By JOSE M. ROMERO
The Portland Timbers continue to revamp their MLS roster, on Monday parting ways with yet another expansion draft pick and adding a former Arsenal system product.
Portland traded defender Jordan Graye, who spent his rookie MLS season with D.C. United before the Timbers took him in the expansion draft last month, to the Houston Dynamo for a fourth-round Superdraft pick in 2014.
Timbers technical director Gavin Wilkinson also announced the signing of defender Kerrea Gilbert, a 23-year-old from London who has bounced around English soccer on loan to various clubs from Arsenal.
Gilbert has a goal and an assist in 92 career games played in England. His most recent team was Peterborough United. Arsenal released Gilbert at the end of the 2009-2010 season.
"He will be a great addition to the squad,” Timbers head coach John Spencer said in a statement from the club. “Kerrea comes to us from a club with tremendous history and tradition. On the playing side, he’s a typical Arsenal fullback who likes to attack for 90 minutes."
Wilkinson believes Gilbert is the type of player the Timbers seek — athletic and hard-working. Gilbert will be an outside back.
With Graye's departure, the only Timbers that remain from the expansion draft are defenders Eric Brunner and David Horst and midfielders Peter Lowry and Adam Moffat. Portland has traded away four for players, future draft picks or allocation money, and owns the rights to two other picks, Robbie Findley and Jonathan Bornstein, who are either signed to a foreign club (Bornstein) or exploring options abroad (Findley).
ehh its “the rose city red” kit
Good point – I agree that having to share the expansion draft made it harder for each team to find talent. Perhaps I should reconsider how many useful players each team will be able to acquire through the expansion draft.
However, I still think there were enough players out there for each team to draft/trade for at least three or four major contributors. I’m not sure that’s happened. But we’ll see.
If someone’s dumb enough to not want to live and play in Toronto or Vancouver, then you should trade them for a bag of used practice balls.
Man, that away kit is U-G-L-Y. It ain’t got no alibi.
Did Seattle share the expansion draft?
Gilbert was a guy you thought was gone but all of the sudden an article would come out that he was on loan again. I’m shocked Arsenal kept him as long as they did.
Are they going to sign Mark Randall next????
There were two teams picking this year. If both players keep 2-3 players that would equal the 4-6 of Seattle. Not that I understand only getting a 4th round pick in 3 years for a player.
I agree that teams do not need to field competitive sides right now. If you read my comment carefully, I never said that either Portland or Vancouver needed to field sides that were competitive “now.”
Seattle found several players who were either starters or provided significant depth in the last two years:
Nate Jaqua
Brad Evans
James Riley
Jeff Parke
Nathan Sturgis
Tyson Wahl
Jaqua, Riley and Evans started nearly all of the inaugural season. Wahl and Sturgis were frequent subs. This year, Parke and Sturgis found their way into the starting lineup, while Jaqua and Evans were limited due to injury.
My point is this – you need to get more than 2 starters out of the expansion draft. You need a few starters and depth. Whether you turn those draft picks around and get starters/depth via trade is irrelevant.
Despite your response, I am still left wondering how either team is going to fill numerous holes prior to the start of the season. They simply cannot sign enough international players and draft enough productive players to fill all those holes. Perhaps the domestic guys they’ve signed to date will fill those holes (like Alonso did for Seattle). But it remains to be seen.
All this….I seriously don’t understand the need to trade him. He’s probably not good enough to be a starter, but Portland needs more than just a starting XI. He’s ok depth at a young age and super cheap price. Thinking the DCU extortion was right, but man I wouldn’t have minded getting stuck with him.
A thought occurred to me….Toronto drafted a bunch of guys and then discovered that some wouldn’t play in Canada or couldn’t get work permits. You’d have assumed that they’d have thought of that ahead of time but obviously they didn’t. I wonder what prep Vancouver did on this matter? It could also have implications for the 2nd round of the player draft coming up this Wednesday.
No they don’t need to field sides that are competitive right now. If that were the case, a number of non-expansion teams would flunk (b/c they have holes they haven’t filled, have guys recovering from surgery, etc.).
They need to field competitive sides by the start of the season, not before. What history shows is that the only teams who’ve relied on the expansion draft to get a lot of starters were teams that sucked with a great sucking. If you can get 2 starters who stick with your team as starters more than one year (while you’re proving to not be dreck) than you’ve had a massive expansion draft.
Ives said at the time that picking Graye was a stupid pick and it’s turned out to be that way. A 4th round pick in 2014 is more like a 5th round pick. Here’s why:
–add more expansion teams
–as more academy players end up in college and teams declare academy rights and exempt them from the draft
–more American players going overseas rather than MLS.
Right now, in 2011 the draft will probably be thinner by about 5-7 players (guys who clubs claim or who would have been drafted but go overseas). By 2014 that number is likely to be 15 or even more. So that 2014 4th round pick is really more like a 5th round pick.
Maybe Graye will stick with Houston: he young, decent speed, and will go forward down the flanks so he fits their scheme. But he’s really, really, really raw.
The way I interpret this is that either Portland picked him figuring they could extort a draft pick from DCU (like a #3 pick or maybe higher) and couldn’t, or they picked him and then didn’t like what they picked, or Graye told them he wasn’t willing to move all the way to the West Coast. With DCU he was close to home, knew the team management and saw what the team did with another academy player (Quinn) so he probably felt like he had as much security as any 4th round rookie could have in MLS.
The argument that Gilbert renders Graye excess to requirements is just silly. The team doesn’t have anything close to a roster yet. For instance, it’s naive to believe that Gilbert is a lock to make the team at this point–maybe he will or maybe he’ll be a complete washout. And Graye can play left or right back so it’s not like he and Gilbert are in direct competition for one spot. Graye is cheap and young and a decent athlete. So to trade him at this point says they’ve concluded he wasn’t a wise pick for one reason or another.
Good move on Houston’s side. Dump Cochrane and Serioux in the re-entry draft, then pick up a young, promising player for next to nothing. Graye has Chabala and Hainault ahead of him, but has a good shot at starting if either is injured. He will definitely get playing time with the reserves. Hope he doesn’t mind the demotion. Kinnear is great at developing talent, so this might be better in the long run.
Kerrea Gilbert and Graye both play the same position, Graye is not needed anymore since Gilbert is a better fit for Spencer’s style of play. Instead of waiving him and getting nothing, they at least got a 4th round pick out of him.
All these trades make me wonder whether Portland and Vancouver have some master plan nobody else knows about. I understand trading away some of the expansion draft players, but at some point these teams need to try and field sides that are competitive. I have serious doubts that either side will be able to do this unless they make several international signings and have great drafts.
And even then, both sides will probably have gaping holes.
you’re right Mike McGee and Ubiparapovic wouldn’t have been good additions to either team and considering that when teams have 40% of salary invested in big name players they would be more likely have to have talented players on the cheap to actually be a good team. Whatever the argument though that doesn’t answer my first and major point.
NY had some depth but 3 players retired and 3 of the players had salaries that wasn’t going to be picked up
Jermy Hall would have been picked if he wasn’t traded to Portland
So… the value of Jordan Graye is a 4th round pick in 2014?
If thats the case, why the hell did Portland draft him in the expansion draft?
Are we to then interpret that the value of a mid to late expansion round draft pick is the equivalent of a 4th round pick in the superdraft in 3 years?
This is odd. You’d like to know what Portland is thinking, because you really want to think they didn’t just wing the draft, but wow.
Don’t be ignorant. Rsl was deep but la and nyrb had very little in terms of depth due to how much of the salary cap their big names take.
It helps his development because he is now being developed by Dom Kinnear.
I look at it that its a lotto ticket for the team. If either comes back, Portland own the rights and if they can’t use them, someone would be willing to trade something for either. If they don’t come back, then you didn’t lock up any salary/roster spots, and maintained the flexibility they obviously were looking for.
I have not been a big fan of just picking guys in the expansion draft and then dumping them for nothing. I don’t really care from the expansion side point of view but think it is unfair treatment to the player and his rights with the league. Jordan Graye is a local DC kid and gets PT in his first year with DC but DC doesn’t have room to protect him and prob. thinks who would pick a kid who played 20 games on the worst defense in the MLS last year and then bam Portland picks him with no intention to keep him and dumps him for nothing for a team to take a flyer on him- how does this help in the development of young players? how is this fair to the player who has zero rights when expansion draft comes?
Also how did some of the top teams not have any players picked in the expansion draft, this is still baffling- arguably the three deepest teams in the MLS last year were RSL, Red Bulls and LA and only RSL loses players with one who only played in USL and the other with a slim chance to sign. Seems bogus and fishy.
Gilbert is a nice player. He was unfortunate to be stuck behind Sagna, Eboue, Justin Hoyte, and Gavin Hoyte at Arsenal.
Maybe they never had any intentions for either player but considering trades were done with both RSL and Chivas it almost seems that part of the deal was picking the player: why? bc then the team was able to either add an extra player to its protected roster or it became the second player taken and they no longer could get anymore players picked. I think it is funny no one has brought up this scenario- looking at RSL lineup and its unprotected players it made zero sense for a team to take Findley but when you consider right after the draft RSL makes a trade with Portland it seems to make a little more sense now
At the very least, Gilbert will feel a home in the secondary Timbers kit.
Spencers a crafty fellow. given that we traded earlier to for extra international spots, im thinking he just took players to take players, and wasnt really counting on the expansion draft at all for talent
Strange to see a trade for picks in a draft that won’t happen for 3 years. Usually you only see that when you’re trying to offload a guy to make roster space, but that wouldn’t seem to be a problem for Portland, heh. And Portland didn’t take any Houston players in the expansion draft so it wouldn’t appear to be a bit of recompense.
Yeah we haven’t traded Findley or Bornstein, Romero got that wrong. But neither is likely to play next year for us.
Sounds like a good addition. What happened to Findley, though?