Last weekend Wolves played their last game of the season, missing out on the Championship playoffs on goal differential.
Currently Kevin Doyle's contract with Wolves run through June 30th and his contract with Colorado starts July 1st.
Colorado should move heaven and earth to get Doyle signed and on their books by the close of the MLS window on May 12th. I believe there are two ways to do this:
- Wolves releases Doyle on a free (essentially tears up his contract) and the Rapids modify or sign him to a new contract starting May 12th instead of July 1st.
- Wolves loans Doyle to Colorado for the remaining ~ 2 months of his contract, then he becomes a Rapids player on July 1st.
Without knowing FIFA's, MLS's, and the Championship's exact rules I don't know which option works better and either option would require Doyle to agree so there are three sides to the negotiations.
That said the Rapids have to get this done. They're biggest hole right now is the ability to finish and they need reinforcements. Wolves doesn't need Doyle anymore and (you would think) would be willing to work with Colorado to get it done. The sticking point would be Doyle himself. I don't know how Championship contracts work but I assume he's going to get paychecks from Wolves from now until June 30th and he probably doesn't want to give that up, unless somehow the Rapids are paying him more money (unlikely). There should be some sort of creative solution to that though, like the Rapids agreeing to pay him the same amount per week/month/whatever as he'll be getting after June 30th and then Wolves only have to make up the difference or something.
Even assuming this gets done, I don't think its reasonable to expect to see Doyle suited up for the KC game on May 16th. After a season in England I'm sure Doyle wants some down time, plus he needs to get his family moved across the Atlantic. But even if he shows up in Colorado on June 1st, trains with the team for a couple of weeks, and makes his first game-day roster against Dallas on June 19th that's still 3+ games earlier than he'll be ready in July. Given that right now our playoff hopes are very slim, those 3 games might make the difference.
Posts
2 comments:
Jason,
I hope Doyle does the business for you, and by that I mean scoring. He was never prolific at Wolves, far from it. His value originally to us was that he could operate alone up front and retain the ball to keep pressure off our overworked defence.
Being able to hold the ball will help us as well. We have a number of fast strikers that could play off of a "#9" and that might lead to more scoring as well. Right now the opposing defense can close down our one attacker and the rest of the team isn't dangerous.
Post a Comment