Offseason Outlook: Atlanta United Football Club
/Atlanta United Offseason Preview
For a brief synopsis of the 2019 regular season, see the postseason preview here.
Roster Construction: 10 remaining players to add
One Reserve Roster Spot
After waiving Patrick Okonkwo (previously on-loan) and Chris Goslin, Atlanta United need to fill one Reserve Roster spot and presumably they will do so with homegrown signing George Campbell, an 18 year-old center back who was part of the inaugural ATLUTD academy team and spent time with ATLUTD in 2018.
Two Supplemental Roster Spots
Following the departure of left back Mikey Ambrose and the new more expensive deal for Miles Robinson, there are two Supplemental Roster spots open, so Atlanta will need to fill these two spots with players who are making the senior minimum, or Generation Adidas, or a specifically designated SuperDraft picks, or a homegrowns. I would bet on a 2020 first round draft pick holding one spot and something creative happening with the other, some sort of loan where Atlanta only pays the senior minimum and the home club takes the rest perhaps.
Seven Senior Roster Spots
Following the retirement of Michael Parkhurst, the departure of Darlington Nagbe to Columbus for $1M and Brandon Vazquez to Cincinnati for $50K and the waiving of Justin Meram, Florentin Pogba, Kevin Kratz, and Brek Shea, Atlanta freed up seven senior roster spots and $2M in wages. This does not take into account Alec Kann who was out of contract at the end of 2019 but to whom Atlanta United have extended an offer and Emerson Hyndman, whose option to buy from Bournemouth is retained by Atlanta through the end of December.
To make things manageable, this write-up presumes both players will eventually sign before 2020 starts, and it also presumes that Atlanta was operating pretty close to budget capacity in 2019 – this means that for every new wage dollar spent in 2020, it must come from a 2019 player being taken off the books. So, if we want to be conservative, we can take $400K to get these players’ deals over the line, leaving us with $1.6M of freed up wages to allocate across seven senior spots.
If we then adjust for what we can only speculate was a very big raise for Miles Robinson, the front office is now working with $1.1M in freed up wages to spread around seven spots. Update: While this article was being written, Atlanta traded $300K allocation for RSL right fullback/winger Brooks Lennon who draws a $230K salary. So let’s call it…a rounded down $800K of freed up 2018 wages to spread around six spots. Next, it is an oversimplification but a helpful one to presume that after paying RSL for Lennon, what is left of the allocation balance from the Vazquez and Nagbe moves will be plowed back into whatever Bournemouth requires to break the remaining six months (reportedly) on Hyndman’s contract with any remainder serving to juice other transfers as the club finds the right pieces for the remaining six spots.
Hopefully that’s all of the boring stuff out of the way. On to some sports:
Footballing Questions: What will happen with the remaining 6 roster spots?
Let’s first take a look at the depth chart, which I’ve transposed back to a 4-3-3 for tradition’s sake, and because de Boer seemed quick to revert back to it in the 2019 playoffs. Below is the 2020 roster in its entirety at time of writing compared to the 2019 beginning of season depth chart:
If in 2019 the desperate need (which was never really addressed) was depth at RB, then on paper at least, heading into 2020 Atlanta United needs to sign a striker or two for depth. While losing Vazquez in the expansion draft may not have seemed like a big deal, Atlanta United are certainly worse without Vazquez, a player who is young, athletic, and scored goals and assists at lower half MLS starter levels – about as good as you can hope for from a backup. Atlanta also definitely needs to sign two defenders for depth and possibly to start, a left back and a center back, or two players who can play either left back or left center back (think Pogba), in a back 3 or in a back four, or a player who can play left wing and left back or left wing back, or some combination therein, again on paper. There are six question marks in the above 2020 lineup graphic, and 6 senior spots still to be filled and perhaps approximately $800K in freed up wages to work with ($133K per spot).
That all makes sense, but if the Atlanta front office goes out and knocks down each one of these targets and successfully finds the right depth pieces for the right prices on paper, something still feels off here doesn’t it? It’s on the one hand too calm of an offseason to be realistic, and on the other hand, it lacks a boldness we’ve become accustomed to with this team – it doesn’t really attempt to improve the team year over year which is almost assuredly the primary goal of the front office in the 2020 offseason, and it feels to me that this lingering feeling stems from a few key points to touch on:
The Midfield
First, there’s Darlington Nagbe, an intriguing player for whom the analytics never quite highlight, but a player who seems vital to the team’s success when you watch the games. If the task of a central midfielder is primarily about retaining possession, moving the ball into the final third, and winning the ball back from the other team, Darlington Nagbe is exceptional at the first two, and good at the third and it’s difficult to imagine a perfect replacement player. It appears based on the high-level budget math above and upon a general assessment of the player that Emerson Hyndman is who the club thinks can do the job. But it’s very difficult to envision there being nothing lost in this transition. And because of that, you wonder if the club will make some other moves to find budget space for another central midfielder. Perhaps, Eric Remedi could be moved and replaced by a player tidier in possession and more keenly aware of the space on the field. To summarize it in a question: Does a midfield of Larentowicz, Hyndman, and an attacking player (Pity/Barco) have the same sort of dynamism and energy, both in attack and in defense, that has been a hallmark of Atlanta United to date? This doesn’t seem like an area on the field that the front office would ever be complacent with.
Keep the ball but also get in the box
Frank de Boer is on record as wanting to dominate games in possession, avoid turnovers mostly, and then to “lock on” to the ball in transition if it is lost to mitigate the damage of any turnovers. As I discussed heading into the 2019 postseason, these principles were challenged by the players last year, and after some conflict, results only began to improve after the team shifted away from a 4-3-3 focus on control and towards a 3-5-2 wide open approach. But this surely is an unstable equilibrium. You would expect that if the 2020 Atlanta United are to be successful, de Boer will have to find the alchemy of controlling the game in possession, but also getting players into the box and pressing high to create transition opportunities. It sounds hard to be honest, but it might be the only way.
Anyhow, a key difference between the controlling Atlanta United of the first half of 2019 and the free-wheeling Atlanta united of the late summer and autumn was the positioning and role of Pity Martinez, the most polarizing player on the team. Early in the season, Pity wanted to be on the ball in wide and central areas in midfield, and Barco wanted to be on the ball in wide and central areas in midfield, and Nagbe wanted to be on the ball in the central areas of the midfield. That left Josef and Gressel the only ones consistently willing to make runs into the box without the ball. To make matters worse, for a team wanting to control play through possession, Pity’s wastefulness on the ball was a real problem, as he consistently put his foot on the ball outside of the box with no one in the penalty area to pick out and endangered his team when the ball was turned over.
When Atlanta switched to a 3-5-2, many things changed. Robinson’s subpar passing out of the back was minimized by his new sweeper position and Gressel’s excellent service into the box was optimized as he consistently found space on the right. But more than these two, I can’t help but key in on Pity’s shift in role and position. By placing the nominal #10 alongside the other Martinez as a forward in a front 2, de Boer asked Pity not only to find space between the lines but also to make runs into the box – you know, the stuff forwards do! And the benefits were three-fold: first by getting into the box he occupied defenders freeing up space for Gressel and others and provided a target for Gressel and others to create for, second it minimized his turnovers and importantly, shifted his turnovers higher up the field to soften their danger, and third, it prevented him from taking the worst shots imaginable over and over again.
What does that all mean for this offseason? Well, if Atlanta plays a 3-5-2, there are different implications for how the front office fills those left-sided defensive spots. They might be more persuaded by available left wingers/attack-minded types to start over or spell George Bello than more traditional fullbacks. And they might want a bit more mobile of a center back to backup Gonzalez Pirez on the left side.
If Atlanta United is to return to a 4-3-3, which they played more often than not in the 2019 playoffs, de Boer will need to solve the aforementioned runners in the box problem, as he will once again have three creators in Barco, Pity, and Hyndman who like to be on the ball just outside the penalty area. Hyndman has shown a knack for making clever runs from midfield just as Gressel has, but you can imagine these types of runs creating team shape problems for a manager so focused on control through possession. And it makes me wonder about Hector Villalba.
SEC Speed
Villalba is a guy who can take on defenders in wide areas and make off-ball runs into the box to create chances and more generally havoc. If de Boer wants to keep it tight in possession until the ball makes its way into the last mile, perhaps he should include Villalba in the team sheet for that final move. And yet, it’s hard to shake the rumors that Villalba will be traded and/or transferred. And to go back to an earlier point that an offseason of filling bench spots with $130K players seems a little too calm, a very plausible domino to fall here would be a Villalba departure, generating roughly $750K of free wages plus whatever transfer/trade price comes with it. While this could be spread across multiple positions, my guess would be they take a flyer on the next Villalba and find a DP-light/heavy TAM teenage attacking international.
All of this assumes there are no bombshells to drop, like Barco or Pity being sold and replaced with a new designated player, or perhaps even more impactfully, LGP or Escobar being sold and not adequately replaced in the TAM market. We can tackle those problems as they arise.
Post Scriptum: Julian Gressel
One of the more interesting offseason stories revolves around the impasse in negotiations between Julian Gressel and the club for a new deal. In short, I don’t see anything significant happening this offseason, but I discussed this thoroughly here.