News: Toronto FC player movement/rumours thread

that's fine. MLS is a feeder league. if someone makes 3 mil offer for Laba, you're selling him. You pocket 650k in allocation money, bank the rest minus league's share on the team, and you reload. the key is to have good scouting infrastructure to look for the next Laba.

before MLS looked for cheap buys or free agents. now that barrier's been broken, any player you can get for good deal is fair game in South America and Central America now.

 

Every time I read a story the transfer fee changes. ESPNFC has the wrong amount.

http://espnfc.com/news/story/_/id/1676047/bradley-completes-transfer-toronto

Edit: The Roma website says $10M dollars. Who knows if it's Canadian or US.

 

It's done:

http://espnfc.com/news/story/_/id/1...confirm-jermain-defoe-join-toronto-fc?cc=5901

He'll report on the 28th of Feb, not sure about any loans.

 

MLSE are partners with Spurs now as well.

http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/jermain-defoe-moves-to-mls-toronto-fc-100114/

 

With Bradley and Defoe in you fellas seem to be spending some money. A couple of good buys I'd say

 

I would think that Jackson and Morrow have to be good enough for the bench at least.....no?

 

Well the web guy has some 'splainin to do:

http://www.torontofc.ca/news/2014/01/toronto-fc-signs-jermain-defoe

 

From what I read about Morrow he is very flexible/adaptable amongst the defensive positions and he likely starts ahead of Bloom.

A complete recap (updated from a few pages ago) of where the roster stands:

Might be useful to recap where the club is at.

Goalkeepers (3): Joe Bendik, Chris Konopka, Quillan Roberts

Defenders (8): Steven Caldwell, Jonas Elmer, Doneil Henry, Ashtone Morgan, Gale Agbossoumonde, Mark Bloom, Ryan Richter, Richard Eckerlsey, Justin Morrow

Midfielders (9): Kyle Bekker, Matias Laba, Jonathan Osorio, Alvaro Rey, Jeremy Hall, Manny Aparicio, Reggie Lambe, Jackson,Michael Bradley, DeRosario

Forwards (6): Bright Dike, Emery Welshman, Andrew Wiedeman, Gilberto , Defoe, Jordan Hamilton

So 26 players under contract for next year. If we assume Eck gets bought out, Laba moves somehow and Bradley signs and move the 6 homegrown players off to the side (in italics - they don't count in the cap) and look at last year's salaries as released by the players' association and assume a cap of $3 mil this year (I think it is a bit higher but not much).

I figure that TFC has 20 players signed to cap using positions.....and about $2.2 mil of the cap used. They have 26 spots used of the total allowed of 30.....so they have room for 4 players in total and about $650k of cap space left.....the average salary they can pay a cap counting player is around $160k.

If you assume 2 spots go to MLS super draft picks (arbitrary assumption) that probably eats up no more than $100k of the cap. That means the remaining 2 cap hit players can average about $275k each....that is a good number for "vets".

Same caveat as before that this is void of any knowledge of how much allocation money there is and void of how that actually works.....probably offset by the fact I have used last year's salaries and some of those may go up and it is never clear if it is the salary or the guaranteed comp figure that gets used (or some combination).

Suffice it to say, this is a rough suggestion that with fewer roster spots left to fill going into January and more room than ever.....TFC has never been in this kind of shape before camp (IMO).

 

lol.....but even the Bradley sale has been announced by Roma.

I think it is a function of how we treat sports in North America as more of a showbiz/entertainment vehicle...thinking we can control the message until a pre-arranged media event on Monday is naive. The selling clubs have a say in how this gets out.

 

You know, that has the potential of being one hell of a team.

I have been to Toronto to see Fire-Toronto FC games a couple of times and always had a great time.

Let's hope this reignites the passion Toronto seemed to have in the first couple of years.

Congratulations to you guys. I wish you success in 2014 (except against the Fire), you deserve it.

 

So, the only weakness I can see is in D. Would like to pick up a defender or two.

 

We also picked up Morrow from San Jose though.

 

True, might need more depth though

 

We can always improve on D but it is worth pointing out that even last year our D was pretty reasonable. We surrendered 47 goals compared to a league average of 44.5.

 

At least one team made the playoffs conceding more goals than ours.

I have no issue with the notion that the next improvements should be at the back end but I also think this squad will spend more time in the other teams' half which, in and of itself, will improve the number of goals we concede.

 

So in one year, we've replaced Frings/Koevermans with Bradley/Defoe.

Works for me.

 

I'm predicting Morrow over Bloom, Jackson and DeRo will alternate.

As for the comments above about our D, I'm quite pleased with TFC's D. It improved substantially after Caldwell, and Morgan and Henry will continue to improve. They are still both so young. Statistically, as mentioned, TFC wasn't that bad last year.

The offseason needed to focus on the attack, and holy shit did it deliver more than anyone ever would have predicted.

 

Morgan wont be starting he's not trustworthy I don't think Nelsen is going to allow the possibility of his meltdowns. Bloom might not even start either, although I like him.

If Laba is retained, which he should be at all costs I'd suspect,

---------------Gilberto
-------------Defoe
-Osorio------------------------Rey
----------------Bradley
---------------Laba
-Morrow--Henry--Caldwell--Jackson