Yep, it's the off season.

After last weeks excitement of expansion drafts, trades and player releases, it's been a fairly slow news week for TFC, one very minor trade that really won't affect things much at all, and a couple of interesting announcements that could potentially have huge ramifications, but probably won't and woudn't be happening for a long time anyway.

The first news item was the trade of Joseph Nane to Colorado for a 3rd round draft pick in 2012, which doesn't really deserve much more than a barely interested meh!  I've got nothing against Nane, so best of luck to him, but he was never going to be a major piece in TFC's plans going forward, so a 3rd round pick is probably about right, and maybe even more than I would have expected his value to be.  Well done to Earl on that one, the cuttting of last season's dead wood is going well, though I'd still like to see someone permanent in charge before we start adding new players.

The 2nd bit of news was that MLSE head honcho Richard Peddie confirmed he will be resigning in December of 2011.  While it did provide a brief "Thank God for that, things have got to get better from here" feeling, nothing's really going to change is it?  I'm sure the shareholders were quite satisfied with the returns over the years from all the various different pies that MLSE has it's fingers in and people within MLSE seemed to be lining up to sing his praises, so I'm not getting my hopes up that there'll be any cultural change there.  Obviously Leafs and Raptors supporters will have their reason to love or hate him, but looking at things strictly from a TFC perspective, well MLSE did stump up the expansion fee when no-one else was doing it, as well as playing a part in getting BMO Field/National Soccer Stadium built and the other ways that TFC has helped grow the game in Canada.  It would be churlish not to acknowledge that, and thank him for whatever role he played in all that, but at the same time, he should take his share of the blame for how things have started to go wrong, especially in the off the pitch side of things where he would have a more direct influence.

This season's "royal screw up" with the 2011 season tickets and all the scrambled apologies and freebies that followed, was the inevitable conclusion to the last few years of aggressive price hikes and exploitation of supporter passion that has so soured the whole "TFC experience".  It takes a special talent and focus to be able to turn people off so quickly, to turn such an enthusiastic supporter base, ready to provide a great atmosphere, buy merchandise in huge quantities and propel TFC to be named brand of the year in 2009, into a grumpy bunch who grudgingly renew their tickets, but only after a "cratering" of sales forced MLS Commissioner Don Garber to come up to Toronto and lend a hand,  and whose views of the front office range from wary suspicion to outright contempt, all in the space of 4 years.  So take a bow, please leave as quickly as you can, I just wish I had even a tiny sliver of confidence that things will improve.

What do you know, that sliver of confidence actually came on Wednesday with the news that Rogers was in negotiations to buy the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan's majority stake in MLSE.  Now this is all at a very preliminary stage, and any deal, whether with Rogers or any other company probably won't take effect for a very long time, but it's fun to think of how it could change things.  Hopefully rather than being seen as first and foremost profit making enterprises for the Pension Plan, MLSE's teams could instead be seen as loss leaders, not necessarily making a profit themselves, but providing content to drive profits in Rogers media empire, TV channnels, smartphones etc.  I'm thinking of how for marketing purposes Red Bull has given the, er, Red Bulls the means to attract Thierry Henry and Rafael Marquez, as well as building them a very nice stadium.  It's very unlikely that would happen, and more than likely it'd be more of the same, maybe we'd be better off as is, in a "better the devil you know" kind of way, but daydreaming of a more fan friendly and successful ownership group is pretty much all TFC, Raptors and Leafs fans have to keep them going at this stage.

A good start. Thank you.

Toronto FC today put out another open letter, emailed to supporters and posted on their website here.

After the previous letter of apology and removing of two games from the season ticket package, this details the further actions they've taken after listening to feedback that's been so freely and angrily offered up at the townhall meetings, message boards, conversations with account reps and so on over the last month or so.

What are those actions?  Firstly, a price freeze guarantee, if you renew your season ticket for 2011, the price won't increase for 2012.
Secondly, a guarantee that the 2012 package will only include the MLS games and 2 Voyageur cup games.  Everything else will be optional and sold seperately.
Thirdly, a committment to two further townhall meetings in 2011.
Finally, renewing Season ticket holders will get the home opener in 2011 free, refunded one way or another from their ticket package.

There was also talk of improving transportation to and from BMO field, and of course for the on the pitch side of things, they're "working hard to assemble a management team that is second to none in Major League Soccer."

For me, the last part is by far the most important factor, and it obviously remains to be seen how that will work out, even after the appointments we probably won't know for a year or two.  On the ticketing side of things, there'll no doubt still be many questions, and some people still won't be satisfied, but for now, I'm impressed that they've listened and taken concrete action in the right direction.

I'll upgrade my "mangy flea-ridden pigeon" from a few posts ago to something very tasty, if still a bit small, let's say a Pheasant.

Thank you.

A mangy flea-ridden pigeon.

My post yesterday called for a Scrooge like epiphany and changing of ways from the MLSE higher ups, and in a way, that's now what we have.  Daniel Girard's article in The Star has Tom Anselmi in a remarkable and unexpected mea culpa.

First of all, the chief operating officer of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment is “pissed off” about the poor performance of Toronto FC this season, which will see the team miss the playoffs for the fourth straight year. He also admits the club “screwed up royally” with its season-ticket renewals.
And he vows to “get this fixed real quick” by re-jigging season ticket packages and hiring the right general manager to improve on-field results.

It seems he recognises the need for action on both the on pitch and off pitch side of things.  For me the most important thing for the future of the club is the on pitch product, so let's start there.  Anselmi seems alarmed that Mo and Preki made so many changes, as opposed to going with the plan of  making“a couple of tweaks that would put us over the finish line” and into the playoffs.  I'm concerned that he felt last year's over budget division-riddled squad was a couple of tweaks away, and also very alarmed that he seems to see making the playoffs as the finish line, but I'll let that go for now, as this is the depressing part.

“At Maple Leaf Sports, we’ve been accused at length about suits like me interfering with the team. (This is) proof positive, we don’t interfere.“We had a general manager and a head coach who played together on both sides of the ocean, won a championship together. You would have thought that they were on the same page. We stayed out of their hair and let them do what they did and maybe that wasn’t the right thing.”

Anselmi insisted that he and other MLSE executives aren’t looking to run the day-to-day operations of the team. But rather than a “one-man band” as under Johnston, he said the new GM will have soccer people around him in the front office, including interim GM Earl Cochrane and Jim Brennan, who earlier this season retired to move to the front office as Johnston’s assistant.

So the lesson he's apparently learned is that he should be interfering more rather than letting whoever he hires next do the job their way!  While the idea of having soccer people around the new GM is a very good one, it seems that Jim Brennan and Earl Cochrane are definitely going to be a part of that, continuing Anselmi's investment in their potential rather than viewing getting whoever it takes to win as a priority.  To recap, it seems whoever they hire won't have independence to bring his own people in, will have Anselmi's pet projects pushed on him and won't be left alone to do things their own way.  That should get us some quality applicants.

While it's easy to despair on that front, the fair thing to do would be to wait until there's firm action taken before judging too harshly, so instead let's move on to what is being done to fix the "royal screw up" with season tickets.

An email was sent out to TFC's mailing list and posted on the club's website saying how sorry they are, and inviting people to a series of townhall meetings over the next week or so, which could be very interesting, but what did they actually do?

TFC fans know that with two extra teams in the league next year, there were always going to be extra games in the season ticket package and overall prices were going to go up because of that, but what most people are angry about is yet another increase in the per game cost, and the fact that tickets to this years MLS cup final were automatically included whether we liked it or not, whether TFC is there or not.  So that must be what they addressed right?

Nope.  Instead, with no mention of the MLS final or per game increase issues, we get the news that tickets for 2 Concacaf Champions League games will be taken out of the package and the deadline for renewal extended to October 22nd.  So instead of paying for those 2 games, then getting a refund if TFC don't qualify, we don't have to pay until TFC qualify.  That's nice, for sure, but really misses the point of what people are angry about, and has in effect made people angrier, giving the impression that they think they can placate everyone with a token gesture like this along with a few compliments about how Toronto has the best fans in MLS, and how they're looking forward to showing the rest of MLS and the soccer world how great our fans are this November.

I suppose it's a start, but it's hardly the big turnaround needed to improve supporter relations.  To belabour my scrooge analogy even further and for the last time I promise, they haven't gone out and bought the biggest goose in the shop for our christmas dinner, they've given us a mangy flea-ridden pigeon they found dead on the street, and they expect us to be thankful for that.

This Saturday's game against the Crew should be interesting, the Red Patch Boys will be wearing green rather than the usual red, and the North End Elite are planning a silent protest, no standing, chanting, clapping, no nothing.  The Front Office has a long way to go to get people back on side.