Rumor: Terrence Boyd eyeing loan from RB Leipzig to New York Red Bulls

Taylor Twellman has put an end to the long wait for a viable New York Red Bulls transfer rumor:

.@TBoyd91 is looking to be going on loan with @NewYorkRedBulls for the 2017 @MLS season. Took a tour of the facilities last week.

— Taylor Twellman (@TaylorTwellman) December 12, 2016

The surprise is it took so long for this to be suggested.

Terrence Boyd joined RB Leipzig in the summer of 2014, but his time at the club has been severely disrupted by injury. For pretty much the first time in two seasons, he finally returned to full fitness this summer, but the team he joined had moved on and moved up (from 2. Bundesliga to the German top flight) and the 25-year-old forward has reportedly been made available for transfer.

But who wants a player who has barely been able to play for the best part of two years? The last time Leipzig had trouble with a talented-but-injury-prone forward, the solution was a series of loans around the Red Bull family of soccer clubs. Omer Damari was sent first to Salzburg, then to RBNY.

Neither move was particularly successful, but Boyd's circumstances looked conspicuously similar to those of Damari: he's no longer in Leipzig's plans, he hasn't shown enough of anything recently to have much transfer value - why not let a fellow Red Bull club try to rehabilitate his fortunes with the promise of playing time in a familiar system?

A move to RBNY in particular might suit Boyd, who is in the US Men's National Team player pool. He has played for America, but never for an American club.

Any move to RBNY would need to be cleared by MLS, of course, and satisfy whatever remains of the league's eminently flexible rules about the allocation of players to its teams. But if Boyd has got as far along in his thinking as to visit the RBNY facilities, perhaps MLS' opaque transfer mechanisms are not an issue.