I guess Dawkins was a transfer last year, but obviously there is more money changing hands there then the $60k listed publicly as his salary. Chavez at $50k doesn't seem to make sense either, though he doesn't seem to be on loan anymore. There again, it's hard to know exactly what's going on with him. I think his first year with the team, his salary was listed at something like $50k, and if that was a loan deal I find it hard to believe that figure included the loan. Totally disagree. He is definitely a game changer - he makes dangerous run after dangerous run with the ball to unbalance the defense and he's a good finisher. He has a similar impact on the Quakes that Hucks had, though Dawkins is a better finisher and plays a little better defense. He's not as effective as the very best DPs in the league but he's more effective than most, and IMO he has been more effective than Geo was with the Quakes. In case that's somehow not immediately obvious to you, you can check the numbers. Lindpere? He has, what 10 goals in about 6000 minutes? Dawkins has 6 in about 1700.
I didn't get all the fuzz about Xabi Alonso until he started playing for RM. Man, he can spray short, long and very long passes with ease and with pixel perfect velocity, height, power and accuracy. And this season he stayed deeper and just in front of the backline. His type of player would be even more suitable to play in MLS than Xavi and Iniesta. Perfect when you have speedy wingers and overlapping backs. Dawkins, Morrow and Beita will have lots of fun. Well, I am daydreaming.
very very good points! If anyone could hit Chavez on a full run from > 35 yards .. it is Xabi Alonso.
Yes, the salary numbers from the MLS Players Unions site do not include things such as loan fees. And nobody ever seems to disclose how much the loan fees are for players, although there have been a few instances where players were called DPs but their MLS Players Union disclosed salaries were far below DP. In those cases, teams supposedly included the transfer/loan fees in the players contract and added it all up to be a DP. So if the salary plus transfer fee was, say $500k, then by making the player a DP only $335k of that counts against the salary cap. Anyway, my point about why Yallop is saying the team is running out of money and will not do another "big signing" is still valid. If the team was paying loan fees for Andre Luiz and Dawkins last year (and they also paid something to buy out Stephenson's contract) then the Andre Luiz and Stephenson loan/transfer money is not being paid this year and should be freed up to get another player, right? Also, the MOST the team should have to pay for Dawkins on the salary cap in 2012 is $335, because if it's more than that they can just make him a DP. And the team can use allocation dollars to buy down the impact of loan/transfer fees as well as new player contracts. So overall, I still maintain that the team has to be well below the salary cap and should have more money. If they want to hold some back for mid year signings, that's fine. But they shouldn't hold back so much that the team is handicapped going into the season. I agree Dawkins could be good if he's healthy the whole year - I wouldn't say he's as good as most of the DPs, but he's pretty good. And if the team does get another young attacking player on loan from Tottenham, then I do think that the team is pretty well set offensively. I just can't give up hope that they go out and get a strong defender, though, either trade in MLS for one or get someone from overseas. So the positive spin is IF Dawkins and Opara stay healthy and play big minutes this year, and if you figure that Lenhart barely played last year so it's almost like he's a new signing, and Salinas is clearly better than Gjertsen, and Baca and Morrow and Beitashour should all be better this year with another year of experience.....then you can say the team is quite a bit stronger with the roster as it currently stands (assuming they do get Dawkins). But they need to have better luck with injuries and not lose so many key players this year. The flip side is that many of the other Western Conf teams are losing key players and it's not clear if what they will bring in will make them better. LA is losing Juninho and almost certainly Beckham. Dallas lost Chavez and may lose John and Shea either at the beginning of the year or mid year. RSL lost some key pieces with Williams retiring and Russell leaving, and haven't brought in anyone new. Almost everyone in the West lost someone pretty good in the expansion draft or reentry draft, so the Quakes losing Burling and Convey doesn't really seem so bad (particularly since Convey, while a very good player, was not a good player last year and made little impact). So I can easily argue that the team is stronger in all 3 areas as far as starters go this year (IF Opara and Dawkins stay healthy) and other teams in the West may be weaker. Here's the breakdown on the Quakes: Defense: Opara is better than Burling or McDonald, and Beita and Morrow are one year more experienced, so overall an upgrade in starters but less depth Midfield: more options in the middle with Alexandre, Baca and Ampai have one more year of experience (and maybe Ampai can stay healthy), and Chavez is clearly a big improvement. Lost Convey, but Convey really didn't do much in 2011 anyway. Better than 2011, and possibly much, MUCH better Forwards: the team only had Wondo and Lenhart together on the field 9 games last year. If they can play together and stay healthy, and get service from Dawkins and Chavez and whoever plays in the middle, then the offense could be much better this year. Gordon as an experienced #3 off the bench is a vast improvement over last year (if he stays healthy). Still a bit worried about who the #4 forward is, either a draft pick or another signing would be good For me, it's not so much about whether the roster is better or not (I think it is), it's all of the noise the team was making about spending more this year. My numbers show that it doesn't look like the team IS spending more this year, in fact they are spending less. So unless the plan is to bring in major reinforcements in the summer, then what's the deal with that?
Sorry, you're wrong. Loan fees and transfer fees are NOT reflected in the MLS Players Union salary disclosures. Just conjecture, but the Quakes probably had these fees last year: Transfer/contract buyout for Andre Luiz Contract buyout for Stephenson Loan fee for Dawkins No idea how much those would have been, but it's pretty easy to believe that could have added up to $100-300k. Remember the sticking point about Stephenson was that the previously negotiated loan buyout fee from 2010 was really high and the team needed to negotiate it down. So that says that the team may have been closer to the cap last year than we thought, but it also says that they should have more money to spend this year because the only loan fee is for Dawkins (and a second Tottenham player if they arrange that)
Yeah, from what I've read Dallas either bought out the loan or the Honduras team just let Chavez go, because in 2011 he was not on loan to Dallas. As for his salary, I don't think the Honduras league pays that much so $50k for a salary may be pretty good compared to what he could get in Honduras, who knows? But the salary cap impact for Chavez should only be $50k or so this year (whatever raise he has built into his contract above $50k), based on everything I've read. Of course, there could always be some surprise hidden somewhere, because MLS does not disclose things beyond the player salaries.
...which reinforces the point I was trying to make last year when folks were whining about the Quakes payroll. We don't know exactly what each team's total payroll is. Every team is pretty close to the cap even just based on the estimates calculated with published salary figures. So really the only thing that is going to create significant separation in a team's payroll is the DP. And since a DP creates a significant hit on the cap, it's not always a good move. You might be better off spreading out $420k among three $140k players for example. I think we can assume that before it's over the Quakes will be pushed up pretty close to the cap limit. The only question is whether or not they get a DP. And it's possible that they've spread out enough reasonably rich contracts to guys like Wondo and Dawkins that they don't have space for the $420k or $335k hit. I'm OK with that, but they do need to build out the roster a bit from where it is now, and hopefully they have enough cap room to sign some more quality players. Let's put it this way. If it comes down to getting a DP now or say three quality players at $140k to build out the roster, I'd take the latter in a heartbeat.
Well, without knowing how much the loan fees might have been, it's hard to say. Remember, in addition to the $400k or so that the salaries were below the overall salary cap, the Quakes should have had $200-300k of allocation money last year. They traded Brandon McDonald for allocation money, so they could have had more. As for whether to spend on 2-3 more mid range players or one DP, I would rather see a DP if they can find someone that they think could really be an impact player. The issue is that it's unlikely they would spend for a really expensive DP (I'm assuming this based on how tight the budget has been), so they really need to scout and find a high quality "lower end DP" to fit into the salary that the team would be willing to pick up. And there are probably several other teams looking for a similar type player (either a forward or attacking midfield type). In that case, if it's a "marginal DP" who really doesn't have a good resume, or two or three good players, I would tend to agree they should go for two or three good players if they can find those. Not roster filler guys, but potential starters at slots where we need depth and upgrades (central or outside defenders and left mid would be good options).
Only if they've changed the rules. You may recall that evil, cheating, scum-sucking el Pedito was listed as $30K or so on the filth's salary cap. That's because he was a loan player and most of his salary was eaten by his previous team. They did that to retain the rights to sell him, thinking he'd go for big bucks in Europe. Same deal here. We pay a pittance for Dawkins because he belongs to another club. When we had Narcisus, we paid next to nothing for him, because he belonged to a club in Germany. (Beyer Leverkusen wasn't it?) Transfer fees are a completely different animal. I believe those are paid for with allocation ducats, or in the case of DP's straight up cash from the owners. Loan deals, what you see is what they pay. For ALM, we were only on the hook for half his salary the first season because we only had him for half a season. After that, his salary doubled. At some point, we bought his contract, and that number is never disclosed, but it doesn't count against the cap either, at least I think it doesn't. GO QUAKES!! - Mark
Ah, but therein lies the rub. We've seen enough DPs in the league by now that I think it's safe to say that you just can't quite tell a priori how they effective they are going to be in the league. There is a high risk. Whereas if you get 3 $140 players, if one of them turns out to be a bust, it doesn't hurt you much at all. And you can't just go by reputation or "pedigree". Robbie Keane is a storied Tottenham player, and Dawkins can't break onto the Spur's roster, but IMO Dawkins is a much more effective MLS player. And Keane is probably commanding 5-10x the salary. Keane looks like a good but not great MLS forward. Dawkins, when healthy, looks like a game changer in MLS to me. Same goes for Geovanni. He was a highly-regarded EPL first-teamer, but not nearly as effective as Dawkins for the Quakes IMO. The DP think makes more sense when it's a player who you think will bring in the fans. Strictly from an on-field perspective, it's far from a slam dunk. You have to get just the right guy.
Assumes facts not in evidence! Dawkins was a LOAN, not a transfer. So Spurs still own him and no doubt paid most of his salary. BUT, they did not sign him until they knew that we wanted him. Chances are, his salary is not high in any case. But if we pay him $60K and they pay him $70K, that's not too bad for a first year player, and this would have been his first season under contract with Spurs. (And that $70K number could be a lot higher. Remember that Donovan's salary was not terribly high, because Leverkusen (sp?) were paying the lion's share of his salary.) I agree that Dawkins is better than Geo, better that Hucks was for us? I'm not so sure. Most of Dawkin's goals came when he played a-mid or forward for us, though I suppose that doesn't really matter. Lindpere marshalls his team. He's an orchestrator, a ball winner, and a team leader. We don't have anyone like that on our team. But it's OK if we disagree about how good Dawkins is. I still think that he is an important player for us and we are in serious trouble if we can't get him back. GO QUAKES!! - Mark
So in other words ... you aren't sure. What the players union prints as the players salaries is what counts. But you're assuming loan fees on top of the salary. OK, let's go with that for a moment (though the league has always said otherwise). Agree with your reasoning here, excepting that we had already bought out André Luiz's contract, so there shouldn't have been any additional fees for last season. (Narrow chance I'm wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure that we had already bought his contract in 2010 when we thought he'd play again.) And are we really trying to buy Dawkin's contract? I think that we want to, but I can see our FO going for another season of loan because that would be cheaper, and then maybe try to buy him outright when the stadium is set to open the next year? Just a wild guess here. And it's possible that I've missed some news. I've been really busy lately. Exactly! And a point I've tried to make elsewhere. I know that we are trying to get another attacking player from Spurs. But where would we play such a guy? Lenhart, Wondo, Dawkins, and Chavez are all going to start right? Are we going to get an a-mid? Are we going to go to a 4-3-3 again? I just don't get what the plan is. We seem to have signed some players that we aren't going to start, or even play. If Frank goes with his beloved 4-4-2, we'll see: - - - - - Lenhart - - - - - - - - - Wondo Dawkins - NewGuy? - - Chavez - - - - - - Alexandre Morrow - Ike - Jason - Beta - - - - - TheBusch I'm assuming that Alexandre will start because they traded for him. I could be totally wrong on that, and Frank may very well play Corrales at d-mid, or left-back. If we go 4-3-3 ... Dawkins - Lenhart - - Wondo - - - Baca - - - - -Ring - - - - - Alexandre Corrales - Ike - Jason - Beta - - - - - - TheBusch Maybe the putative NewGuy steps in for Baca? I'll agree with that too, but I still see us as only a middle of the table team. That would be a huge improvement mind you, but this is year five. We should be pushing the top of the table at least. With the guys on our roster (and sadly, Frank still coaching) I can see an argument that we will be better, but I don't see us making run to the cup. I think we have to believe that the filth and shittle will spend some shekels and get some replacements. RSL and Colorado may go cheap. Portland has already signed a DP and look to be improving, and they finished above us last season anyway. Remember, this is only the beginning of a very long pre-season. Just because OUR team think they have done enough, doesn't mean that the other teams are standing pat. We'll see more moves in January and February for sure. My problem here is that Khari (who Frank really likes), Baca, Ampai, Cronin, and Ring are all OK, but none of them are really great. Chavez is an upgrade for sure, but is he one of the best wingers in MLS? Do we have any midfielder as good or as dominant as Beckerman, Larentowicz, Lindpere (even if you don't like him), or the like? I don't think so. And I think we need that to compete. Assuming that everyone stays healthy (a terrible bet) then yeah, we look stronger. We upgraded right mid, where we sucked, we got Lenhart back and he should be with us all season, we got Ike back and hope he plays all season, Baca turned out to be pretty good. So yeah, we can argue that the team looks better already. But we still have the same crappy coach and we still lack depth at a number of critical positions. And, you're right. It looks like we're spending less money on the roster instead of more. Waiting until the summer transfer window is just sealing our doom. As I've pointed out before, the schedule will be tougher this coming season than last. By July, we could already be out of it. GO QUAKES!! - Mark
That's because they don't count against the cap. Transfer fees are usually handled with allocation money because the league doesn't like to pay transfer fees. I'm not sure about loan fees. If we're suddenly going to start counting loan fees as part of our salary, then we're all shooting in the dark, because we have no idea what those fees may or may not come to. What we can see of the salary cap, it looks like we're spending less. In order for it to be otherwise, we've got to be dropping major dollars are some unspecified fees. Ah, conjecture. A well chosen word. I thought that we bought out ALM's contract earlier, like his second season with us, when we still had fantasies that he'd play a lot of games for us. (Why would we have bought out his contract in '11 when we knew for certain that he'd never play again? '11 was his last season under contract with us. I don't think there was anything to buy out. Could be wrong about that.) You're assuming that there are loan fees in the first place, and that they are big, which they might not be. The usual plan with these things is for the player to gain experience and exposure. The money comes in when the club who owns the player sells him. (At least, this is how MLS has always explained it in the past, and there's a significant chance that they are lying weasels.) We know what they spend against the salary cap. If you want to assume that they are spending more go ahead, but if they are, we might as well all start drinking heavily because we're never going to figure that out. I agree with you there. Three upper level MLS players would have more impact that one DP, even if he was a good DP. I think you're making stuff up, but go ahead. IF we were really close to the salary cap last season, how could Frank and JD say that ownership were committed to spending more money?! That makes no sense at all. They'd be lying on the record and in the face of not being able to follow through with their lie about spending more money. IF we really were spending a lot more, wouldn't Frank of JD just say: "I know it looks like we're well short of the salary cap, but we've got to eat some loan fees and a contract buy out or two, so actually, we're pretty close to tapped out." Why make up a lie that ownership are going to spend more if you know that they can't? And then wouldn't Lew be pissed because Frank and JD made him look like a cheapskate when he's not? Nah, you're full of it. Even if there are loan fees, they don't count against the cap, and therefore the team are free to spend more. It's true that we had to renegotiate with every player on the roster, so we could be spending a lot more just to keep the guys we already have, but we'll find out soon enough when the union publishes the salary cap numbers. If we do have enough left to buy some quality players, why would Frank say that Chavez is our last big signing? Really?! We're going to believe that Frank and JD are going to scour the corners of the Earth and find us a quality DP for just over the limit who isn't injured, in his mid-30's, or a drunk? There's less risk to us fans if they sign two or three guys for $160K to $220K each. So that's my plan. If we need for them to go find the next Zura, I think I might start shooting heroin. Good night! GO QUAKES!! - Mark
No, according to this article the Quakes spent over 2.7 million on roster last year, which is over the cap. I guess allocations would enable them to go over since they didn't have a DP. (I lost track of where we ended up with loans and the cap). And that's before the ill-fated Zura deal, which, if it panned out, was probably another couple $100k. I don't know that Frank and Doyle ever said precisely that they were going to spend more money to get closer to the cap (and again, looks like they were already likely very close to it last year), but I think there's been a claim that there would be more "resources" available. I would have to go back and look at the quotes. Resources can mean a lot of things - player evaluation SW, scouting, etc. It can also mean that they have a bit more allocation money allotted to them because they missed the playoffs. They may have also given them the green light to get a DP again this year, but again, it may or may not be the best thing for the team, contrary to popular belief. You have to get just the right player or it's a net negative. Frank and Doyle understand that.
That calculation includes all off-budget salaries. Every team's payroll in that list is way over last year's cap.
What are "off-budget salaries"? Based on my scanning of the article, looks like they took the published Players Union salaries and added them up. And they admit that this is a highly imprecise science. What are the ways in which the totals can be higher than the cap? Off the top of my head, allocations and DPs beyond the amount that counts against the cap. Not sure if there is anything else. "Every year, there's this little dance that MLS does with player salary data. Whenever the signing of a player is officially announced, there's a line in the release that says "Per MLS and club policy, terms were not disclosed." Then around this time of year, the MLS Players Union releases their own list of salaries for just about every player. Sometimes the union's data makes perfect sense. Other times, it can be a bit baffling. In any case, it ends up being the best we have to go on, so we do."
Ah, OK, thanks. So if you subtract those salaries from the Quakes total roster expenditure and figure that they were probably going to pay Zura a few hundred k, they would still be reasonably close to the cap. But then there's allocation money and however loans / transfers are figured, etc.
If that article is accurate, then there is no way to calculate how much teams are spending on player salaries and we can just forget it. As SJTillIDie points out, it looks like the author is counting cap exempt salaries, which is just silly. The calculations by seismothusiast in this thread are the closest we're going to get to what the Quakes spend on players. Some here have been arguing that we spend a lot on loan or transfer fees. Those have never counted toward the salary cap, so again, that shouldn't be relevant, UNLESS, Lew and JohnF see it as money spent on players, and they have an overall limit on how much they want to spend and they count those fees as part of it. So, if it is the case that loan fees are significant, and if it is the case that Lew and JohnF are opposed to spending more on players ... then we're screwed. Even so, this flies in the face of JD and Frank both saying that ownership was willing to spend more in 2011. Even sportsfan-quakes thinks that it looks like we are spending less on salaries for 2012 than we did for 2011. They both said more money, but not necessarily closer to the cap limit. And it may be that Wolff and Fisher look at the money differently than the league does. No matter how you slice it, we have not made a single "major" signing this off-season. Don't get me wrong here, I think signing Chavez was great! Getting Lenhart back for the whole season will be great! Getting Salinas was great! I hope like hell that Jean Alexandre is much better than I think right now. (I haven't seen enough of him to have an informed opinion.) But it's not like we signed a big time player from Central or South America or even Eastern Europe. We haven't scored a starter from Sweden or Denmark. And with Frank saying that we're done with big signings for '12, color me disappointed. Yeah! That! I think that we're splitting hairs here. Right now, on paper, it looks like we're going to spend even less on salaries in '12 than in '11. That's troubling. It could be that a bunch of guys got raises and that we are spending more on salaries, but until the union releases the numbers, we won't know. GO QUAKES!! - Mark
Again, my guess is that they were reasonably close to the cap last year (especially after signing Zura, however badly that turned out), and they will be reasonably close again this year. Yelping about how they are this far under the cap this year or last year based on very flimsy figures and spurious assumptions is just a waste of time IMO. I think according to sportsfan-quakes back of the envelope calculations the team may have something like $800k to sign Dawkins and fill about 3 more senior roster spots. I think it's a safe assumption that most of that will be used up.
Mark - loan and transfer fees do count against the cap, I don't know why you don't think they do. Here are a few articles in past years that mention this point: Bigsoccer thread in MLS N&A from last year here Article on Juninho stating that his fee would count against the cap here Article on Chicago Fire here Article on Saborio with RSL here
One other point about the salary cap that I've gleaned from other sources is that if a team is under the salary cap, that "savings" doesn't get pocketed by the team. It gets pocketed by the league, and then distributed to ALL teams. Each team pays in a certain amount to MLS (same amount per team), and then MLS pays the salaries and transfer fees. The salary cap is only an arbitrary distinction to keep teams on par with each other. So even if Lew Wolff and the Quakes ownership are "cheap", they don't save money by not signing enough players to hit the salary cap. (Well, technically they save, but that savings is only 1/18 (or in 2012 1/19) of the total savings, as the money that the Quakes are under the cap gets distributed to all teams equally. The way that the team saves money directly is by not spending on scouting, overseas trips, academies, and other things that could contribute to player quality, but not directly the salary or transfer fees. Here's a thread on the NE Board about this topic. I just found these discussions in the past few weeks; prior to that I had assumed that a team pocketed any savings. So I assume when Yallop was talking about the ownership letting them spend more this year, he was hinting that the team either might sign a DP at some point (since the DP salary over the salary cap hit IS PAID BY THE TEAM, not the league), or else talking about how they were going to spend more on other non salary related things to help scout, etc. Also, note that any transfer fees are spread out over the life of a contract. So, the Andre Luiz fee was also paid in 2011, not just in 2010 (if there was one). Similarly, the Stephenson fee that was paid last year to buy out his contract is going to be spread over 2011-2013, the 3 years that his contract was for (or maybe it's just two years, since the 3rd year is typically an option year). Loan fees hit in the year of the loan, since they are only one year at a time. So whatever the team paid for a Dawkins loan should have hit fully in 2011, and if they do another loan deal in 2012, that hits in 2012. If they buy out the contract, that can be spread out over the new contract's term. So with this info, I would have to say that the issue that the Quakes have had in the past few years is likely not that they spent way under the cap, but that they may have made bad deals and paid more in transfer or loan fees than players were worth, or that they traded away allocation dollars or didn't fully use the allocation dollars to be able to basically spend more. Perhaps they always tried to hold money until the summer transfer window, and then didn't use it because their scouting/connections weren't good enough and they couldn't find quality players to get. The more I research this, the more it becomes obvious that the way to really have more flexibility to improve the roster is to develop good scouting, and also to try to get young guys who develop and get sold overseas (or transfer overseas free). Teams get allocation dollars if they lose star players to free transfers, and they get allocation dollars equal to 1/3 or 2/3 of the transfer fee MLS gets if a player gets sold (the 1/3 vs 2/3 is based on the players length of MLS service and other factors).