Official Red Bulls offseason thread

Doh, lost track of the new rules this year...

 

From Kristian Dyer http://www.bigapplesoccer.com/teams/redbulls2.php?article_id=39565

 

From the article:

"Sekagya, who had 25 appearances along with 23 starts this year for New York, along with Perrinelle, will likely sign new deals with the Red Bulls but not at their current contract rate."

It seems unnecessary to keep all of Sekagya, Armando, and Perrinelle. They're all depth guys or spot starters at best and none of them are a particularly great value - all three make six digits at the moment. I think ideal scenario would be signing a bona fide starter to pair with Olave, keep two of the those three at lower salaries, and keep Miazga.

This is a good list though, I'm glad the club could spot the dead weight as well as the fans could all season. Convey should have just retired before this season, Eckersley makes way too much money for his ability, Sene was a bust... At least all of our key guys made it through the first round of departures.

 

Brian Lewis ‏@NYPost_Lewis 51s51 seconds ago
#RBNY declined options on Saer Sene, Kosuke Kimura, Bobby Convey, Marius Obekop, Damien Perrinelle, Ibrahim Sekagaya & Richard Eckersley.

Brian Lewis is reporting that Kimura and Obekop are out too. Another good call with Kimura, the league has surpassed him the last few years. I guess they felt Obekop was taking too long to develop.

Edit: More from Lewis, Obekop may renegotiate alongside Sekagya and Perrinelle

Brian Lewis ‏@NYPost_Lewis 55s55 seconds ago
Red Bulls did say Obekop, Perrinelle and Sekagya are still in discussions for 2015. Ostensibly everybody else expected back. We'll see #RBNY

Also very, very interesting to see him say that everyone else is expected back, I'm still sitting here bracing for the club to take a machete to the roster and lose some key players. If this is the full list of players gone, that should give the new GM a decent amount of cap space to use without losing anyone crucial. Promising start to the offseason!

 

Franco Panizo @FrancoPanizo · 10h10 hours ago
FWIW: Tim Cahill did not speak to media today, wasn't present in the locker room during the end-of-season availability. #RBNY

Writing on the wall?

 

Obekop is young, so he may be worth keeping as a non-Senior player.

I don't think the team will keep all of Sekagaya, Perrinelle and Armando, but I suspect that Perrinelle is the odd man out. Maybe the team will hang Armando out there in the offseason, in the expansion draft and he gets moved to another club?

I can see the Red Bulls signing Brandon Adler as an HG, he seems to have a lot of upside as a versatile defender. Would they bring in a sixth CD? That's a big what if, but I can see them carrying at least five center backs, especially if three of them are young.

 

good start

 

BWP is officially a Designated Player for 2015

Well deserved for sure, curious as to how much he'll be making. I'd guess somewhere in the $500k-$1M range.

 

I'd guess he is right in that range. This is not really a surprise. He's deserving and it is in line with the team's philosophy going forward.

 

IMO not nearly as much as the current narrative running around the league would have you believe. Especially with the way fans from other teams have reacted to his new contract, you'd think BWP was an invalid who just happened to have 31 of Henry's shots deflect off him and into the net.

BWP still scored 19 goals this year that had nothing to do with Henry, and he scored 3 goals in the 4 matches that Henry wasn't on the field.

 

Was BWP's deal up, or they just restructured it and gave him a pay raise to be nice?

 

BWP is officially the new face of the franchise.

not a global name, but very productive in this league, we can do worse than more signings of his caliber around.

 

Not sure, they never released his contract details when he signed in the summer of 2013, but considering he jumped from $50 to $330k in the off season I'd guess there's some whacky stuff in there. Its possible he had performance based incentives that would have triggered a raise above the DP threshold, maybe he was picking up interest from other clubs and we wanted to lock him down, or maybe they were just being nice.

 

That is my point, a DP as a SUB don't make sense, they will find out the way to send him packing, now he never will live by his own, 3.5 million at 35 years old he will not find a fool to sign him on and he will not live behind 3.5 million dollars for nothing, that is for sure.....

 

Since BWP scored only 8 goals off of Henry's assists then maybe Henry held him back and he will do even better next season for us!!!!

 

The guy looked awfully good in the WC and always scores for Australia in all their games it seems to me. I bet someone does want him for that money somewhere in the world....

 

BWP doesn't creat his own shots.

If we get a creative midfielder that can provide him opportunities, he will score. If not, he wont.

It will be very interesting to see how we move forward offensively without Titi. He made Luke, Coop and BWP into real threats. We have been near the top of the league in production each year we had Henry.

Will be very interesting whom we bring in to to try to keep this going. A DP? A Valeri type from SA? We'll see.

 

I think this is the key to creating a fluid attack for next season. I'd love to see RBNY make a play for someone like Gonzalo Castellani (Boca Juniors) or Ariel Cabral (Velez Sarsfield).

----------------------BWP----------------------
Oyongo-----------New CAM------------Sam
-----------McCarty------Alexander-----------
Miller------New CB------Olave------Duvall
---------------------Robles---------------------

The two biggest needs in my opinion are a attack-minded midfielder to play the Luyindula role and a starting CB to pair with Olave. I think if both of these positions could be filled with cheaper DP types in the 25-28 age range then this team wouldn't skip much of a beat next season while positioning themselves for long-term stability.

 

One thing is certainly true, with a decent bump in salaries, not only will MLS clubs be able to attract young DP's from Latin America, they will also be able to pay competitive wages to the depth guys from these same countries. The average wages are not that far off Mexico's and that is one of our main competitors in the hemisphere for those guys who can fill out the middle part of the rotation.

That said, $1-2 million in salary should attract a lot of quality talent from Latin America. For a young guy, this league could become a good step-up league for those headed to Europe, but it is also a great alternative. The wages are good, paychecks come on time and hey, America is a great place to live.

 

Of course, a YA like Mix Diskeruud would be another option.

Mix on the market.

 

I just don't see Mix as an attacking mid. He's not really a creative player. Based on his time with the national team I think he works best in a deeper position. I also question his ability to hold up in the rough and tumble MLS.
In terms of Americans, Bedoya would be a better fit for RBNY in my opinion.

 

The only problem with that is Bedoya is mainly a wide player.

If you want to juice up the middle of the field, there are lots of ways to go and I frankly doubt that MLS will be able to compete with Europe to sign Mix. OTOH, NY is a pretty sexy destination for an international player. At some point, the club should flex its muscles a little for signing one of these guys. At least Diskeruud would be in a more reasonable price range and there's no transfer free involved. As a US international, he's also subject to the allocation process and thus, the Red Bulls aren't over-committing if they were to throw a hat in the ring.