2017/18 Offseason Player Movement & Rumors

Doesn't for purchase by ownership just mean that teams can expand their payroll by another 2.8 million that doesn't count against the cap? Just sounds like an opportunity for the spenders in the league to pull ahead even further.

"Hey, Jay, you can spend another $3M on your team payroll this year!"
"Oh, gee, thanks, Don. Golly. I don't know what to say."

It's like when your boss gets excited about a "challenging opportunity" he's too busy to take on himself, but thinks you're a great fit for.

 

Philadelphia Union: left in the dust

 

Well, MLS will get better. This should really separate the field. Let’s say your LA and you’ve got 1real DP and a couple of Zardes’. You’ve got the ability to buy down the Zardi into upper middle class player territory, free up the DP spots and go get headliner talent. TFC, SEA, LAG, LAFC,ATL, NYC and maybe RB could really separate from the pack. People wanted Euro style football, you’re gonna get it with a divide in club strength. I think this is as it should be. Any complaints we’d have all stem from a have-not owner. This will keep the borderline DPs from being discussed as stars. Imagine Bedoya as a glue guy with 2-3 legit stars over him.Call it the “Mix Rule”.
$59M more in player costs potentially added to the league should get them closer to Lg MX quality. There are a lot of very good players in that next pricing tier who only seem to trickle into the league like Valeri. Teams who scout will have a field day.

 

Honestly I sort of hope we just get obliterated when it comes to spending at this point and make it no question that the current strategy isn’t viable. Hope DC and Minnesota with the new stadiums start spending, hope the sleeping giants of Kraft and Kroenke open up their wallets... become a league that has payrolls actually in line with our other major sports to the point Sugarman pretty much has to sell to someone who can afford it.

 

With all due respect, Euro-style football is not what I am looking for. Too much imbalance in an American soccer league always leads to the collapse of the weaker teams and eventually the league. Unlike any of the other big American team sports, soccer offers no entertainment value at all to fans of the worst teams and they simply leave. Even the worst baseball teams win about 1/3 of their games. The worst football teams win a few games and score touchdowns. But the worst soccer teams neither win or score.

MLS AFAIK has never revealed how many owners need to approve the salary budget and at times it has seemed like they needed a unanimous vote. I would rather see a high salary budget across the league to improve the overall quality of play instead of allowing some owners to vastly outspend the others.

 

Playoffs are always the great equalizer, but generally I agree...Should up the cap to something like 30 million and set a floor at 15 million. Take off the kid gloves, if you can’t afford it gtfo.

The NHL floor is 55 million with a cap of 75, pretty sure that’s the lowest of thenbig 4.. even with a huge increase MLS would be operating at a fraction of the cost of our other leagues. I refuse to think it’s unrealistic to expect MLS to be closer in payroll to our other major sports.. it’s peanuts right now compared to them.

 

To Raise the cap more then what has already been set in the current CBA, they would need to have a new CBA drafted and approved. Adding more Garber, & Bit-Garber Bucks to the fray helps to bring in more quality while keeping the run of the mil players happy. Also avoids the messiness of negotiating a new CBA before the current one is up.

Does MLB have a cap or floor?

 

MLB doesn’t have a Cap or a floor, but the lowest payroll in 2017 was just north of 60 million. A majority of teams are over 100 mil in payroll

For the hell of it:

Eagles: 152 million, 53 players, 2.8 mil avg
Phillies: 112 million, 25 players, 4.4 mil avg
Sixers: 99 million, 14 players, 7 mil avg
Flyers: 72 million, 23 players, 3.1 mil avg
Union: 7 million, 30 players, 233K avg

We’re not even in the same stratosphere... I couldn’t find information on the Soul but I suspect we are closer to them than the big guys... and we wonder why MLS/Union aren’t in the same conversation as our other teams. The Union brought a butter knife to a nuclear bomb fight. It’s amazing they perform as well as they do.

 

Precourt bought the wrong team

 

Jay is right, suggestions on raising the “cap” (it’s not hard, more like a salary budget) require a new CBA. A new CBA is another can of worms that risks a lockout. MLS TAM and the additional “self-funded” TAM primes the pump (I just invented that phrase) for player acquisition and would raise the mean salary. How much is dependent on how many teams really use this. Without a complete breakdown, my luke-warm take is a third to half leverage it. If $20-30M in selfieTAM frees up ballpark 20 players from DP spots, then an additional 20 better players added would raise the quality.

As for my Euro comment, more of the move away from enforced parity which can make things boring. It’s a gradual change. I think invoking the ghost of NASL 1980 is a bit much but whatevs. For the Union, it would require much higher levels of funding player acquisition than they ever seemed capable of.

 

The Unions Salary outlay isn't for the 30 players. It's only for the first 20, players 21-30 don't count against the Salary Budget. So their average salary is closer to $350K.

https://www.mlssoccer.com/league/official-rules/mls-roster-rules-and-regulations

Total Team spending:

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/04/25/mls-team-payrolls-2017/

Interesting that Atlanta isn't spending all that much more on Salaries then Philly is, however, they ARE spending significantly more on Transfer Fees.

Also when you Take Kaka's 2017 salary of $7M out of the equation, Orlando's spending drops to the bottom half of the league. It'll be interesting to see if they actually spend big on Designated Players going forward. A lot of people forget that the main reason they were able to sign Kaka is because he's personal friends with Orlando's Owner.

 

The 7 million was total player salaries added together, not the salary budget. (My numbers were from the Denver Post link you posted) MLS’ cap is only 3.8 mil, but most a majority of payroll is “off budget”

Either way and extra 100k in average is peanuts.

 

Raising the salary budget will simply lead to the players in the league right now getting paid more, that is the opposite of what the owners want. Allowing more TAM will bring in better players than the ones currently in the league without having to overpay the mediocre ones already here.

 

Bingo. I remember when TAM was first announced by Garber (conveniently right after the most-recent CBA negotiations were completed), the head of the player's union issued a statement saying that while he appreciated the increased spending on player salaries, he would have preferred seeing it in the form of a higher salary cap so all the players already in the league could have shared more equally instead of just a few players not already in MLS.

 

Looks to me like the owners with the money are getting tired of the ones not spending and holding the league back. This seems like a way to allow the ones that want to and can spend more, to do so without giving league money to the owners who aren't spending their own money. I'd like to think that Sugarman will see that he can't keep up and sell the team to someone who can but I suspect he just sees it as more return on investment once he does sell.

I think our only hope of getting rid of Sugarman is if someone in the area with money decides to take an interest in the team and wants to make an investment now thinking farther into the future. They will have to overpay now with the expectation that a little more cash now will be less than an lot more later to get the team.

Now we just need to find out who that might be and start lobbying them.

 

I dunno.....Everyone seems to THINK that the more frugal owners won't spend this Discretionary TAM. MLS put a cap on this discretionary TAM though. To an owner like Sugarman, who runs things on a budget, this plays into his hands and thinking. He's already said that funds will be available, and they are going to spend more this season. He also stated that they really can't spend more then $10M / season. He'll spend this TAM, because he can budget for it. What he's not going to do is go spend $6M on ONE player.

Sugarman is a smart man. He's on the expansion committee, and definitely knew that increased spending was going to be approved. He more then likely planned for this increase in spending. In the past, he wouldn't approve additional spending because Nick Sak likely didn't have a long term plan/process for said spending. Now that Earnie Stewart is in charge of the soccer side, Sugarman is more comfortable with his process and line of thinking. Therefore he's willing to spend more.

Now teams like NYCFC, LAFC, LAG, Seattle, TFC......they get to spend an additional set amount of TAM each year, in addition to the 10's of millions of dollars they are already spending on 3 players.

I think what we'll see is a few VERY good teams, who are clearly better on paper then the majority of the league. Then you'll see a huge traffic jam of teams fighting for the last 3 playoff spots in each conference, with very little separating them.

The Union will improve each season, but will it be enough to get over the hump and into the playoffs every season? This will also certainly put a much greater emphasis on the US Open Cup as well, not to mention make it that much more difficult for non-MLS teams to have a realistic shot at winning it.

Smart teams will be able to compete, just look at Sporting KC. They don't spend a lot of money despite having very wealthy owners. The reality is that SKC is who the Union are trying to become, they were just setback 6-7 years due to having no clear direction and plan to get there. SKC didn't get to where they are now overnight, and they nearly fired Vermes before they turned the corner.

 

I’m not going to quote all that but-

Jay said last year there’s money and we watched a transfer window come and go.

Ambitious teams will use this to free up DP spots. If you could buy Ale down to $475k and free a DP AND had the ambition and cash to buy a real* DP, then the senior team starts to look good. As it is(er,will be), the U will have pedestrian DPs like Bedoya while 4-6 clubs per conference will spend up.

If anything, the league just refuted academies as a way forward. Let’s use local example Derrick Jones. Let’s say each club has 1-3 defensive midfielder. I’m not entirely sure what you’d say Jones’ key ability is, but he sure as hell ain’t offensive, he keeps possession like my 20yo keeps a hold of his money, so let’s hedge he can tackle and protect the back line. So out of the 30-40 def mids,where’s Jones? 30th? 35th? Now MLS has a vehicle to bring in upper mid level players. Ballpark another 30 of these TAMsters and lets say 10are mids. By default that pushes him to 40-50th. Now, do you want a HG like Jones who can’t crack the XI on fetid pile, or do you call the club who just brought in a TAMmany Hall project to trade for the guy he replaced? Like if the Fire bring in a guy, wouldn’t you try and grab Dax? Everyone was talking about Mix last year (maybe 60/40 please don’t get him),but if your choice was Mix or Jones, what do you do?

I’m not convinced this is a vehicle the Union will use, but the teams that do will now have more talent from 4-6 than our 1-3s.

 

https://www.philadelphiaunion.com/p...ounce-protected-list-2017-mls-expansion-draft

Protected from selection by LAFC are the following players: Alejandro Bedoya, Andre Blake, Jack Elliott, Marcus Epps, Fabinho, Fabian Herbers, Ilsinho, Haris Medunjanin, Fafa Picault, Keegan Rosenberry and CJ Sapong.

Additionally, the following Union players are automatically protected as either Generation Adidas players who have not graduated as of the end of the 2017 MLS season, or Homegrown Players on a club’s Supplemental/Reserve roster: Anthony Fontana (HG), Derrick Jones (HG), Adam Najem (HG), Auston Trusty (HG) and Josh Yaro (GA).

Each MLS club that competed during the 2017 season is able to protect 11 players between their Senior, Supplemental and Reserve Roster. If the player’s contract expires at the end of 2017, as is the case with Fabinho, he will still be considered part of the club’s Senior Roster. In the case of Fabian Herbers and Ilsinho, if a club protects a player, it is not obligated to exercise the player’s option. It may renegotiate a new budget number for the player as in previous years, subject to the CBA. Option Decline Free Agents and Out of Contract Free Agents are part of the Expansion Draft and are not automatically protected.

LAFC only gets 5 picks from all MLS rosters, so the it is not likey a Union players gets picked but they could pick:

McCarthy
McGuire
Marquez (he seems the most likely pick if someone does get taken)
Gaddis
Creavalle
Ayuk
Simpson

There are also the players whose options were declined such as:

Onyewu
Wijnaldum
A. Jones
Alberg
Edu
Tribbett
Pontius (free agent)
Davies

 

Moneyball working its magic

 

I thought they would have protected Marquez for the sake of the tattoo franchise. Could be a big loss for the Union's business model.

 

Did we add Simpson to our top 5 worst trades/acquisitions list yet?

He's got to be up there somewhere.

 

Impossible! He played for Arsenal that one time!

 

Do smart men buy sports teams they can't afford?

 

Oh, he is smart all right. He created a franchise using tax payer funds under the guise of investing in the redevelopment of Chester. I wonder how much each of those jobs he created cost the county. What percentage of those jobs are minimum wage? He can coast along with minimal investment, riding the coat tails of Owners who spend and grow the profile of the league. He has a windfall of money coming when he sells and the value is just going up. He should be forced to pay back Delaware County when he sells (with interest). He's a snake.

 

I get all that but I wonder how he expected to maintain it when people aren't lining up to buy the team or even join the ownership group.