Tell me how am I supposed to live without you?

Darth Vader takes the Raivas Hscanovics news badly!

Alright, so the off season is well and truly under way, starting with an all action expansion draft.  Vancouver picked their ten players and then promptly traded 4 of them away, for international player spots and allocation money, which given how American players are no longer considered internationals for the Canadian clubs, suggests they've got something up their sleeve that's better than MLS castoffs.  Portland also traded away two of their picks for allocation money and a 2011 superdraft pick, one of which was Anthony Wallace, the Colorado full back, who they sold back to the Rapids, in a pre-arranged deal that also allowed Colorado to put Wells Thompson back into their protected list, and thus maintain the core of their cup winning side.  Colorado also picked up Seattle winger Sanna Nyassi via Vancouver, which when combined with Omar Cummings and Macoumba Kandji gives them three very fast and tricky players to work around Conor Casey, in what could be a very exciting attack next year.

There was only one TFC player taken and the big surprise for Reds fans was that O'Brian White was that man, picked by Vancouver and later traded to Seattle for allocation money.  What exactly was Seattle thinking?

“O’Brian is a forward with good pace and size” head coach Sigi Schmid said.  “He adds another option for us in our desire to be a club that scores goals.”

Owner/GM Adrian Hanauer said.  “O’Brian had a tremendous college career and he adds depth and competition at the forward position.  He can strike from distance with both feet and is a player that can be impact on our roster.”

Can be impact?  I presume that's just a transcription error, but if not, well there's your answer TFC fans, they were drunk.  Part of me wants to be fatalistic and say that White is now bound to become another player who does well after leaving and will score an important goal against TFC at least once next year, but I really can't figure out how that could possibly happen. 

After those formalities were out of the way, teams were free to start releasing their unwanted players, and TFC jumped into that with a lot of enthusiasm for a club that is still waiting to find out what it's philosophy and direction are.  Gabe Gala, Raivas Hscanovics, Maxim Usanov, Martin Saric and Mista were all let go, and all passed through the waiver draft to become full free agents available to any MLS club who might want them. 

Saric had moments where he looked useful, but hopefully we won't be playing more than one defensive midfielder next year, so he'd definitely be behind De Guzman and Sanyang for that role and therefore not worth keeping around.  Usanov also had his moments last year, but at over $100,000 was taking up way too much cap space for a player of his sporadic talents.  Hscanovics and Mista?  Don't care at all about either of them, and Gabe Gala?  Well it's a shame to see a young local kid who's been with the club since 2007 go, but he never really looked like breaking into the first team at all, at least he'll always have Real Madrid. 

So some quick and necessary thinning of last year's pitiful herd, with a few more decisions to come soon, Interim Gm Earl Cochrane confirming in a media conference call that they have 7 or 8 players whose options would need to be renewed or not by November 30th.  He also stated quite firmly that Dwayne de Rosario will be with TFC next season, and with reports saying that Bas Ent has already signed a deal with the club, it seems that they aren't letting the lack of a permanent management team get in the way of the decision making.

While in a way that's a good thing, it's also a bit disconcerting.  At the time of his press conference, Jürgen Klinsmann's remark that "maybe the right guys are already here" drew a snort of derision from me, but I was cynically resigned to the fact that Earl and Jimmy Brennan would probably be forced on to the new guy as assistants.  Now, with them so decisively starting the remodelling of the squad, that thought is growing into the fear that this is it, that 'EarlandJimmy' is our braintrust going forward, that Jürgen has come in and just told them what a great job they're doing and to carry on.  I hope I'm wrong, I wouldn't argue with any of the decisions made today, and won't be shedding any tears for the departed, but lettting players go is the easy part, rebuilding will hopefully be the responsibility of someone else.