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Looking forward to expansion draft....

So 2011 was the last transfer draft and the rules were roughly this: You could protect 11. Most DP's, GA's, and home growns were protected by default. Assuming roughly the same rules, here's one fans view of how to approach it and what players end up at risk.

First, who's protected. I'm going to assume that Tshuma (GA), Valeri (DP), Adi (DP) and Ridgewell(DP) are already protected. That may not be true, but it's my assumption.

Moving on, I would break players into 3 lists: Definitely protect, bubble/at risk, and unprotected.

Note: This is what I would do, not necessarily what I think the Timbers will do.

Definitely Protect: Gleeson, Harrington, Villafana, Chara, Will Johnson, Nagbe, Wallace, Fernandez, Urutti, (that's 9). I'm going to only list 9 because you may have to protect one or two of the people I thought were protected.

Unprotected/with Reasons:

- Keepers: I wouldn't protect Rickets at this point, I think we need to move on and use his salary.

- Defenders: Kah/Paparrato/McKenzie/Peah/Powell/O'Rourke/Gallego. We need to find the pairing with Ridgewell and a couple of good backups, and I'm not sure we have them. We also need to go get another lateral defender or two. I'd like to keep Peah, but I think he's so little known there's little risk of losing him. Ditto Gallego.

- Mids: Alhassan, Zakuani, Nanchoff, Zemanski, Evans, Fochive. If I come out the first phase with a couple more to protect I would pick them out of this list, Zemanski first and then probably Alhassan.

All in all, it doesn't look disastrous to me, but there's certainly some decisions to make. I imagine contract status influences it heavily but I don't know enough of the details to build that thinking in. Anyway, add your thoughts.

This FanPost was written by a Stumptown Footy community member and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the site or its staff.

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