Welcome to From The Upper Deck, my blog about RSL and soccer in general. I have a lot of passion for the beautiful game. I am just a fan that likes to sit in the upper deck and take it all in.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

2015 Expansion Draft- Season Update

By Charles Barnard

"Time is marching on. And time......is still marching on"

Above is a quote from the They Might Be Giants song "Older". Time is marching on and everyday we are one day closer to the 2015 expansion draft. When I first wrote about this topic back in February I heard a couple of comments saying the draft was so far away. Why even think about it now? But as we are now a third of the way through the MLS season I am starting to hear more and more people talk about it. Who should we protect? Who do we think will be drafted?

I thought the time was perfect to revisit my look at the draft and conduct a new poll. Things are different now than they were back in February. We have much more information than we did at in the off season. Back at that time only 50% of those that responded to my survey chose to protect Joao Plata. After conducting the survey this time I am guessing that number will go up. Back in early February no one really had any idea who Luke Mulholland was. Knowing what you do now would you add him to your protection list?

I am very excited to see the answers to these questions. This is the exact reason why I started writing these expansion articles to begin with.

As a reminder, here are the rules that I am using for the expansion draft in this poll. Since the official rules have not been released I am somewhat guessing what the rules will be. You can protect 11 players. Home Grown players will be automatically protected so you don't need to worry about protecting players like Jordan Allen. Remember that even though Carlos Salcedo did go to the academy he did not sign as a Home Grown player so he is eligible for the draft. In the past teams had to protect their DP players, but for today's purposes I am not having that rule in place.

This is where you come in. Please go here and fill out who you think the 11 players that should be protected in the draft. Do take age into consideration but don't worry about things like player's contracts as that information is not readily available.  I will post a follow up article in a few days with the results of the poll along with who I chose to protect.



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