I thought this deserved it's own thread as there were many important things discussed. 1) Club is negotiating with Logan Pause and Chris Rolfe to bring them back 2) Yallop thinks the Fire will be signing Harrison Shipp, and that he hopes he'll be a starter in 2014. Referred to him as a young Mike Magee. 3) Seemed very clear about going with youth and potential. Didn't want to get rid of anyone with upside for the club. 4) Doesn't believe in the number 10. Thinks we need a number 8 forward attacking midfielder. 5) Doesn't want to bunker (we'll see) wants to kill off games. 6) Said he prefers 4-4-2. Always wants at least 4 in the attack. 7) Said he thought we needed to be quicker on the counter, mentioned that he'd prefer someone to be slipping in Patrick instead of Patrick dribbling up field on the break (that would of course require another player who can do the dribbling part). 8) Club previously focused on scouting in South America, but he's going to focus on Europe. 9) Sounded like the Paladini trade wasn't about the Fire getting anything, it was about getting Paladini to the club he wanted to go to. 10) They figured someone would pick up Bone in the draft. 11) Main priorities sounded like added additional depth at CB and more attacking midfielders. 12) Buying a house in Hinsdale. 13) Sounds like he is hoping possibly for players (?) from the Athletico de Madrid partnership. 14) Let it slip a few times that Johnson is going to be called up to the January camp. 15) Said we were well over the salary cap 16) Spoke well of Hauptmans desire, passion, willingness to spend... 17) Said he's looking at guys "all the way up to a million dollars" 18) Wants the team to play high pressure defense and win the ball back quickly. 19) Rebuilding year, or condender? A: Yes. That's all I can remember at the moment.
If anyone wants to see Harrison Shipp play the College Cup Championship game is on today at 2PM on ESPNU.
Excellent! Thanks for this...my lady will groan. I tried to watch the game Friday but got stuck in rush hour traffic.
It seems like the previous administration had quite a number of guys who were "on loan" permanently and were still on the books. I don't know if any of those guys still are but that couldn't have helped matters. Does anyone have any of that information?
As of September, the MLS Players Union listed 4 Fire players on their (suspect/incomplete) chart that were, to the best of my recollection, on loan at the time: Orr Baruch - $46,500 (Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv F.C.) Alvaro Fernandez - $366,667.67 - (Nacional) Kellen Gulley - $79,000 (Atlanta Silverbacks) Federico Puppo - $125,000 (LDU Quito) Gulley is off the books (contract option declined). Not sure about the rest, maybe someone else remembers? One other thought - if there really was a belief inside the organization that JLA would hit the 2014 cap only for his published salary of $120,000 instead of the full DP hit, that might have thrown off projections?
So if the league covers up to a million, then Andy could get his guys and not pay a cent (just the way he likes it).
I have feeling those clubs are not paying 100 percent of the players salary. The Fire might be paying a percentage thus the reason they went over the salary cap.
Great, how the hell are we suppose to improve if we are up against the salary cap? So all we will be getting is (retreads) players other teams don't want. If we are up against the cap WHY would be trying to bring back Pause, so even signing him for league min. would be to much.
It really does put into perspective how bad Leon and Co. fucked this team up with basically ZERO improvement. We're going to be feeling the effects of their fuck ups for a long I'm sure.
The fact that Klopas was fired before Leon or Petrei is kinda scary and telling. Let's hope Yallop is a strong enough character to stand up to an owner.
Seriously. WTF was going on with Petrei for the last month. Also: Do you think FY meant he was looking at: "Up to a million" different players players with transfer fees "up to a million" or players with salaries up to a million dollars Only one of those really appeals to me.
I think he meant that, before they waved/didn't pick up options for half the team they were way over cap. I THINK when he said that he was including Rios's "option". With all the people we've released, I think we have a lot of cap room. Bringing back Rolfe and Pause for 50% isn't bad.
Rios (at the full DP hit), Tornaghi, Paladini, Lindpere, Santos, and Thompson clear out $944k in salary cap space. Add to that whatever we save from Pause and Rolfe's contracts. Plus account for the fact that most of those guys were probably due to get a boost in their salary figure next year Thats over a third of the total salary cap number ($3.1m) for next year. Its pretty easy to see how we were over budget.
Still doesn't mean we should bring back players that shouldn't be on the team anymore, we need to use that money on players that are going to help us win (not sit on the bench and maybe get a couple minutes in garbage time).
Most if not all of those players were gone after this year. That's why the salary concerns never made any sense to me. You bring a backup like Santos in as cover and release them if they don't produce. No harm no foul.
I wasn't saying that was a good or bad thing, I was just showing the numbers to answer @Fanaddict's question about how we could possibly be overbudget. Whether it was good, bad or indifferent spending, the fact is we had to get rid of a lot of salary before we can add new players. Now that we have, we have (or at least ought to have) a lot of cap space to get the players we need
There certainly ought to be a payout mechanism that would allow a team owner to payout the balance of a MLS contract to eliminate cap space.
If there was. Do you think our owner would do that? Remember his cheapness and dosen't care if we suck.