Probably through the summer transfer window. If they are scouting Europe or South America they may have more luck in the summer. That's my rubric. Though the Losada hire is a success just based on my enjoyment of the style of play.
DCU exercised its option. The fact is that right now Najar is locked into a lowball offer. There may be "negotiations" with DCU, but as Pablo says there are nibbles from Middle Eastern clubs as well. The simple fact is that when a player has a breakout season, you do right by him. Najar has a history with the club and the fanbase, if you want to be a "destination organization" for players and build up what is now an anemic fanbase based on attendance at AF, you pay the man.
Anybody have insight into the high turnover in technical and support staff? We've lost 5 or 6 employees this offseason.
You take the number Najar's people submit you go a little under it and all is well. He gets a raise and you save a couple of bucks.
Still waiting for #DCU to make some moves, more than a few roster spots available. My understanding: club has a few heavily-backloaded, long-term contracts that are costing them this year. Budget-minded club will have to get creative to compete this season, no doubt.— Pablo Iglesias Maurer (@MLSist) January 18, 2022 sounds like the club is starting to build its excuses for 2022
Budget minded? Check! Bargain bin players? Check! Not making playoffs? Check! Coach and the few decent players we have abandoning ship? Check!
With our luck one of Hamid, Canouse, Birnbaum or Kamara will get hurt this year, because that would be a wrap.
This is why gettin Paul off the books frees up funds. They have the slots but not the funny money to pay down the contracts.
Morrisey, the idea that we have contract/money issues constraining us etc. is really at odds with the conventional wisdom our various club news network as been promoting. In short, we appear to be more money ********ed than anyone previously expected and honestly I don't know why. We should have money right now, is what I am saying, to get at least 2 quality players, but from this reporting we have to ******** with our current players and get no one.
Here's a thought. Make Andy a DP! Use the slot to nail him down for the next four years. No one can convince me Arriola is any better than Najar. Keep one of our own, use the MLS machinations in place to help with the cap ramifications, please the fans. Do something right, dammit! If Najar jumps into Arriola's spot, I'm not complaining, and the money can work. I hate this shit. If you want to cry poor, do it loudly and proudly much, much earlier than today with this weak leak to Maurer. Tell us we're going with young, cheap players. I'm sure the coach would like a heads up. Not that we've forgotten, but this is the value of Olsen as head coach. Give him little to nothing, he won't care, just happy to be a lifer. If they were forthright about all this and did something cool like bring Najar into the fold for good, I bet a lot of fans would genuinely respect it. I think I would.
I know DC United fans have a soft spot for Najar, and he definitely should receive more money, probably even twice his current salary, but using a DP slot for Najar is last straw material. It would be an indicator not that they are trying to do right but that we are utterly more ********ed than we know.
We are most certainly ********ed. But they have three DP slots and only use two of them. This season, possibly only one. At least it's a feel good deal for the fans and I love Andy Najar so awesome for him. If you're not going to use it anyway...
Or the actual money. Jason Davis on USoS on Sirius was saying, and I don't know if he was quoting someone, that DC has received at least three record breaking offers for Paul from inside MLS, let alone the America interest. He cant go outside MLS because then our ownership will have to use their own money to pay the players this year, instead of MLS money. What a scam. Thx, Jay!
Najar was lucky someone was interested in him last year at all so he and his agent knew what they were doing accepting a low 2-year offer - I think he deserves a decent raise, but I don't mind the team not going overboard. I still think dumping Ariola is a dumb idea, no matter the cash involved. I'm not buying the back-loaded contract issue, sounds fishy.
Ok, but the thing is we've let a lot of good players go as a result of slow rolling Arriola moving. We could have gotten a combination of Sean Davis (350k), Kelyn Rowe (less likely), Dominique Badji (300k) or Stefan Cleveland as a backup for Hamid as just a few purely domestic examples. For that matter, would we have played such a weak hand to get Rusnak if we weren't slow rolling Arriola leaving? Arriola isn't gone yet, and I guess there is a chance he doesn't leave, but if he does, we're going to look at the wasted time and missed chances.
I am not sure if I buy the contract situation or not, but it does seem odd that there are contributors who we could have already had back relatively inexpensively. No one would have been unhappy to see Felipe back and based on his IG posts, it sounds like they were stringing him along to see if they could get someone better. And here we, camp has started, there are how many empty roster slots, our one real DP is destined to be out the door and the other carrying a knock into camp with a rep for being injured all the time. I don't get how this club runs itself. All those 1% shares were sold at a $730M valuation. That's $7.3M per. There had to have been at least 5 sold. $36M+ isn't chump change in MLS, where did that money go?
We suck at international signings, we should sell international slots and just make a team of deliberate, gas-in-the-tank journeymen from MLS if money is a big issue.
Chris Pontius' turns a wandering eye to his cleats in the back of the hall closet. DeLeon, Mullins, and hey, why not Fred group texting this very moment.
Re: Paul Arriola; as @tombogert reported last week, the club has received multiple offers from Club America and is mulling one over as we speak.They've also received "record-setting" offers from within MLS, a source tells me.Club source today calls a move "unlikely," though.— Pablo Iglesias Maurer (@MLSist) January 18, 2022
Christian Gomez didn't retire from Nueva Chicago until 2019 when he was 44 though I find this hard to believe.