:/ I stopped responding a week ago as I didn't really have it in me to keep arguing. Kind of peeved that it's still going on, but whatever. Going to try to keep my responses calm and fair now, because I'd rather keep it civil and still don't quite have it in me to get my blood up again over all of this.
I think this is the problem, and half of the issue behind Lampard-gate (the other half being that Lampard's contract status was so murky and uncertain for such a long time). Expansion teams, as a general rule, struggle badly in their first year because of how MLS's transfer rules work. A large part of their first ever recruitment comes from a system I have no love at all for called the Expansion Draft, where they get to pick players off all the other teams in the league, but there's a caveat in that teams are allowed to "protect" 10 players, plus DPs cannot be drafted. This means you're stocking your squad with the bench-warmers and outcasts from the rest of the league. Not only this, but NYCFC operated at a further disadvantage as, whereas most expansion clubs are one-off new entries, NYCFC joined the league at the same time as Orlando City, meaning they had to alternate draft picks with another team, thus further diluting the decent talent available to sign. You also sign players from the "waiver list", which is comprised of all the players who teams have allowed to go out-of-contract, which is hardly again a stunning indictment of their pedigree.
Hence part of the reason people got so angry about Lampard-gate - they had pinned all of their hopes on the three DPs and a literal sprinkle of other top-notch players dragging the team through its first year. Claudio Reyna went so far as to promise the club would sign three DPs on a video interview on the club's media, and yet they ended up with one player, who was playing up front and for the first few games was virtually unable to touch the ball as he was marked out of every single game and NYCFC had literally no-one who could feed him a single pass.
As for the Ben Haim comment - this is especially pertinent as defence is NYCFC's weakest area. I would go so far as to say that Tal Ben Haim would arguably be an upgrade on every defender NYCFC has right now except Facey - he certainly would have back when he was playing for us. Most of the defenders NYCFC has are decidedly not capable for MLS. When they leave the club, most of them will probably struggle to get a starting role anywhere else in the league. Thankfully, NYCFC are making signings to change that, so in a month's time the situation should be much more rosy.
Mostly. The team struggling so much served to numb most of the antipathy, although it definitely still exists in some quarters. Still, people can talk about him on the forums without it turning heated now, so yeah, it's calmed down.
Yeah, there was. Opinion was divided on the name change but the change in kit colour was almost universally derided. At one point there was talk of a concerted CFG-out campaign, though it died down very quickly and most people simply accept it now. Still, many on their forum still express that they're waiting for CFG to come good in the transfer market before they fully buy in to CFG's promises, and it's also worth pointing out that despite the CFG buy-out and a better season (6th place finish and the play-offs this season, against dead last in the previous one), attendances by the end of the year were actually down by about 1,000 on 2013-14...
