A Statement of Principle, And A Plea

Although the New York Red Bulls' 2011 season ended just a week ago after defeat to the LA Galaxy, there have already been more rumors about transfers and trades into and out of the club than I can count. If such rumors are to be believed, we are about to sign Frank Lampard, Dimitar Berbatov, Didier Drogba, and Kaká, among many others. Tim Ream and Juan Agudelo will definitely be sold, and half of the team will be traded to other MLS clubs.

All of those things could happen, in theory. It is far more likely that none of those things will happen.

This is all that we know: the New York Red Bulls will not play a competitive football match again until next March. On the appointed day, eleven players will take the field, there will be some number of substitutes on the bench (between zero and seven), they will be directed by a coach, and they will attempt to direct a spherical object between two poles and under a third pole. Hopefully, they will also try to prevent our opponents from directing a spherical object between two poles and under a third pole, but that's not guaranteed.

We don't know who will take the field next season, we don't know for sure who the coach will be (although it seems extremely unlikely that Hans Backe will not return), and we don't know how many subs he will use or not use.

Transfer rumors are inherently speculative. Most of the time they aren't true. While we may discuss transfer rumors here on Once A Metro occasionally during the off-season, it's not our raison d'etre. That's not why this site exists. We do our best to produce insightful, interesting, and sometimes humorous writing about the Red Bulls, and give you a place to debate and discuss that writing. We're not here to troll for hits and give fans false hope about a transfer-window Messiah.

As a corollary, I have to ask our fine members to post links to transfer rumors judiciously. I'm not going to take FanShots or FanPosts down, and I may put up an omnibus thread for transfer speculation, but I think we can agree that most transfer rumors are a waste of everyone's time. While I appreciate you taking time to reading our site, I'd rather you read some interesting content instead of endless, mindless speculation.