Bleeding Claret & Cobalt podcast yesterday discussed roster breakdown with Elliott Fall. Definitely worth a listen to, but I did find myself with more questions at the end. Key items, though: Sava is a full-blown DP - cannot be bought down by TAM Julio is not a DP Cordova is a TAM-able DP (we knew this from salary dumb) Kreilach is a TAM-able DP New ownership gave the green light on 3 DPs in the roster. In fact Elliott said it would be dumb of the club not to fill them. So...
You might be right about Rubin. If Jasper is better than the HGs, maybe he's worth keeping. I thought he took up an international slot (and thus why he was a 3rd round pick; he was slated for the Monarchs like Fonseca, the 2nd round pick). I'm definitely not a fan if that's the case, not to mention I believe (I could be wrong) he's taking a senior roster spot. I don't trust any of the roster info that's out there. With Gomez, I don't like that we had to sign him to the MLS roster. Again, maybe it's easy to get off of his contract (or others) later, but I don't like using senior roster spots like this.
Great points. I should pay more attention to all of the roster machinations as well. For a team that loves home grown players they sure are scared to actually play them. For crying out loud Seattle subbed in a 16 year old in the CCL final. Play the kids. I do like Jasper though. He has a Luke Mulholland vibe.
The knee-jerk reaction to losing players like Soto and Ledezma has been to offer promising young players contracts. The problem is they are first team contracts and really limit the roster construction for Fall (his own doing). In an ideal world these young promising players get signed to Monarch contracts. I'm curious as to why this isn't happening. Is there a limit on the amount of a MLS Next Pro contract? Was there for USL? Does having a first team contract matter more to a kid than a developmental contract with the same (and maybe even more) amount? Does MLS Next Pro pay for those contracts as a league, like MLS, or do all MLS Next/USL contracts come out of the owners pocket? I haven't tracked the Monarchs as well as I should this year. I found the player with the most minutes very surprising: Fonseca. Also of note, there are players that are still part of the academy that have more minutes than the guys with first team contracts. It's really really weird. And to beat the same dead horse: The team's website sucks when it comes to roster breakdown. It has Jeizon Ramirez listed as a Monarchs player...
https://www.mlsnextpro.com/about/roster-guidelines From what I remember, it's all on the club owner for team salaries. There are no limits on salaries or acquisition costs. That being said, there appear to be rules about bringing players in to the MLS roster from MLS NEXT PRO. 15, you have lots of good questions. Would love to hear Elliot and Tony answer them. Like, what's to stop a team from paying a large transfer fee for a player to sign them to a MLS NEXT PRO contract and then transferring the player to the MLS team? Sure there's salary guidelines, but the transfer fee was paid already and then doesn't count toward the MLS salary budget hit? I'm sure it will take several years to see how the development path changes with MLS NEXT PRO in the fold.
I don't know if it's so much that Rubin has been figured out, but it's more that we have no midfield to feed him the ball. No one has replaced Rusnak or Damir's service and our midfield is anemic when it comes to distribution and possession. Sure they'll make the outlet passes out wide, but there is very little service to the forwards that's purposeful and opportunity creating. I'm hoping Rubin turns things around once Damir is back in the 18.
That could be the case for Rubin but even last season his productivity tapered off through the season. It will certainly be great to have Damir back or a player like Damir in the midfield again to really get a good idea about Rubin and other players up top for RSL to gauge their productivity.
Didn't Rubin have a nagging injury through the second half of last season, got it operated on during the offseason, and also started this season recovering?
the lack of midfield seems to be by design, honestly, and it's super annoying. The 4-4-2 / 4-2-3-1 plays more like a 4-2-4 when we're in attack. I mentioned it at the Portland game and it seems to be a push from Pablo. The idea being to just get the ball to the final third quickly and then go from there. Which is ok if we had the right type of players to do it, but I really don't think we do. Interesting enough, the pattern of play we scored on in the Austin game relies on a midfield possession but quick play setup. Maybe it's the end goal, but so far I'm not convinced it is.
correct that was given for the reason for his dip in form. Since he's returned, he's looked like a guy that didn't have a preseason and is trying to figure it out on the fly. Hopefully he can find that same run of form, but it's worth noting that while he had 8 goals in 2021, 5 of those came before September. His 2021 stats had a goal every ~ 280 minutes, a not terrible return for a secondary striker. However, when you go from September to now that drops off significantly. The guy works hard, but like so every other "forward" on this roster, he plays as a secondary striker. He isn't the guy, if you will. We don't have one of those currently. Maybe Savarino will do that and (as an optimist) it opens the field to these other guys to flourish.
I still don't understand why Sergio is a TAM-able DP but Bobby isn't. Sure seems based on salary, Wood makes more sense. I wonder if there's a loan fee that makes Sergio's budget hit higher?
Nope, based on salary data, Wood makes $400k more than Cordova. Sure seems to make more sense to make Wood the DP and save the GAM/TAM. There's got to be other money (loan fees, agent fees, etc) that make Cordova a DP. The current DPs are Sava (can't be bought down) and apparently Cordova and Kreilach (can be bought down if there's enough TAM still around). I'd like to hear if Elliot has full access to discretionary TAM as well as thoughts/plans on the U22 slots.
He’s on loan… wtf? Or is it that fall “bought down” woods number already but hasn’t done that yet for cordova? You could hypothetically have a guy on a higher contract than another one (both over the max) and the one on the lower number left at a dp level while the more expensive bought down??? god this stuff is stupid