Does Nick Cushing Matter?
Justin Egan examines how an improved roster, not just managerial tactics, has fueled New York City's results this season.
After last season’s struggles, Nick Cushing felt the pressure to start 2024. Losing four of the first five games can do that, especially when you're the only New York City Football Club manager to miss the playoffs and not get fired.
But then a very MLS thing happened: the Pigeons won eight of their next nine games. Cushing’s critics evaporated, and everyone was ready to crown New York City FC as one of the league's elite.
Naturally, nothing gold can stay in MLS. Before Friday’s win against Orlando City, a three-game losing streak reignited criticism of Cushing. So who is right, “Cushing In” or “Cushing Out”? The answer is probably neither.
This might upset some people, but Nick Cushing is a meat shield. He is less responsible for wins and losses than people credit him for. However, as manager he is the public-facing figure who answers the questions at the podium, thus becoming the lightning rod for public opinion.
John Muller, founding editor of The Outfield, wrote about managers not mattering (and upset a lot of Brits) for The Athletic:
Managers can’t perform magic, although some people seem to think they can. They’re not David Copperfield or Harry Potter. They can’t work miracles or sprinkle some magical dust to make players know how to play football.
Spending hours on analysis isn’t very useful. It doesn’t put you in better conditions to win the game. The tactics, the schemes, they’re all bull***t. Of course tactics matter, but players win the game. For 45 minutes at a time, players make their own decisions. Football is a continuous sport in which the coach has barely any influence, less than in any other sport.
Success depends on having top players and top players cost money. It’s impossible to achieve results without spending a lot of money. Where you finish in the league depends on the money you’ve spent. It’s a statistical fact. Clubs can change coaches but if the players are the same, results stay the same.
Managers’ influence in the game is much less than people believe. They choose the players but their role is limited. This is a game played by the players. Coaches’ role is less than many of them realise or want to believe.
But don’t take my word for it. Everything you just read came straight from the mouths of Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Antonio Conte, Marcelo Bielsa, Massimiliano Allegri, Erik ten Hag, Ernesto Valverde, Juanma Lillo and, of course, Sam Allardyce, who’s up there with all of them.
It’s a brilliant article that explains extensive research and comes to a simple conclusion: roster quality is the biggest factor in a team’s success. The economics of the Premier League and other European leagues differ significantly from MLS's salary cap system, but the general thesis remains true.
For New York City FC, replacing Nick Cushing without changing the roster likely would not significantly impact performance. Given Cushing's presence in both 2023 and 2024, it’s reasonable to conclude that most of New York City FC's improvement in the standings is due to roster enhancements that have increased the Pigeon’s depth, attacking quality, and athleticism.
When my colleagues analyzed New York City’s positional groups last month, the standout observation was the vastly improved depth in the attacking group. After Gabriel Pereira’s departure to the Middle East, the 2023 attack featured designated player (DP) Santiago Rodriguez, but no strikers, and no hope of scoring goals.
Cushing has much more to select from in 2024. On the left side, New York City is so deep that U22 Initiative signing Agustín Ojeda and 2024 SuperDraft pick Malachi Jones have relegated an unhappy young DP, Talles Magno, to the bench. On the right, Hannes Wolf has solidified his starting spot ahead of promising 2023 U22 Initiative signing Julián Fernández. Before the Orlando game, only Lionel Messi, one of the greatest soccer players of all time, and Dennis Bounga, 2023 Golden Boot winner and Best XI selection, had more goals added (g+) per minute among wingers. The Austrian has quickly emerged as a Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) signing as potentially impactful as Anton Tinnerholm and Alexander Callens, core members of the 2021 MLS Cup run.
The striker position has been more problematic performance-wise but at least strikers now exist on the roster. New York City FC now boasts three options in U22 Initiative signing Jovan Mijatovic and a pair of late 2023 signings, Mounsef Bakrar and Alonso Martinez. SuperDraft pick Taylor Calheira has also delivered MVP performances for NYCFC II, providing Nick Cushing with multiple potential combinations to choose from down the road.
Maxi Moralez's return enhances the club’s depth at the No. 10 position and indirectly strengthens the wings by allowing Santiago Rodriguez to play wide, as he did last week against Nashville. Even with Malachi Jones's devastating injury this past week, New York City's depth is so strong that they should be able to replace him internally. Alonso Martinez, a natural winger, is another possibility for those minutes.
Improving quality across the starting frontline and among the depth options matters for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is that to score goals, you need offensive players who can create chances and put the ball into the net. According to American Soccer Analysis (ASA), New York City’s retooled attack has driven a 33% increase in expected goals (xG) per game, precipitating a 37% increase in goals scored per game this season.
New York City has made these strides while maintaining the City Football Group (CFG) standard possession-based approach. Possession-based tactics aim to wear down the opposition by forcing them to continuously chase the ball. Eventually, this constant pursuit foments fatigue and leads to mistakes that sometimes result in conceding goals.
The press has emerged as a crucial complement to modern possession tactics. Tactically, a deeper roster also enabled Nick Cushing to employ a more aggressive press this season.
Implementing a counter-press enhances this attacking strategy by immediately pressuring to regain possession upon losing the ball in dangerous areas. This approach not only creates more scoring opportunities in dangerous situations but also further tires the opposition by pinning them in their own defensive third.
A 13% decrease in passes per defensive action (PPDA), according to Wyscout, indicates that New York City FC has increased their pressing intensity rather than maintaining the more passive low- to mid-block of last season. In doing so, they are allowing less easy passes during the build-up phase and forcing opponents into more chaotic possession.
However, effective pressing throughout a match requires sustained intensity. Squad depth allows a coach to utilize substitutions and rotate lineups, ensuring that intensity is maintained over 90 minutes and players are not overworked throughout the season.
What's particularly scary about New York City FC in 2024 is that opposing teams must endure a full 90 minutes to secure points. Reflecting on New York City FC’s winning streak, many matches were decided by second-half moments. Depending on the lineup, players like Andres Perea, Martinez, Fernández, Ojeda, and Jones have come off the bench as dynamic two-way contributors who impact both attacking and defensive phases. The streak wasn't mere luck, but a result of comprehensive attacking quality from top to bottom. Even during the current losing streak, New York City FC has shown hunger and competitive spirit in pushing games to the final minute. String theory enthusiasts might argue that in some alternate universe, the Pigeons earned points in all three recent matches.
Doesn't Nick Cushing deserve any credit for these tactics? The answer is a big maybe, maybe not. In his article, Muller writes:
One read is that these studies don’t mean coaches don’t matter, only that they matter about as much as the rest of their elite peers. “Coaches in sports are not very different from each other,” a Freakonomics blogger wrote. “It may be true (and more than likely very true) that you are better off with a professional coach than with a random person grabbed from the stands (or no one at all). But it doesn’t appear the choice of professional coach matters much.
From a New York City perspective, this makes a lot of sense. The core identity of the club is rooted around the CFG footballing philosophy, not the ideas or imprint of a single manager. Wouldn’t Patrick Vieira, Dome Torrent, and Ronny Deila be employing similar tactics with this group? Would Medhi Ballouchy or the next manager after Cushing be that different tactically? Sure, there will be marginal differences, but the bulk of a team's wins and losses will be a product of the quality of the players on the pitch, not the coach on the sideline. Just remember, before using Jason Kreis as a counterargument, his biggest failing as a manager was assembling a terrible team that took years to rebuild.
While roster construction has significantly bolstered New York City FC’s competitiveness this year, it also imposes a ceiling on how high they can potentially climb. Cushing has settled on a backline comprising Tavyon Gray, Thiago Martins, Birk Risa, and Kevin O’Toole, but all four have missed time due to injury at some point this season. Their absences revealed a significant talent drop-off beyond them.
Strahinja Tanasijević often resembles a hockey enforcer rather than a center-back when filling in for Martins or Risa. Despite receiving decent playing time, Mitja Ilenic hit a rough patch and was largely responsible for the game-losing header by Tyler Boyd against Nashville. Christian McFarlane made his MLS debut against Columbus, but remains inexperienced, which is far from ideal for the only other left-back on the roster. Adopting a "next man up" mentality is effective only when there's sufficient depth to support it. A significant injury to any part of the backline could have a substantial impact.
The lack of reliable defenders down the depth chart has impacted the team’s defensive performance. Despite once again ranking within the top ten in the league in goals conceded per game, their ability to thwart chances has degraded. According to ASA, their expected goals against is 1.42 goals per game, placing them in the bottom half of MLS.
If you've watched any New York City FC game this season, you realize these lower-than-expected xGA numbers can be attributed to Matt Freese. He is having one of the best shot-stopping seasons in MLS history and was a disappointing snub for this year’s All-Star Game. Before the Orlando game, Freese’s 0.31 goals prevented per game1 ranks only behind Đorđe Petrović (2022), Matt Turner (2019 & 2020), and Tim Melia (2017) in the ASA database.2 Goalkeeper performance relative to the expected value is historically unstable, so a predictable shift away from Freese’s current all-time great form could regress those real numbers toward the expected ones.
New York City FC has also hindered their roster construction with their allocation of DP slots, partly due to league rule changes and partly due to mismanagement. The Outfield has learned that the club structured their current DP deals intending to use TAM to buy down Talles Magno this season, Martins next season, and Rodriguez in 2026. However, with the league changing how DP buy downs work, the May roster profiles indicate that all three DPs cannot be bought down with TAM, casting doubt on the viability of this plan.
This further highlights what a puto desastre the Magno signing has been. Magno’s time in New York City has been marked by a series of errors by sporting director David Lee. Going into 2023, it seemed that only Lee, Magno, and his agent believed moving the Brazilian to the No. 9 role was a good idea, even though it was clear to everyone else that his performance declined from an elite winger to a much less effective striker after Taty Castellanos left the prior season.
It's clear Nick Cushing prefers a different type of player than Magno in the wing position. In 2023, it wasn't until the end of September, when injuries left no other option, that Cushing finally reintegrated Magno into the rotation at left wing. Cushing reverted to his preference this year with the emergence of Jones and Ojeda, leaving a disgruntled DP a healthy scratch on the bench, having played only 6 minutes so far this season.
As rumors of Magno's potential moves this summer gain traction, reports of Bologna offering €13-14 million highlight a significant missed opportunity for New York City FC. Such a transfer could have allowed NYCFC to reallocate their designated player resources towards securing a striker, instead of relying on U22 slots—a strategy that historically has not yielded high success rates league-wide3—for signings like Mounsef Bakrar in 2023 and Jovan Mijatović in 2024.
As New York City enters the second half of the season, success will hinge less on what Nick Cushing does on the sideline and more on whether the attacking depth assembled by David Lee can withstand any backline injury concerns and the significant mismanagement of New York City FC’s DP slots. ❧
Image: Arnold Böcklin, Self-portrait with Death playing the fiddle
Minimum 1000 minutes
The ASA database goes back to 2013.
Ravi Ramineni, co-founder of SRC FTBL and former VP of Analytics for the Seattle Sounders, said on the Transfer Flow podcast that the league has a 1 in 6 hit rate on U22 signings.