That means we'll have one, two, three.....

The Metrologist apologizes for his post-draft hiatus, but he's only just come to after passing out. It's bound to happen when you hold your breath for a week and a half, waiting for the other shoe to finally drop on the Amado, Eddie and Ante trades (while simulataneously racking your brain for more cliches to describe the situation). Just imagine that multi-pronged attack - Eddie and Edson blazing past helpless defenders, Youri and Al Ocation spreading passes left and right from midfield, and Chelsea phenom Joe Keenan holding it down at the back. Did you smell Metro glory? Because I did.

Of course, it never came to pass. Perhaps because the first, floppy-haired domino to fall got picked up at the last minute, and our first rounder sent to California for Marvell Wynne.

That left many Metro fans (The Metrologist included) a little surprised, but heaving a sigh of relief. Well, not so fast. Michael Lewis writes this morning that Amado and Eddie could be packaged up and sent to an unnamed team for a player and allocation. Metrofanatic does a good job of reading my thoughts on such a deal; who on Columbus and KC (the most likely trading partners) is worth swapping Guevara for straight up, never mind along with Gaven? No one, I say.

Sure, there's an allocation in there, too. And just look at some of the recent success stories that have come via the allocation process. DaMarcus Beasley begat Andy Herron, Cory Gibbs begat Pando Ramirez, Carlos Bocanegra brought back Samuel Caballero. And how we could forget that part of the Donovan allocation landed us Daniel Garipe?

Yikes.

In the past few weeks, we've learned a little lesson about dashing for the fire extinguisher at the first wisp of smoke (keep in mind, Matchnight and Big Apple Soccer were reporting the Gaven-Buddle deal as done). But the smell of smoke is still blowing around the Swamp; Amado's coming back from Honduras (sometime) carrying two jerry cans of gasoline, along with a couple pounds of nitroglycerine in his pockets. And he's promising to do jumping jacks. Let's just hope Molexi know what they're doing.

EDIT for a thought: On that note, Marc Connelly over at the second-best Connecticutite-penned soccer blog notes how the longer this goes on, the more Amado's trade value falls. I'm afraid that's awfully optimistic of him. It may already be a lot lower than we think, and it has little to do with time. The moment Amado made noises about jaking his way out of the Metros, every GM in the league had to be thinking "if he would do it to them, he might do it to us, too." So he's contributed to driving his own stock down, and Alexi seems likely to hold the line and not get rooked.
Oh yes, it's a mess.

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I'm not sure what he'd say now if you could find him, but a few weeks ago Sol Campbell was again quoted as being interested in playing for the "Metro Stars" in a couple years, when (we assume) he is old and unreliable. "Or somewhere like that."