Tuesday, May 14, 2013

When Do You Consider Recalling Dwyer?

To say that Dom Dwyer has had a stellar start to his loan time at Orlando City may be an understatement.  Sporting KC's first round draft pick in the 2012 SuperDraft is off to a flying start in Orlando.  Through 8 games for Orlando, Dwyer has scored 10 goals already.  That's double the amount of goals as the next highest scorer Joseph Ngwenya (although he's played half as many games as Dwyer has). 

His two latest goals came in Orlando's 2-0 win over the Seattle Sounders reserves on Sunday in Seattle.  Plenty of comments can be made regarding the level of competition in the USL-Pro league, the third division of US Soccer, but you can't deny an output of over a goal a game for Dwyer with Orlando.  And in the last game against Seattle the lineup included players that have regularly appeared in league play for the Sounders, including Patrick Ianni, Jhon Kennedy Hurtado, Steve Zakuani, including others.  And he looked pretty good doing it as well with a few other chances that were blocked or well saved.

With this success you have to begin to wonder if and when Peter Vermes will look to recall the Englishman to Kansas City. You can't coach form and right now, Dwyer is in a very good run of form at the moment.  Other than the win over Chivas, KC has struggled at times to find the net.  And with the US Open Cup starting in a few weeks and Champions League starting later this summer, KC could use a guy that is putting the ball in the back of the net.

Vermes has said in the past that if he does call up one of his players that is on loan with Orlando he'd try to send a replacement to Orlando, with there being only four players currently in Orlando, per the terms of the deal, Vermes would need to send a player down to replace Dwyer.  The logical choice for KC to send should they recall Dwyer would be Soony Saad who since the healthy return of Jacob Peterson and return of Kei Kamara has found his chances limited. A chance for Saad to get game time and get his confidence up the way that Dwyer is currently would be a big boost for Sporting KC as the season progresses. But on the other hand Dwyer would likely be behind Claudio Bieler and CJ Sapong should he return with Dwyer being more of a center forward.  And with Teal Bunbury looking like he could return in June, that'd put Dwyer further down the depth chart at the center forward position.  But again with KC potentially competing in 3 competitions later this summer depth will be tested and needed for those games.

The odd thing is that with KC's current issues on the back line it could be another loanee that could get an emergency return to KC, at least for this weekend's game against DC.  With Aurelien Collin suspended and Matt Besler still recovering from a knee injury KC's only has 2 players likely to play center back, Ike Opara and Lawrence Olum.  That could potentially see Vermes recall Yann Songo'o, who has played every minute for Orlando so far this season, at least to have center back coverage on the bench.  If Vermes decides not to recall Songo'o the likely center back coverage would seem to be Michael Thomas who has played there in games against college teams during the season so far.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i've thought about this too. just to begin with, i think no matter what you have to send teal to orlando when he is ready to play. just a standard injury rehab trip to the minors like they do with baseball pitchers. also, i get the feeling vermes likes saad in the attacking mid role rather than forward. and i get the feeling that kei is leaving with the transfer window. these are all factors. i could see dwyer being recalled when kei leaves, and hopefully teal will be ready to go down at the same time.