Is Teitur Tottering?

He did well at the USL level such that he deserved a shot. He is failing, 1 win in 11 games, on track for 3 wins. Worst MLS expansion team in MLS history. There is no way he survives the season if things continue on like this and he knows it. The Nutralite Championship is a fight for his job – he also knows that. When you have two people in the whitecaps staff who have coached MLS teams to championships , and comparable teams with similar backgrounds (Seattle and Portland) clearly displaying better training, drafting, planning, coaching..Whitecaps Management will need to take action soon. I suspect that if we lose the NCC, and the attendance start to drop (e.g. on Sunny weekends days) then Teitur will not survive into August. In the end it starts with him first then they can look at what player changes must be made. As an expansion team I believe fans (who pay thousands for season tickets) should expect competitiveness , to me that means winning the occasional game and being on par with Seattle and Portland, anything less is failure and like any sport changes must be made. SO win the NCC, win 6 games this year or he is fired.

How about Denis Hamlett , who coached the Chicago Fire for 12 years in the MLS (brought them to two conference finals as head coach) who is now Teiturs Assistant, of have Tom Soehn step in for the remainder of the season. As for chemistry, if we are sitting at 3 or less wins August 1…they team will be eating eachother alive anyhow not much to lose there. if anything a change will be needed.

This season is Teitur’s. I find it very frustrating when bad teams fire coaches when they aren’t the problem. This is a team with plenty of new players and has had injury woes on top of that. Giving him the balance of the season to show what he can do is the only reasonable course of action IMO.

I posted in the other thread, but to recap: if Teitur gets us to fifth or sixth in the conference, he’s done very well. Eighth would be bad, seventh not out of the question.

Think of him as a promotion manager, comparable to Ian Holloway at Blackpool. Give him the year to see what he can do with a mixed up USL-MLS side in the top league. In the case of the EPL both Chris Hughton’s and Roberto Di Matteo’s mid-season sackings were shockers, and I think – barring a bona fide losing streak – firing Teitur before November would be seen in a similar light, a little harsh on a guy who is trying to put together a team that needs to punch above its weight every night to be competitive.

If you fired him now, I’m willing to bet nothing would change.

This is interesting. I have been a vociferous critic of TT since half way through the season before last and went so far as to register my disappointment with Bobby L when TT was appointed as our MLS coach. Truth is its no use bitching about him at this stage, he should never have been there in the first place. I empathize with him being saddled with a very shallow squad but despite talk of building slowly for the future, the quality of the teams in MLS is poor and we could be doing better. So fire the coach? Not sure what that will achieve until the club decide to strengthen the team, put in some proven performers and assign to the sidelines those that are clearly way out of their depth. Read: Knight, Brovsky, Dunfield, Wagner. The club must protect the momentum they have generated with the fans and the people in Vancouver because once that starts to slip it may be hard to recover.

I don’t think there is much merit in comparing to other leagues as that would pull the likes of Football League 1 into scope. The point is, with the low level of capability in MLS, being competitive shouldn’t have been so hard and with the investment made at BC Place an inept team is hardly an option. MLS is probably the only major sport where competitiveness is achievable right out of the gate and we could have taken advantage of that just as Seattle did in their first year

I would say let’s not discount talk of building slowly. If I could paraphrase what I heard Bobby Lenarduzi and Paul Barber said in the preseason "success will come, but don’t expect too much too soon." So the home opener was a MAGICAL experience. There was bound to be a let down as we all discovered that, wait, what?, MLS is a competitive league? (When Thierry Henry and Rafael Márquez play for a team that manages to lose once in a while?)
Now, while I’m perfectly happy to have a LOT of patience for this squad and its staff as it exists (as longs as the Canucks playoff run lasts, but that’s for another board) I can see both sides of the argument.
One one hand, I wouldn’t argue that TT "did well" for us at the USL level. 10-5-15? Sure, they were auditioning talent for the big league, but it was like watching the auditions episode of American Idol. For every "That was pretty good…" or the occasional "Wow…" there were a number of "I hope I never see that again as long as I live." In retrospect, at the time I thought it was fair to completely burn a season of competitive sport because of what was coming. But, at this point, if I have to hear "I think we held our shape very well, I think we created good chances but couldn’t finish them" again.. well…Its carrying on into this season a lot farther than I thought it would.
So what’s his record as manager? Successful with major clubs in minor leagues (Norway and Iceland). OK, I’ll give him a pass. I can think of one way Norwegian football is close to comparable with MLS. Its a league that’s on the fringes of the European soccer world. And to be fair they probably have more players that have played in more meaningfully competitive matches than the NCAA grads who have populated MLS over the years. Give me a motivated Rosenborg BK over a coked up FC Dallas playing in Pizza Hut Park any day.
More impressive I think is taking a national team from 145th to 68th in international rankings (currently ranked 75th, BTW).
That took three years.