MLS’ Matt Doyle, their stats guru and therefore the king of the realtors, put it this way: “[Minnesota United} is already good. With two DP slots open and the summer window opening in six weeks, they have an opportunity to be more than that.” That illustrates both the Loons’ present opportunity and the challenge that comes with it. This team is playing damn close to their talent ceiling in a way they seldom have before. So while the summer transfer window usually opened with an obvious need – striker, it was always striker – and some other places it would be nice to improve, this year’s team doesn’t have the same glaring weakness.
With 2-3 games in hand over all the teams ahead of them, the Loons are tied for 6th in goals scored and tied for fourth in the Western Conference. They’re outperforming their expected goals a bit offensively (27 scored on 22.75 expected) but not in a way that means the second half of the season is guaranteed to feature a wild regression.
Defensively, they sit 10th in goals allowed and tied for sixth in the West. They’re hewing even closer to their expected goals allowed on this side of the field, giving up 20 goals on 21.9 expected. Dayne St. Clair has been a top-10 shot stopper in MLS this season, but even if he were to falter a little bit in the second half of the season – say, coming out of Copa America – the Loons are unlikely to suddenly give up goals in bunches.
So the Loons can choose to improve either end of the field, but they need to add not just a warm body, not even just a starter, but a player who can turn a top 10 defensive or offensive unit into a top five.
I’m not yet convinced that the hybrid 5-2-3/3-4-3 Eric Ramsay has settled on this season is what he wants to use long term; that will impact how the team invests. But with so much potential to improve the squad and so much progress already made, I doubt the team will let the summer play out without reallocating the salary and slots previously occupied by Emanuel Reynoso. Obviously, they can do more than that if the money is available.
To succeed, Ramsay’s 5-3-2 needs a few things:
- Forwards that can maintain width while attacking and force turnovers with a press
- Wingbacks that can both move into the attack to create overloads and get back to keep the backline from being exposed
- Defenders and defensive midfielders that can hold a high line to snuff out attacks as well as progress the ball.
Obviously this isn’t an exhaustive list of what makes a 5-2-3 work, but it’s a formation that lends itself well to adaptation, which makes assigning definitive characteristics challenging. For example, the powerhouse F.C. Barcelona team of 2008-2009 played in a modified 5-2-3 and gave us an exquisite look at the power of tika-taka. If you just got a cold chill up your spine picturing Kervin Arriaga trying to play Yaya Toure’s role in a tika-taka, I can’t blame you. Ramsay is not a great fool, so it’s safe to assume he’s not going to go that route.
Need 1: Indefatigable Forwards
Improving on Robin Lod and Tani Oluwaseyi is going to be difficult and extremely expensive: Lod’s 1.03 goal-creating actions per 90 is 5th best in the league and Oluwaseyi is tied for SECOND in goals per 90. In Sang Bin Jeong and Bongi Hlongwane, they have two of the most willing pressers Ramsay could ask for on the wings and both players can reasonably be expected to improve. Teemu Pukki hasn’t been the catalytic force the team hoped for, but he’s bought into the system, works incredibly hard, and provides great minutes off the bench doing a lot of thankless work to finish out games.
Could the team try to get better here? Sure, it’s not illegal, but they won’t nor should they.
Need 2: Two-Way Wings
Joseph Rosales has been as revelatory this season as Hlongwane was last year. He fits perfectly into Ramsay’s system and he has consistently put in strong performances the likes of which Minnesota hasn’t seen from a left-sided fullback since Chase Gasper’s promising rookie season. There are rough edges to his game, without a doubt, but I can’t see the team looking to improve on him just because he picks up too many yellow cards.
Adrian Heath often praised D.J. Taylor, calling him the team’s best 1v1 defender, and in Heath’s 4-2-3-1, that was really all Taylor needed to be. He’s still a capable defender, but getting pushed up into the attack more and more is exposing weaknesses in his game. The Loons hadn’t conceded a penalty in their first 12 games of the season before Taylor was called for one in back-to-back games and both times he was rushing back to cover an attacker who had gotten in behind.
I won’t belabor this next point because it’s a whole separate article, but Taylor’s lack of offensive prowess isn’t just a problem in and of itself, it allows teams to swing over to Rosales’ side and make attacking there difficult. The charts below show pretty clearly what Taylor brings to the team:
I think there’s a role for Taylor on this team: Having a player of his caliber coming in to kill off games would be hugely valuable. That said, this is a place where the team can clearly improve the starting XI and a place where improvements will make an outsized difference. Even if they decide not to bring in a starting caliber player, getting more depth should be part of the plan. Jeong played remarkably well for a deputy fullback against Sporting KC, but that shouldn’t be something that happens on anything resembling a regular basis.
Need 3: Stoppers in the Middle
One of the interesting changes in the Loons this season is how much the center backs are allowed to roam. Michael Boxall’s heatmap from the SKC game looks like Wil Trapp’s average heatmap from 2023 and he was far from the only one. Kervin Arriaga’s icing goal in that game came from 11 yards away, not exactly where you expect your CB to be outside of a set-piece situation.
There’s enough interchanging between the backline and the defensive midfield that it works and creates some very fun moments, but it also highlights the Loons’ lack of a true defensive midfielder.
Trapp is looking better this season in large part because his role features what he does well – quickly moving the ball side-to-side to get the defense off balance and passing through the midfield – and less of the intense defensive work that he was asked to do in the 4-2-3-1.
Hassani Dotson doesn’t yet look like he’s all the way back from his injury, Carlos Harvey showed his first promising signs against KC but was quiet before then, and Moses Nyeman is both returning from an injury of his own and didn’t get much playing time even when he was healthy. Could one of these three step up and be the stopper the Loons need? Possibly, but it’s not a risk a team with a belief they can win MLS Cup would take when they don’t need to.
There is a temptation here to set up a false binary here and explore which of the two positions the Loons should address, but here’s the truth: The Loons can afford to make a meaningful addition to both their midfield and their defense. Before Reynoso moved to Mexico, the Loons had the seventh lowest salary burden in MLS. Removing his $2.1 million in guaranteed compensation puts Minnesota third lowest.
The first window for Khaled El-Ahmad will come with a very different pressure than the Loons have faced in the last few seasons: Can he take a team that is performing well and add the pieces they need to make a deep playoff run?