Fears that TFC's 2 month long wait just to appoint a consultant to help them find their direction in life and a new GM would paralyse the club and leave us falling behind in building next year's team are proving very unfounded as the moves just keep on coming. After Wednesday's loss of O'Brian White to expansion and release of 5 players, and with official confirmation of the Bas Ent signing rumour still pending, a trade was announced on Thursday, Toronto sending their first round pick (8th overall) in the 2011 superdraft to Vancouver Whitecaps in exchange for Nathan Sturgis, who they had just picked up in the expansion draft from Seattle.
Sturgis, 23, has been in MLS for 4 seasons now, and has passed through the expansion draft twice, as that was how Seattle originally picked him up. He formed a partnership with Osvaldo Alonso in Seattle's midfield that helped Seattle to a great second half of the season, and if he could replicate that with Julian De Guzman for the Reds, then this could end up being a very good deal. He can also play at full back, which is definitely a problem position for TFC, so at a salary of $70,000, it seems like a good pick up.
Is the price too high, our first round pick? We probably won't really know the answer to that for a few years when we can see how deep this years draft actually turned out to be. But considering that of the 7 players taken in the expansion draft and subsequently traded, 2 of them, Sanna Nyassi and Alan Gordon were for international player spots, 3 of them, Anthony Wallace, Alejandro Moreno and O'Brian White were for allocation money, and Real Salt Lake gave up only a 2nd round pick, 22nd overall for El Salvador international midfielder Arturo Alvarez, a first round pick does seem to be a bit much.
Overall though I'm reasonably happy with the trade, Sturgis should be a useful player right away for TFC, as opposed to the crapshoot of the draft, but again, much like all the changes made on Wednesday, it's the person making the trade, and what that means going forward that worries me. Fair enough, the Reds are in too much of a mess to be able to stand around and do nothing, and a first round pick is definitely no guarantee of anything, but surely it's the sort of asset that any potential new GM would like to have, to use as he sees fit. The fact that as well as getting rid of last years disappointments, Interim GM Earl Cochrane is now starting the rebuild is a bit alarming to me and suggests further that when all is said and done, the interim will disappear and he'll be the one chosen to implement whatever plan and new philosophy Jürgen Klinsmann identifies for the club. I still can't quite believe that this is what will end up happening, but for those who are ok with it and suggesting Earl's a decent, honest guy, and a smart man who deserves a chance, let me ask a couple of hypothtical questions.
If he had the exact same experience as he has now, but with a different club, and was now available on the free market, would anyone be suggesting TFC should go out and snap him up? No. If Toronto were to release Earl for whatever reason, do you think any other MLS club would be beating down his door to ask him to be their GM? No. So why is he good enough for TFC? Inertia, and 'he's already here so he might as well keep going' can't be good enough reasons to make a full time appointment.
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