TD;DR (Oshan’s predictions)
- Lodeiro probably leaves
- Rusnak probably gets renegotiated to a max-TAM level player
- Ruidíaz may get bought out or traded; he wants an extension but that would be hard to imagine
- JP probably back
- Heber probably gone unless he scores a boatload of goals in the rest of the season
- Xavi probably leaves, either by having his option declined or by having it picked up and Sounders trading him
- Hopefully Frei stays on a team friendly contract with a small pay cut
- Cleveland may be headed elsewhere to let the other keepers in the pipeline get more time at lower cost
- Rowe and Fredy probably won’t be back
- Sounders will probably listen to offers for Vargas, RBW, and Leyva.
- AB is probably gone given his age and so he can get playing time elsewhere, to free up minutes for some of the Defiance CBs
- CR7 will have a bounce back year after the injuries; JMo will be back to his excellent form, Atencio needs more minutes, and Chu will be in the last year of his contract and out to prove that he deserves a big new contract.
- biggest off-season priorities: new DP 10, new number 9 (maybe somebody younger to develop while Jordan starts up top for now)
What are your thoughts?
I think there’s a lot of space between moving ~65% of our total wage bill in a single winter window and standing pat, and I might more expect us to inhabit the space between those two extremes than either end of the spectrum. I would love for O’Shan to be correct here, but it’s the winter window – the secondary window for most of the world – and turning over two DPs and three TAM players, plus a bunch of squad players, all in a single window is almost unheard of.
Yep. My guess is Lodeiro leaves and the focus is really on a quality 10. Ruidíaz probably stays though any extension before next season seems unlikely. More likely the team sees what he can do next year / if he can stay healthy and then makes a decision after that. But I guess they could try to move him and Xavi and open up a bunch of space and DP slots for next summer, while relying on JMo up top for the first part of the season?