Expansion Draft Unprotected List Out

Today the league released the list of players that have been exposed by their teams for Wednesday's expansion draft for the Montreal Impact. Plenty of arguments are made about how bad the expansion draft is. Teams do work to develop players than have to lose one of those players to an expansion team. Kansas City's list was what most people expected except for one exception. Kansas City protected Davy Arnaud, Matt Besler, Teal Bunbury, Julio Cesar, Aurelien Collin, Roger Espinoza, Kei Kamara, Chance Myers, Jimmy Nielsen, CJ Sapong, and Graham Zusi.

That leaves Korede Aiyegbusi, Omar Bravo, Daneil Cyrus, Birahim Diop, Jeferson, Michael Harrington, Eric Kronberg, Scott Lorenz, Lawrence Olum, Peterson Joseph, Craig Rocastle, Soony Saad, Luke Sassano, Seth Sinovic, Milos Stojcev, Shvar Thomas, and Konrad Warzycha.

The one surprise for most people was the inclusion of Arnaud on the list over someone like Sinovic. Sinovic had become a starter basically around the Gold Cup basically leading to Espinoza's move to the midfield. Arnaud on the other hand lost his starting spot as the season went on with Espinoza's emergence along with Cesar and Zusi holding down the midfield. Arnaud is the club's captain though and the all time leader in appearances. But I would have thought his salary of $250,000 would have been enough to keep Montreal from taking Arnaud.

I can also see the reason for the way things were done as well. With both Sinvoic and Harrington left available it would certainly seem those two would be the favorites to be taken. Both have proven that they can be starters in the league, neither is incredibly expensive, although Sinovic's $42,000 is much lower than Harrington's $110,000, but Harrington has made over double the appearances that Sinovic has. It would appear to be similar to the situation a few years ago when KC left both of their young center backs, Tyson Wahl and Aaron Hohlbein, available for the Seattle Sounders in the expansion draft. Unfortunately that move doesn't appear to have worked out as the Sounders selected Wahl, he's still with them, while Hohlbein is currently in the NASL. Hopefully if this same scenario plays out KC ends up on the good side of this move.

The other potential worries some people have is losing the team's young striker, Soony Saad in the draft. The fact that both Sinovic and Harrington can and have started in this league combined with Montreal likely looking for a few starters in the draft, Sinovic and Harrington seem to be much more likely to be selected than the 19 year old. The other one is leaving designated player, Omar Bravo, exposed. It's not totally surprising, despite what the salary said on the players' union website I guarantee he's not making that amount and Montreal knows it. Does it speak to Bravo and Vermes relationship? I doubt that as well.

Plenty of other surprising players have been exposed by their teams. Looking through the list I have to question what Chivas (Blair Gavin and Zarek Valentin) and Colorado (Kosuke Kimura) were thinking exposing those 3 guys, Montreal certainly has some decent selections that they could choose from.