As Toronto FC prepares to tie off another dreadful season, blame is the only thing the team doesn’t find itself short of.

Much of it must land on former manager Aron Winter, architect of the nine-game losing streak that hobbled the campaign at the outset.

However, some of it must also fall on an unlikely culprit — Major League Soccer itself.

According to multiple sources around the club, many at Toronto FC view MLS as the villain in a failed deal that might have spared them a last-place finish.

Their anger is amplified by the fact that this is the second time the league has undercut Toronto on a key personnel decision.

Only now, as it ends, are we beginning to learn the full scope of how out of his depth Winter was in North America.

Winter’s taste for fussy discipline was already beginning to turn players against him in 2011. On the road, they were often confined to the team hotel during the evening. If they were allowed to leave, they were instructed to go out sporting full Toronto FC kit. In warmer climes, they weren’t allowed to wear flip-flops. Anything but team-issue socks and runners were verboten.

“That’s the way you treat kids in an academy, not grown men,” one source close to the team said.

Winter’s obsession with trivia masked a larger problem — he was missing the forest for the trees.

He was repeatedly given scouting reports on overseas upgrades. Though the team desperately required reinforcement, no decision was ever made. Winter hadn’t bothered watching the tapes.

He was too busy worrying about lengthy, pre-game video marathons that left players “looking like zombies” as they headed onto the pitch, according to another source.

“Analysis paralysis” is how an observer summed up Winter’s management style.

The losing streak to start the season got Winter headed in the direction of the plank. Ironically, it was their first league win that tipped him off it.

Danny Koevermans came on in the 63rd minute of that game against Philadelphia to score the game’s only goal. It was a cathartic moment of uplift.

As Koevermans came off the pitch, Winter told him he was playing in the reserve game that followed immediately afterward, generally a proving ground for fringe players. Richard Eckersley, another marginalized regular who’d appeared as a sub, was also put in the reserve game. The move was perceived teamwide as a gross insult.

“Things already weren’t great, but that was it for a lot of guys,” one source said.

This was late May. Within days, the decision had been made to pull a management switch — Winter would take over the youth academy; the current director of player development, Paul Mariner, would become coach.

Winter initially agreed to the change. But the night before it was announced, he asked to be relieved of all duties.

Mariner now found himself working alone, trying to retool a shambling squad on the fly. Defence was his first priority. He decided to off-load out-of-sorts midfielder Julian de Guzman, whose job was being done by Terry Dunfield — another player Winter never warmed to — for roughly one-20th the cost.

Mariner took over on June 7. A week later, he watched Sweden vs. England at Euro2012. His eye drifted to Olof Mellberg, once one of the best defenders in the world. At 35 years of age, Mellberg was not young, but Mariner was thrilled by the crispness of his game. He also knew Mellberg was available.

An ill-fated courtship began.

“I want to move on from Mellberg,” is all Mariner will say of that deal now, with no small trace of bitterness.

But people with knowledge of the deal point to that saga, rather than the initial losing streak, as the nadir of the Toronto FC season.

On July 13, the team shed its second-biggest contract by trading de Guzman to Dallas. The door was open.

Recently released from a contract in Greece and now retired from international football, the Swede was more interested in a new cultural experience for his young family than a bidding war. Though he had several European offers, Toronto caught Mellberg’s fancy.

He visited the city, where he was presented with a personalized Toronto FC jersey. A deal was worked out in principle — $3 million over two years. That number represented a significant savings on the $1.9 million paid annually to de Guzman.

Everyone in the team loved the move — acquiring a vastly experienced player capable of plugging that spot at the back where TFC wins went to die. They felt it was good value for money on a short-term contract that could bridge them through a rebuilding phase.

Given the cachet of Mellberg’s name, no one anticipated a problem getting approval from the league. They were stunned when the deal hit a wall at the MLS head office in New York.

“When the league talks with clubs about signing (designated players), about a significant amount of guaranteed money, they want to make sure the long-term health of the team and the league are taken into consideration,” said a league source, trying to summarize a philosophical position that might most charitably be called unusual.

The league is in the unique position of paying all the players operating under each club’s $2.8 million salary cap. Designated players are paid outside that structure. The first $350,000 of DP money is paid by the league and counts against the cap. The remaining salary is paid by clubs and is theoretically unlimited.

New York Red Bulls have three players making more than $3 million a year. Toronto FC has none. Nevertheless, the league felt $1.5 million a year for Mellberg represented too great an outlay.

One suspects two factors aside from the financial. As a Scandinavian, Mellberg appeals to none of the sizable ethnic minorities MLS covets as fans; and also the fact that he is a stoical defender rather than a zigzagging forward.

Whatever the reasons — and the league will not talk about them, on the record or off — MLS didn’t like the look of Mellberg.

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Toronto FC was understandably furious the league had decided to play miser with team money.

The club was already nursing a grudge with MLS over the exit of Scarborough’s Dwayne De Rosario.

When De Rosario demanded a raise to seven-figure DP range in 2011, Toronto FC was willing. The league torpedoed that deal as well. In a fit of pique, De Rosario demanded a trade the club felt compelled to provide. Toronto got a dumpster full of disposable parts in return. De Rosario went on to become MLS MVP.

The cases of De Rosario and Mellberg raise the thorny question of who has the final say in personnel decisions for Toronto FC — the club or the league.

MLS is unapologetically clear — they do. (Though not so unapologetic that they want to say so on the record.)

Unique amongst every sports league in North America, MLS has taken on the role of helicopter parent. They decide what is best for all 19 of their children.

What’s disturbing is that no one can say precisely what the parameters governing these decisions are. They aren’t codified anywhere. MLS takes them on an arbitrary case-by-case basis. A suspicious number of them favour MLS’s cornerstone franchises in New York and L.A.

As it applies specifically to Toronto, part of the friction may have something to do with the 2009 signing of de Guzman. According to a league source, Toronto FC was advised against making the move by MLS. Anxious to acquire a hometown boy, the team convinced the league to push that deal through.

De Guzman, a player inherited by both Winter and Mariner, was a failure in Toronto. One imagines the league saying, “Fool us once …”

At this point, it was mid-July and the Mellberg deal was stalled in New York. There are two versions of how it died.

The league contends they went over the heads of Mariner and his staff and made the case against the Swede at the MLSE board level. According to MLS, it was the board — usually a rubber stamp for sports decisions made within the MLSE family — that scuppered the move.

Looking discomfited when the question was put to him during a live interview at halftime of the July 25 All-Star Game, that was the position taken by MLS commissioner Don Garber: “Let’s put Mellberg aside. The league hasn’t nixed that. Toronto has decided it didn’t make sense for them.”

That’s not how people around the club remember it happening.

“Absolutely untrue,” one source, who would know, said of Garber’s explanation. “Not 99 per cent untrue. It’s 100 per cent untrue.”

Rumours circulated within the club that the league had polled other teams for their thoughts on the deal.

“If you come to me and ask, ‘Do you think Kansas City should get (Manchester United star) Wayne Rooney?’, what do you think I’m going to tell you?” an insider fumed.

Whether true or not, the suspicion speaks to the paranoid depths to which the relationship between the club and league had sunk.

Once the deal was dead, an embarrassing phone call was made to Mellberg’s agent. The Swede later signed with Villarreal in Spain.

Without a steadying influence in the centre of defence, Toronto FC’s patchwork back four collapsed, repeatedly giving up results late in games. It ended in the worst season in team history.

What remains in the wreckage is a lingering tension between MLS and the franchise it once held up as a model for others.

Going forward, people in and around the club grumble that they face two opponents — whoever lines up across from them on the pitch; and an unpredictable, activist league stripping them without explanation of talent they want, need and are willing to pay for.