It's almost that time again, folks. Another team is going to enter the hallowed land of MLS and in doing so they're going to take some of our stuff. And don't kid yourselves. Unless the Seattle Sounders and the incoming Montreal Impact work out some sort of deal, we're going to lose a player. Seattle's a tremendously successful and deep franchise and the list of players that have played significant minutes in big games this season is much more than 11 deep, which is all we get to protect.
Last season we gave the readers a chance to vote on protected 11 before the Portland Timbers and Vancouver Whitecaps held their expansion draft. Our list of most protected differed from the final list by three players. While Sounder at Heart readers protected Blaise Nkufo, Patrick Ianni, and Leo Gonzalez, the team protected James Riley, Brad Evans, and Nate Jaqua. The front office seems to have the better of that comparison, as Nkufo, Ianni, and Gonzalez went unpicked by the two expansion teams.
This season we're going to do it again. As far as we can tell, only Michael Tetteh (as a Generation Adidas player) is immune from the expansion draft and so we must pick 11 to protected from the entire rest of the roster. Make your 11 picks and then see what the rest of the community thinks.