Erik Soler's Reasoning for the Cooper Deal

In case you missed it, yesterday, before the opening salvos of the 2012 MLS Draft could even start, the Bulls made a trade to bring forward Kenny Cooper to New York in exchange for allocation money and a 2013 first round pick, kicking off a wave of speculation that Juan Agudelo could be leaving, it could be a change in tactics for the team or that Thierry Henry is going on an extended loan to Arsenal.

Anyway, GM Erik Soler offered some reasoning behind the move, and it seems like a pretty well reasoned move.

On shopping Agudelo:

"No we're not ... There's been interest in Juan ever since I came here. There's a lot of clubs that want him, and at some stage he'll probably go abroad, but I think the time isn't there yet."

On the trade as a depth move:

"We have a situation where we have Juan Agudelo where he will play for the Olympic team, he's going to be playing qualifiers, he's going to be away with the (senior) national team the way it looks, so he's going to be away for a long time ... We simply need to ensure that we don't get into a situation where we have injuries and have no one to put up top."

On what it means for Luke Rodgers:

"We have to be open to the fact that Luke Rodgers had a one-year visa and that visa isn't renewed at this very moment ... We think it will be, but it's not for sure.

"We think there's a good chance, but he had the (criminal) record before he came. He's been absolutely fantastic when he's been here. There's no reason we think not to have the visa, but still it's not on our table and we don't want to take any risk."

On Cooper, generally:

"Kenny Cooper is a player that I tried to move out of the U.S. five years ago to Rosenborg in Norway when he went to 1860 Munich ... He's a good player that will suit us. He's big. He's not really a target man, but he's good with his feet, he can move around and he can score goals."

So there you have it. Some seemingly sound reasoning for why we brought Cooper in.

EDIT: I thought I had added the link in the initial post, but to give credit where credit is due, the quotes come from this story by Soccer By Ives' Avi Creditor. I'd like to apologize to SBI and Creditor. I didn't intend to take quotes without proper attribution.