SALT LAKE CITY – It’s been a busy week for Real Salt Lake General Manger Garth Lagerwey. RSL traded three starters for allocation money on Monday, and they are now waiting to see if star midfielder Javier Morales will accept their latest contract extension to stay with the team.
“It’s always a two-way street when you do a contract negotiation,” said Lagewey. “I want to think Javier wants to come back, certainly we would like to have him back. We think we’ve made an offer that reflects that we want him back, but now the ball is really now in his court.”
RSL made a big move on monday, trading forward Fabian Espindola and defender Jamison Olave to New York, and midfielder Will Johnson to Portland.
“It’s three guys that have been a part of our team for a long time, but we knew we needed to cut our salary by about 25 percent,” said Lagerwey.
But he wouldn’t call this a rebuilding project.
“We are keeping eight out of 11 starters, we freed up some resources we feel like over the long term we can really make our team better through these moves, even though they are painful at first.”
A big part of that improvement will on scoring more goals. RSL did not score a goal in the final five games of the season.
“We traded some guys who are more defensive-type players on bigger salaries to try to reallocate some sources to bring in some more attacking players.”
