RSL 2023 Season News Thread

Herrera being a HG didn't matter, because he made enough money to be on the senior roster. He was a TAM player so we could buy down his cap hit with TAM - that will be true for Vera as well. Vera's budget hit will be his salary plus his transfer fee, which we can amortize over the life of the contract if we want to, but even if we do that it'll be like $450K a year, so when you combine it with Vera's salary it's almost certainly higher than what Herrera made.

But we're paying the transfer fee and excess Vera salary with TAM so that's why I'm saying these are comparable moves. We went from a TAM outside back to a different TAM outside back. I'm not sure where the contention is? I guess it's possible we're planning to spend TAM on a backup CB while Oviedo starts but I don't really think that's the idea. I guess we'll see.

 

You are right about him being a senior roster player that needed TAM to buy down his budget charge because he was making over the max salary. I was confused about the HG player subsidy, it does not apply to someone making that much. You are also correct about the transfer fee amortization, but it isn't clear if you can amortize over option years.

You are wrong about others. He has 2 option years. If the reported purchase is true, that counts towards his budget charge ($360k-600k depending on if it applies to option years or not), but TAM does not pay for transfer fees. Transfer fees and salary above the max for DPs are paid for by ownership.

I'd be very surprised if he's making over $400k (from your numbers) and have a higher budget charge than Herrera.

You keep referring to him as an outside back. The club and even Dunny are saying he's a CB.

Oviedo's contract is up after this year and Silva may have an option for next year. It's entirely possible this move isn't primarily for this year.

Sorry, but I believe nuance and details matter. I get lost in the weeds sometimes.

 

Getting lost in the mls roster mechanisms has taken away from what I think irondeep is ultimately getting at: the club moved a well regarded homegrown and replaced him with an external player using a lot of the proceeds.

That doesn’t make sense from a club pipeline perspective. This was called out before in this thread. It’s weird that the club was so quick to action this area of the roster while still not having resolved the striker situation and not having a defensive midfielder.

Lastly, if Vera is actually a CB then this really makes no sense. Was CB a concern for this roster? So much so to jump ahead of other areas? Why was holt brought back if Vera is 3rd? Why was orozco sent on loan? It doesn’t add up

 

I agree with you on the roster building points. I just think that's a separate discussion and I was trying to separate the two.

I still believe that they replaced Herrera and his backup with cheaper options that the club feels are more than adequate replacements. The proceeds went to (hopefully) upgrade other parts of the roster. We've been wanting a starting level 3rd CB since Nedum left. We have wanted a quality LB even longer (could be Oviedo, but his contract is up at the end of the year). We all thought Vera would be the starting LB later in the season and it was a bonus if he can be a quality CB.

It seems like there's a big disconnect between what Pablo wants in players and what players are being brought in. We heard about the supposed youth movement, but then promising youth is sent on loan and RSL had one of the highest average starting ages in the first week of play. Is the team trying to win or develop players? It doesn't appear that coach and FO on the same page. This is more to your last point and deserves more discussion here.

 

TAM does pay for transfer fees. It's right in the roster rules:

"Targeted Allocation Money may be used in the following ways:

• Clubs may use the funds to sign a new player provided his salary and acquisition costs are more than the Maximum Salary Budget Charge."

This probably explains the confusion we'd had. This is why I was saying this was essentially a straight swap, and also why Vera will have a higher budget charge than Herrera.

 

I'm almost positive you're misinterpreting that. Allocation money is only used to buy down the budget charge.

Put another way, what international team is going to accept TAM as payment?

We'll see what the salary survey says.
Yes, they may have a similar budget charge, but they don't play the same position. They used the proceeds from the trade to (hopefully) improve 1-2 spots on the roster.

There should still be resources to improve the forward (still lots of roster spots being used) and defensive mid positions.

 

I don't really want to go round and round on this because there are no winners in a game of "Who understands MLS' arcane roster rules the best", but I'm pretty positive I didn't misinterpret anything. You are correct that allocation money buys down budget charges, but the "budget charge" amount is the salary + transfer fee (or "acquisition cost" as the roster rules put it). You can ctrl+F "acquisition cost" in the roster rules and it will clarify that in several places.

Of course Cali wouldn't accept TAM as payment, much the same as how Herrera wouldn't accept TAM as his salary. Allocation money is a mechanism within MLS to work through the salary constraints, and it would defeat the entire purpose of having allocation money if transfer fees simply existed outside of those constraints.

The way to think this through is - we paid X (salary + transfer fee) to acquire Vera, where X was more than the maximum budget charge (roughly $620K), so we use TAM to buy down that budget charge to below $620K. Instead of using that TAM to buy down Vera, we could have used it to buy down Herrera's budget charge - that's why I said they were comparable.

We'll learn some when the salaries are posted but again, you'll need to add Vera's salary to the transfer fee to get his budget charge. What the MLSPU posts are just salaries, not transfer fees.

 

I agree that the budget charge is roughly salary + acquisition cost (I'm sure there's more to it, but that's the simplest way for fans to think about it). I agree that TAM is used to buy down the budget charge for players whose budget charge is greater than the max (~$651k this year) but less than the max plus $1m.

You can still have GAM or TAM even if you don't count acquisition costs in the budget charge (which lots of teams want to move towards).

I just want to be clear, the money that RSL paid to acquire Vera was not TAM, it was real money.

RSL may not have to use TAM on Vera. It's possible, but seems unlikely, that you can spread the acquisition costs over option years. If you can't, that's about $600k/year, definitely need TAM. If you can, that's about $360k/yr and maybe no TAM is needed, but could still be used. MLSPA shows base salary and average annual compensation (bonuses and stuff, even on unguaranteed option years).

We don't know any players true budget charge, but it can be a good exercise to guesstimate how much room a team has.

 

Money is money
Throw whatever acronym you want in front of it, it’s money

I disagree that the club replaced Herrera internally with adequate backups. Brody is not better than Herrera. This club desperately misses a guy who can consistently cross the ball. Herrera had a down year last year and everyone wants to just throw out how damn good he was before. He lost his main target and the only real reliable cm. He wasn’t going to be as good.

a third string CB is behind the roster need of a STARTING striker and a STARTING defensive midfielder. I didn’t think I had to type that but maybe I did. Fall has some major gaps in his recruiting abilities. That he isn’t called out for them more is baffling.

 

I'm not sure it was the right move, but I believe the club thinks it was. I don't think they would have done it if they didn't.

I agree that they need defensive mid and a forward, I've been of that opinion for some time now.

We'll see if they get one or both before the end of the window, there's about a month left. If they add one during the secondary window, they do only count as half towards the salary budget. The club likes to remind us of that.

 

And they like to remind us that said acquisitions take time to come in and get acclimated
It’s such a dumb approach

 

@15 to 32, from the Wasatch Soccer Sentinel
Evaluating RSL general manager Elliot Fall's 2023

Yes, I am triggering you.

 

It is a VERY odd piece.

 

Both authors stayed away from data and specifics of major personnel and coaching moves. Basically it was an “I feel this way because reasons” piece. On the other hand, they are both right in their feelings. Fall is still learning, and we have no idea about the behind the scenes workings. What bothers me most about the unknown behind the scenes workings is that they have had time to craft an identity. They haven’t. And we as fans still have no clue about what the FO/ownership is trying to build. There’s that ‘RSL Values’ document, but it’s not the same thing as a Plan or an Identity. Anyway, the first author basically says Fall hasn’t had enough time by which to grade him. Most of us have been grading him against the player moves that are just plain confusing. And that’s a valid measure imo.
Yet, as the second author says, sports are results based. That’s my perspective too. If a club is winning hardware, or showing steady progress, then basically I’m going to say it’s leadership is doing a good job. If I don’t see those things then I’m going to say the opposite. This author could have added given the disarray following the DLH tenure that reaching the conference finals one season and getting eliminated only because of an idiotic red card the following season are results that probably exceeded expectations.

 

That's quite the strategy by the club. Tell fans your goal is a playoff game while having a roster that is near the bottom of the league in terms of talent value. Exceed most fans' expectations by making the playoffs (barely, two years in row).

Next year, tell fans that a home playoff game is the goal. BUT, the rules change and almost every team that plays after the regular season gets a home game. So, they can meet their goal while not moving up in the standings (they can actually move down to 8th and still get a home game). Meanwhile, the talent value of the team hasn't improved relative to the rest of the league and so fans' expectations are still low, making it easier for the club to exceed them.

Aim so low, they can't say no....

 

That whole “our goal is to host a playoff game” is so Beta. But we don’t know if that comes from Fall or the owners.

 

For a club with "Big Time" owners it all feels a bit naïve, disjointed and a tad bit amateur.

You have a coach that doesn't have any real recognizable "style" of play that isn't just basic football and/or has a style he wants to play but doesn't have the players to fit that style he would like to use.

A GM that is pretty good and bringing in players in positions other that the ones that they are in dire need of that he likes but may or may not be players that fit the style of play the coach wants to play, whatever that style is.

Not trying to disparage either Pablo or Elliot, but whatever they are trying to do feels like they are both at either end of a Chinese finger torture device pulling in opposite directions.

The FO has done some very nice things all round from the stadium experience to spending record amounts of money on players so can't really fault them much. But my hunch is that they are working hard to make this all work out and giving Elliot and Pablo plenty of time and resources to make it work. But along with that comes a lot of rope. You can't invest in the stadium, game day experience, and team and just tread water.

In the last 10 months, since June of last season, RSL has 6 wins 11 loses and 8 draws. That's 25 games and 26 points. The have 3 points in 3 games this season. How long can you essentially keep going at 1 point per game?

It could all change pretty quick and I'm certainly rooting for Elliot and Pablo to figure it all out. The have a month left until the primary window closes on April 24 to make a splash. The secondary window is July 5-August 2.

Will the FO be satisfied sitting at a point a game and to be at 25-28 points or so by July 15 and the Leagues Cup break and hoping that the "Big Summer Signing" will save the day, again?

It could all turn round pretty quick and RSL is not just squeaking in to the playoffs and actually making some noise but that remains to be seen.

I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and hope it all goes well but when should the FO make a change? If I were a betting man I would think that if this year is just like last year, and the year before, you make changes at some point to make sure that next year isn't like the last 3.

 

Elliott Fall sure gets a lot of leeway for being "new" for a guy in his 4th season as GM and 16th with the club.

Just for fun I looked up how long the technical director/GM of the top 7 teams in the league have been in their position and Fall has been in his job longer than 6 of them. Only Bruce Arena has been in the job longer than Fall.

How long will Fall get slack for rookie mistakes? Indefinitely?

 

So it was just a one-year extension?

 

Fall would be fired by now at any club in this league that wants to actually compete

That should be the entire “negative” side of that stupidly written article

 

What’s the odds of Damir getting hurt against St. Louis?

 

“We are thrilled to keep ‘Dami’ the player on the field in Salt Lake for several more years on an extended deal,” Fall said. “And our Club is even more ecstatic to keep Damir the phenomenal leader and person attached to our organization for even longer.”


Is he a DP still?
Is this to lower his cap hit?
I love Dami but this is just dumb

 

His deal was extended for one more year, yet Fall is saying "several more years", what's the actually story?

With the DP threshold going up every year, they technically don't need him to take a paycut to avoid making him a full DP (like Sava). But does it make sense to keep paying him anywhere close to $1.6m/yr?