pitch.  He wasn't even on the bench for the MLS Cup Final!

I honestly can't see any way this wasn't a crooked deal.  His parent club Malaga were, and are, in serious financial jeopardy.  Somehow they managed to convince Lagerwey to take on the full salary of a player Schmetzer had absolutely no use for.

The thing is, the owner of Malaga was a dodgy bastard, who was removed from the running of the club in 2020 due to "irregularities."  Don't you think a guy like that might grease a few GM palms to get $790K in salary off the books of his administration-bound club?  According to S@H, the Sounders also paid a $150K loan fee for Cecchini, who never played.  It absolutely stinks, and I wonder if Hanauer has really looked into it.

I'm kind of perplexed by the whole thing.  For years it seemed like the academy was a smokescreen for the lack of investment in the team.  "Sure, we're blowing DP slots on guys who should be TAM players, but THE MONEY IS GOING TO THE ACADEMY!"  I assumed, informed by Hanauer's long history of lagging behind other big teams in spending, that no money was really going to the academy, and nobody really cared about it except when it could be used as one of Lagerwey's myriad excuses for transfer inaction.

That idea was backed up by the total failure of the academy under Lagerwey.  The only two starter quality players the Sounders have ever produced, Yedlin and Morris, joined the academy long before Lagerwey was here.  After that there's a huge step down, but the next tier is probably Aaron Kovar, and Henry Wingo, who also predate Lagerwey.  Bwana was OK but was probably scouted before Lagerwey got there.  Atencio looked decent for a few games.  Then there's just this indistinguishable mass of players who never meaningfully contributed to the team, and there doesn't seem to be any progress under Lagerwey there either.  Is Dobbelaere any better than Sean Okoli?  Is Alfonso Ocampo-Chavez better than Darwin Jones?  In Lagerwey's academy, the ceiling has fallen dramatically but the floor hasn't been raised at all.
  
OK, so the academy is bullshit.  Fine.  But then . . . this winter, Lagerwey signs just one senior player in Rusnak, and every other signing is from the academy or Tacoma.  There are EIGHT HGP on the roster now and a handful of players who came through Tacoma, even though Schmetzer clearly doesn't have any desire to play them except in emergencies or in games he's written off.  If the academy is some sort of accounting or PR scam, why are these shitty players being forced on Schmetz?  But if the academy is a serious effort to keep up with Dallas or Philadelphia, why is it so totally useless, seven years into a supposed five year plan?  And if it's a sincere, but failed attempt to create a pipeline to the first team, why aren't we bringing in experienced reinforcements for the first team?  

I just read a book on Watergate, and thanks to the baffling mix of corruption and incompetence, to this day people still don't really know who ordered the break-in or even what the purpose was.  I sort of feel the same way about what's going on with the Sounders in the last few years.  Something is obviously going wrong, and something is obviously not on the level, but none of it makes enough sense to develop a coherent theory of what exactly is going on.*  
  
*Except for the Cecchini deal, which I'm now convinced involved a bung.

"I’d be surprised if he accepted what we offered." -real quote by Garth Lagerwey on the low-ball offer sent to Luis Suarez


***However, reports claim Suarez was demanding $12 million per year and no MLS club was willing/able to accommodate.***

I would say, yes, Rusnak's presence put us over the top even if he wasn't all that good. We had to use Obed Vargas frequently in CCL and without Rusnak I don't know who else would have filled in (Leyva and Atencio were injured as well as Lodeiro for several games if I recall correctly). The problem is that we probably could have gotten away with signing a different veteran at CM and left our DP slot open to make a move this summer. Instead we signed Rusnak for barely over the DP threshold and now we're handcuffed.