Off-Season Player Rumors & Movement 2013

Far be it from the Union to turn down someone's $130.

 

Hey, shrimpin' ain't easy...............

 

The source that this rumor comes from is From Carlos Ruiz' best friend, Marlon Puente, owner of Pasion Roja radio show on Lared.com.gt in Guatemala.

Don't believe the hype!

From MLSsoccer.com

http://www.mlssoccer.com/es/news/article/2012/11/21/webeando-fútbol-¿vuelve-el-pescadito

 

whole thing sounds a bit fishy to me..............

 

Desperate measures for Pescadito, currently with no team.... 'Let's lie and make up some BS for me to make dollars off of MLS"....

beware! Doop!

 

https://twitter.com/shrimppimptruck

 

Facilities? you mean the stadium?

 

So The Union may address its lack of size at forward with Armani (via a loan through June 2013) and then he could be replaced (and returned to Tiro Federal) or supplemented with Grafite.

On another note, the same twitter account posted:

MLS Transfers ‏@MLSTransfers
REPORT: Philadelphia Union Def. Chris Albright to announce retirement after MLS Cup. #Doop #MLS #MLStransfers

 

Maybe by then we'll have actual facilities? Or at least construction underway?

 

Even if he visited our facilities earlier, he still probably won't be able to join us until the UAE season is over.

 

Money talks.

 

don't be silly, we'll just make an empty promise to him that they are being built......

 

Grafite? 9 goals in 28 appearances in his last year with Wolfsburg. Ho-hum. I don't know how many minutes he played in those games, but that's a rather unremarkable record with a mediocre side. If he recaptures his 08-09 form, he'd light up MLS. However, he's 33 now so that's not very likely. McInerney would score more goals than him.

Armani looks pretty underwhelming as well.

I would rather see the team acquire a proven MLS vet such as Cooper than another question mark from overseas, but it seems the ship is not sailing in that direction.

 

what they should do is bring him to a game as the Union's selling point is the fans and atmosphere. Unless a public park as a practice facility is all the rave now.

 

Henry scored 4 in 21 for Barca before coming to the Cows. We all know how that worked out. Grafite won a championship and scored a goal ever two games in the Bundesliga. Sign him up for me.

 

9 goals and 2 assists in 22 starts. That was good enough to tie Grafite for 19th most goals in the Bundesliga that season. And last I checked, playing on a bad team against better teams made it harder, not easier, to score goals.

08-09 was a fluke; but other than that great year, he was a consistent 10-12 goal scorer in the Bundesliga for the last few years before retiring to Al-Ahly. If he can retain that form, and translate it to 12-15 goals in MLS, he'd be a good addition (at the right price, of course).

I would also love for the Union to sign Kenny Cooper, last year's second-leading goal scorer. Wondolowski would be nice, too. Or Will Bruin, for that matter. But nine goals in MLS this year would have been good enough for 14th in the Golden Boot race. Not superstar, but not ho-hum either.

Short version: Nine goals is more than any Union player scored last year, and more than any Union player in any season other than Le Toux in '10 and '11. If that's ho-hum, we could use some more ho-hum.

 

It's seriously too bad that we'd have to wait until July and hope the Armani bridges the gap. Looking at the way two of the three years went, the U were out of the hunt come July. MLS is one of those leagues where things change considerably from the start of the year, Portland looked great in March for instance, but you really need to stay in touching distance and be capable of making a long unbeaten run for that to matter. Houston is great at this, but they have a solid core. I'm not sure we do.

 

We are still talking about a guy who is 33 now and won't be signed until the July transfer window, if the rumors are true. That's too little, too late, and unless Grafite finds DeRo-like late career form, I can't see him carrying us to anything better than a marginal playoff position. I just don't think he's the answer.

 

"Marginal playoff positions" make it to MLS Cup. See Galaxy, Los Angeles, 2012 and Dynamo, Houston, 2012.

 

F*** no. Or did we forget how well our last Portland reject forward was?

I know that the UAE is not a great league so I'm not going to use that as any sort of barometer of how he would cope in MLS. However, he is having a battle right now with Asamoah Gyan (whom I'm pretty sure people would fall all over themselves to get here) for the scoring title. Gyan has got 17 goals in 9 games and Grafite has 16 in 8 (both of those numbers are ludicrous by the way). If he can even score half (or even a third) as much as he does in the UAE than I think we'd all be pretty damn ecstatic.