Whitecaps Player Purge Starting To Pick Up Pace – Will Alain Rochat Be Next To Go?

It’s been a busy day personnel wise for Vancouver Whitecaps and it’s only going to get busier in the days ahead.

Some moves we expected, but there’s been some surprises thrown into the mix.

There’s still an air of uncertainty hanging over the camp, as players and fans wait to see who is going to still be in the Caps squad come the end of 2011. Martin Rennie is clearly making his mark on the team.

The two part MLS Re-Entry draft is looming on the horizon for the next two Mondays. Vancouver have the first pick in both parts and we can only hope that they use them wisely and better than last year.

In preparation for the addition of new talent, the Whitecaps announced today that they were not renewing the current options on five players: Joe Cannon, Jay Nolly, Greg Janicki, John Thorrington and Peter Vagenas.

In addition, defender Jonathan Leathers is now out of contract.

Whilst there won’t be too many people up in arms at the thought of losing the four outfield players, it is surprising (to an extent) that both fan favourite goalies could be on their way out of Vancouver.

All six players could still be re-signed. The players and the Caps have until 2pm on December 2nd to renegotiate new deals, or else the players will go into the cyber Monday shopping basket, unless they choose not to be included.

Our first thought is that Cannon will get the chance to re-sign, but on a much lower contract. His 2011 base salary was $199,500, with a guaranteed compensation of $209,756.25 (that quarter could be the key!).

The contract makes Cannon the sixth highest paid goalkeeper in MLS, but way behind New York’s Frank Rost and his staggering $545,460 contract. Jay Nolly, on the other hand, is picking up $65,000.

I personally think that Cannon will get first refusal on a new deal, and if he says no, then we’ll see Jay back here next season, otherwise Nolly will sadly be on his way to pastures new.

The others are most likely to be on their way out, although Leathers may pick up the offer of a new contract if he wants to just be a squad player.

Midfielder Shea Salinas has definitely gone though, traded to San Jose Earthquakes in exchange for allocation money.

Not a big loss to the Caps as far as I’m concerned.

Salinas played 26 MLS games for Vancouver, starting 18, in a season curtailed by a pre-season injury. 1695 minutes clocked up, with only 1 goal and 3 assists to show for it. Not really what you’re wanting from a first team regular.

Perhaps that’s why he wasn’t one. He would get a run in the team, then drop back to the bench. Perform well one week, underperform the next. You just never knew what Shea Salinas you were going to get.

He certainly seemed to be more of an impact player for us when coming off the bench, having his best performances in a blue and white jersey when coming on late in the game and running at tired defences.

It’s a nice luxury to have, but not one Vancouver can afford right now, especially when the end results weren’t prolific enough.

And talking of Impact players, that brings us nicely to Brian Ching.

We’re going to write more about Montreal and the whole Ching thing in our Metro column on Friday.

For now though, we’ve been hatching a plan.

Ching is not going to play for Montreal. No way San Jose.

Will he retire or will Montreal try and cut a deal somwhere, somehow?

Rumours are that they want to play hardball with Houston and take Canadian defender Andrew Hainault from the Dynamo.

With Montreal still not having a Canadian in their squad, it may make sense to the Frenchies but is likely to be no dice with the Dynamo.

So just how important is Brian Ching to Houston?

He is their poster boy, long time servant and the dream for all the Orange men (and ladies) is for Ching to play one final season for the Dynamo, open their new downtown stadium and then bow out to a hero’s farewell.

It’s a nice happy ending, but is it one that Houston are prepared to lose a top player for? I think yes, but not Hainault. And that’s where Vancouver Whitecaps could come in.

Montreal best chance of a deal involving Ching could be with a three way trade and Vancouver may have just the player they are needing and wanting – Alain Rochat.

Although not officially confirmed, Vancouver should be adding South Korean defender Lee Young-pyo to the team by the end of the week.

An international who has appeared in the World Cup Finals, Young-pyo ticks the boxes as an experienced defender, if one who is getting on a bit, who will appeal to a certain demographic in the city, which always helps in getting some extra bums on seats.

He’s primarily a left back, and we already have two of them in Alain Rochat and Jordan Harvey, but he’s also been playing right back recently, in the latter stages of his career.

Harvey didn’t impress me much in that position after his move from Philadelphia, but he did once he pushed forward into a left midfield role late in the season.

He was great there and formed a productive overlapping partnership with Alain Rochat up that left flank.

When Young-pyo comes, it may be as another designated player, but if not, he’ll be commanding a fairly hefty salary at any rate and is unlikely to be a bench player.

So where does that leave Rochat?

Possibly on his way to Montreal.

Rochat moved to Switzerland at an early age but is from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec. He commands a Canadian spot under MLS rules. Just what the Impact need. Plus he speaks French and they may need that even more!

Trading Rochat for Ching, would then allow the Whitecaps to re-trade Ching back to Houston for Adam Moffat.

Moffat is the midfielder we need and is only over in the US thanks to Martin Rennie bringing him here from Scotland, as our previous interview with him outlined.

Pipe dreams or a realistic transfer possibility?

The next few days could get interesting.

In The Cold Light Of Day: Caps To The Four In Basement Battle

What a difference a week makes. Well, eight days if you want to be picky!

Concede four goals, for our heaviest defeat of the season last weekend, yesterday, bang in four and it could have been more.

And the fans certainly lapped it up.

All hail King Eric.

When you’re looking at what maybe made the difference, you really don’t have to look much further than the opposition.

Chicago were a very poor side.

You can tell they come from the Windy City, for they certainly blow.

If ever the chant of “can we play you every week” fits a team, it was this Chicago Fire side.

We may be bottom of the heap, but we’ve competed well in pretty much every game this season. The only game that instantly springs to my mind where we haven’t, was Real Salt Lake away in June.

We haven’t gotten the breaks. We haven’t taken care of business ourselves and held on to our leads. That’s football.

Next season, we might just find ourselves one of the luckiest sides going. Who knows? We can’t really get much worse luck than we have in 2011, and we’re going to have an exciting new manager trying to get the best out of us.

This was another basement battle. Not sure how many such games the Caps can have in one season, but they certainly seem to be coming along at a fair rate of knots.

We mentioned on Friday that the Caps had their work cut out to stop them being the worst team in MLS history.

As it turns out, we may not have that much work to do.

As long as we finish with one more win than Chicago, then we don’t have to worry about that. It’s looking pretty likely, although Chicago certainly did show some glimpses of what they can be capable of, and Vancouver had a few worries of their own at the back.

Let’s get the few negatives out of the way first.

Our defence is woeful at times. No matter what combination we have back there, things just seem to happen that allow the oppostion to get back into games. Silly schoolboy errors.

Obviously the constant changing of personnel doesn’t help, but even our experienced guys are getting caught out.

Alain Rochat was turned inside out for that first Chicago goal. It was actually embarrassing to see Dominic Oduro leave him so flat footed. He’s such a good defender, but was made to look so average. Hey, it happens to the best of them I guess.

I have to say that the jury is still out for me with Jordan Harvey.

The Philly fans were disappointed to see him go. I found it strange that the Union did. Now I’m kinda wondering if there was a reason that they were so keen to accept the offer they just couldn’t refuse.

He hasn’t impressed me so far and has been responsible for a couple of goals conceded now.

The penalty he gave away last week against LA was ridiculous and he clearly isn’t able to cover as a central defender, as his clumsy footedness for the second Chicago goal showed.

He may be a great defender. We just haven’t seen that in a Caps shirt yet.

It was great to see Jay Nolly back between the sticks. Not just because he’s a friend of AFTN, but we feel he is the better keeper and the long term goalie of the team.

He could have done better with the second Fire goal, and he knew it. That was written all over his face. He had some fantastic stops though and hopefully this will see him back as the starter for the remainder of the season.

In a way though, it’s a strange one.

Joe Cannon has been very outspoken about the team and the performances. He is now no longer on Twitter and no longer the starter. That conspiracy theory side of me wonders if the writing was on the wall for him as soon as he gave the Southsiders $1000 for drinks after the Galaxy defeat.

At the other end of the pitch, things were simply sublime.

Eric Hassli had a fantastic game. It’s frustrating in a way because he doesn’t show it all the time and does blow a little hot and cold.

He was hot as hell on Sunday.

He’ll be kicking himself at the penalty miss that deprived him off his hat-trick, but that strike for the opening goal was simply perfect.

When he went to shoot instead of taking it in further, I was saying to myself “don’t shoot from there”. What do I know?!

To have that composure and that confidence in the opening seconds, to find the perfect postage stamp corner, is the mark of a class player.

His footwork and contribution to the third goal was his highlight of the game for me.

I love how he spins around and used his build to prevent getting knocked off the ball. Doesn’t work all the time, but it makes it so difficult to defend and to dispossess him.

That third goal is possibly my favourite Whitecaps goal of the season.

It was almost perfect football. 13 passes, 41 seconds, spraying the ball all around the pitch. That’s how football should be played.

Camilo’s little spin to outfox the two Fire defenders was also class.

Hassli may have been getting all of the post-game plaudits, but I think a case could be argued that Camilo earned the actual ‘man of the match’ award.

It was nice to leave Empire on a high for the first time, in a long time.

We may not have much to play for but I want to see us build some momentum to take into the off season.

We don’t do well after a win. We need to change that.

Let’s go on a run and keep it going well after Portland.

Everything in the garden isn’t quite rosy yet, but it’s starting to look like we’ve done the watering.

Mon the Caps.