Trusty Off To London (Eventually) But Is Anyone Coming To Commerce City?

Big news today as the quiet murmurs about a possible move to Europe for Auston Trusty come true in a big way with the announcement that on the transfer deadline day for most European leagues he had been bought by Arsenal!  As part of the deal he will be loaned back to Colorado until the summer transfer window, specifically July 17th.  Trusty does not qualify for an English work permit so in their announcement Arsenal stated that the plan for the 2022-23 season is to loan him to a team in Europe.

Arsenal is clearly looking at Trusty as a player who's on the edge of the U.S. Nats at 23 years old and see the potential for him to move into the team after the World Cup and qualify for a work permit in a couple of years, with the risk being low if he doesn't make it.  Notably the transfer fee was not part of the announcements, unlike most other moves out of MLS this window, which leads me to believe the up-front number is fairly low and it may have a number of long-term clauses in it.  Or it could be that since this was an internal-KSE move (Kroenke owning both teams) they didn't want to get into the accounting machinations they're putting the deal through to move money from Column A to Column B.

There are already numerous fans of Arsenal and just generally anti-MLS who are claiming this is Kroenke just :"laundering money" or getting around various cap rules, or otherwise dismissing Trusty as anything but an easy way to move resources around and he'll never play for Arsenal.  That's largely example of "fans" not actually looking at Trusty for what he is.  There's no guarantee he'll ever get a work permit and play for Arsenal, but the potential is there.  He could make that move by 26 (3 years).

This move also dovetails nicely into what I was planning to write about tonight, namely that by running in place the Rapids have actually moved backwards this offseason, and its disappointing.  So far the Rapids have moved 3 significant pieces of the 2021 team and brought in 3 new players:

• Cole Bassett Out, Max In
• Kellyn Acosta Out, Bryan Acosta In
• Auston Trusty Out (eventually), Aboubacar Keita In

Roughly three like-for-like transactions.  You could argue that overall Bassett/Acosta/Trusty is a better group of players than Max/Acosta/Keita.  I think at best you argue we've stood pat so far.  To be clear, I'm not expecting anything from our draft picks in 2022.

This at the same time teams like Dallas, Houston, and FSL are spending millions of dollars on transfer fees that should improve the squad.  The rest of the West is in an arms race of spending this offseason and the Rapids are on the sideline apparently not engaging.  In his press conference a couple of weeks ago Padraig Smith said they were pursing options at striker, something reinforced by reporting from other channels, but so far not a single name has been linked to the club and quite frankly, we are running out of time.  Now, with Trusty leaving in the summer, we need to also sign a CB to replace him.  The tweet from the Rapids Communication Director in response to Joseph Samelson calling this out today that there's a secondary window isn't exactly reassuring given the CCL starts in 16 days.

The facts are that Bryan Acosta is out with a positive COVID test, Max is still in Brazil, and Keita is...somewhere.  Which means no new players who are expected to contribute in 2022 will be getting minutes tomorrow, and likely not getting minutes on Saturday.  So at best we'll have the closed-door scrimmage in Orlando for those three, plus any striker signing, to figure out how to play with this team before we face a competitive match.  For a club that has talked the talk, again, about taking the CCL seriously this appears to be a failure to walk the walk, again.

4 years ago the Rapids met one of their big striker signings, Joe Mason, on the tarmac in Boston en route to their season opener against New England.  A move that has been acknowledged as a mistake by the FO in how they handled the offseason that year.  That was the same year they made a panic move in signing Yannick Boli after not being able to get deals done earlier in the offseason.  The FO learned from that mistake and the last couple of offseasons clearly had their ducks in a row and got everyone signed and in camp early.  Right now 2022 is feeling like 2018 again, where we're waiting to the last minute to make a major signing.  Hopefully we're not meeting our new striker for the first time on the ground in Guatemala City...