Copes

Following up, looks like our first 2020 signing TOMORROW? Email from Derek Martin: As you may have noticed over the past few days, several players that were part of our inaugural 2019 Wanderers roster have expressed their thanks to our fans and our club on social media as they pursue new professional opportunities. While we are sad to say goodbye to these young men, we also want to thank them for making the commitment to play for us this past season. Joining a new league, a new club and new city was a courageous decision and we appreciate their contributions to our club. They all played with heart and passion and for that we will be forever grateful and they will forever be Wanderers. They are also professionals however, so they understand that results matter and the hard truth is that our 2019 squad did not perform the way we had hoped on the pitch. Our last place finish in the standings and lack of goal production are not the results we expect at this club so change is necessary, however difficult it may be. We have been diligently at work, since long before the end of the season, identifying the areas where we need to improve and we are now beginning to execute on our strategy to bring an exciting and winning team to the best fans in the league. We have been impressed by the quality of players that have expressed an interest in joining our club, as the story of the Kitchen and our fabulous atmosphere have reached the far corners of the soccer world, and we are excited to start sharing the roster we are building with you! Beginning tomorrow, we will start announcing the players we have signed for 2020 that we believe give us the best opportunity to compete for a CPL Championship. We look forward to continuing this exciting journey with you and thank you for your continued support of our club and our mission to unite our community through the power of sport. Sincerely, Derek Martin Founder & President HFX Wanderers FC P.S. Rover isn't going anywhere!

Fair - I think I valued Perea a little higher than Guti, but you're right that he kind of became lacklustre as the season progressed. Flexible depth is exactly why I expected Sukunda to stay. Provided he wants to. Agreed, forgot him.

Skublak and (unfortunately) Langwa I expected. The former due to what I perceived to be a lack of production, the second because of attitude issues. Simmons and Iida though - I expected both of them to stick around. I thought both showed a lot of heart and a lot of upside. Prediction game. Who weathers the storm and returns next year? Just rolling through the Roster page on the website, I'm guessing that we maintain Arnone, Bona, De Carolis, Firth, Garcia, John, Kourouma, Oxner, Perea, Sukunda. Maybe Guti but that's a long shot. I don't think he lived up to expectations but maybe Hart wants to give the gabled Guti / Perea combo another season with some more support to try and work?

Herdman, IMO, justified his appointment last night. He now has a bit more rope. I wasn't as down on him as some where. I wanted to wait a few games to make judgement - and I got pretty bummed after Haiti - but I think that performance speaks volumes. I literally got into soccer around the time of the Honduran 8-1. I think that was the first (certainly one of the first) Canada game I ever watched. I ordered pizza and beer and sat there in disbelief. This is the happiest I've been in my short history as a fan!

Silberbauer. I feel like Pacific has been the biggest disappointment / underperforming team compared to their roster.

She included in her vows that she would cheer for whatever soccer team I wanted - I've got one on her for life now.

Nah I kind of agree. I was rattled with how long it took Hart to "settle" during the Spring season. I feel like some of our early losses then were do to experimentation. I think at this point we should be playing our starters. I want to see a very competitive lineup against Pacific or else.

Yeah this is probably the best list in this thread - although I would swap Garcia and Langwa I think from the Halifax contingent. Simmons should be there too. IMO the Halifax young guys are ranked Schaale -> Langwa -> Simmons -> Garcia. As mentioned earlier, Simmons is massively overlooked. I also disagree with the assessment that Langwa is overhyped. He is young - bound to make mistakes. He reminds me of a young Doneil Henry with TFC, who is currently one of the starting CBs with our national team. Langwa has a ton of raw talent and he has shown strength defensively and offensively. I like Langwa a lot. Hell - here is my hot take. He'll get called up at some point in the next 2-4 years given how little depth Canada has at that position. You heard it here first!

Just watching the game now - sitting on an island in the Maldives on my honeymoon haha. At this point I can comfortably say that I'm just not comfortable with HFX's depth. When I saw the line up I'm disappointed to say that my first thought was 'we probably lost'. I was right. Garcia should be playing on the wing - he doesn't play the No. 9 role as well as Perea. Skublak is even a bit better in that spot. Neither Guti nor Iida are good on the wing IMO. They are both attacking mids and shouldnt be on at the same time. There is a notable quality drop in the midfield when we replace John or Simmons. De Carolis is no Langwa. N'sa is a CB. Schaale was missed. I honestly think our Starting XI could hang with any 11 in the league, but we have no seen the full group play together yet. We have had so much squad rotation between injuries and schedule that we have not developed the needed chemistry. Plus, we have relied more on our depth than I think we should be. The Fall season is still reachable but honestly I just want Halifax to stabilize at this point. Learn to play away and let our top players play together.

Our attack looks so much stronger when Perea is at the front. We looked more dangerous against the Fury than we have all year. A shame about our called off goal, and our shaky defense, but the work done up front was such a positive to see after such a goalless year. If he can stay healthy I see us being much more of a challenget for the Fall title!

Really positive results. I think we can all wake up feeling a little better about our teams and our league. This was a great showing!

Excited for this - I know that the end result is kind of irrelevant, but I want to HFX emerge as the "best of the rest". Beyond that, I think our team is just improving game-in-game-out, and I'm super stoked for the Fall Season to wipe the slate. I was initially really against the split season, but I can get behind this.

I think Qatar is possible, but far from a shoe-in. Canada is not CONCACAF top tier right now (still would consider that US / Mexico) but I think we can competing with the next level. We demonstrated in this Gold Cup what we have (a very strong attack and a very decent midfield) and what we don't (a backline). I think we demonstrated that while we may not be better than Haiti / Costa Rica / Panama / Honduras, we can hang with them. I think for that reason we have a solid chance at spot 3, or the play-in in spot 4. I'm not writing off Qatar like some - that seems silly. I'm not as negative as some, that seems kneejerk. However I'm not as confident as Herdman once was, and quite frankly, he shouldn't be either. If he sticks around, which he likely will, he has some work to do.

Market size doesn't necessarily dictate a team's success either. I don't know why we are so preoccupied by this. In the EPL (albeit, a much more established league, but a structure that we can attempt to emulate in 100 years) there are regional teams, teams in towns and villages, and cities with multiple teams. Barrier to entry seems low - start from the bottom, play and grow as you see fit. If you can do something that grabs the attendance, great, that will help you grow. If not, fine, you may be content being D5 forever but at least the dream is always there. As the league grows, more investment interest will come. Why would we rule our rural teams that represent a collective population of 90,000 or something over a 100 km radius? So what? It's not a city, but if in 20 years someone wants to try and start a small club there in a 3000 person stadium why wouldn't we let them see what they can build and try to climb our ranks? Why can't we have our own Burnley - or hell, looking at lower leagues, a Forest Green Rovers? In the early days population will likely dictate who we get. But long term? I'm all for smaller areas or regions going for it if they can meet minimum standards for the lower divisions (once they exist).

Couldn't agree more, I said the same thing.