Roster News! Troy Perkins, David Horst Re-Signed, Others Dropped

One thing right after another today. With the sad news of Kevin Goldthwaite's retirement -- due to, I suspect, injuries -- comes more roster news with a couple re-signings and some other, sadly enough, players dropped.

The first bit of news is very welcome to me, personally, as both our star goalkeeper Troy Perkins and up and coming center back defender David Horst were re-signed to new contracts of which we're not quite sure about the details.

I think both signings were fairly obvious.

Troy Perkins had an outstanding year, despite a couple gaffes here and there. It would be difficult to imagine somebody better coming in an taking over at this moment especially because I considered some of those more egregious errors to be put on the defensive backline more so than anything else.

Also coming back for 2012 will be David Horst, who I think thoroughly deserves the new contract. He's still young and what we did see in between a couple injuries was a hell of a lot of potential. It would have been ludicrous to drop him now as I believe he'll become a very competent MLS center back in the years to come.

Now on to the sad new. As with all season ends, some players must be let go. I don't relish writing about this and I feel for the players dropped, but this is just how the game works.

The players dropped officially are:

• Adin Brown - goalkeeper
• Kevin Goldthwaite - center back (retired)
• Rodrigo Lopez - midfielder
• Peter Lowry - midfielder
• Ryan Pore - midfielder
• Spencer Thompson - forward
• Brian Umony - forward

The big name that stands out for many of us who were fans of the Timbers prior to MLS will be Ryan Pore. It's difficult to see such a cherished player with great memories dropped. Unfortunately he just never fit in with the current line up and didn't shine like we all hoped he would. I hope he's able to find a home with the Montreal Impact or some other MLS team.

I'm also a little bummed that Peter Lowry was dropped. He didn't see much regular season playing time, but he was a definite star of the reserve side. I was hoping to see more of him in 2012. Also, we've definitely lost one of the funniest Twitter-ers, if that counts for anything.

The rest should be fairly obvious, as sad as it sounds. Adin Brown didn't really impress and was constantly injured. We never saw Rodrigo Lopez or Spencer Thompson in a regular season match and Brian Umony's loan deal was up. Simple as that.

With these reductions the current Timbers is just 22 players which leaves, as you could probably guess, plenty of room for additions when the transfer window opens in January.

Here is the current roster:

Goalkeepers (2): Jake Gleeson, Troy Perkins
Defenders (8): Eric Brunner, Mike Chabala, Futty Danso, David Horst, Lovel Palmer, Steve Purdy, Chris Taylor, Rodney Wallace
Midfielders (8): Eric Alexander, Kalif Alhassan, Freddie Braun, Diego Chara, Jack Jewsbury, James Marcelin, Darlington Nagbe, Sal Zizzo
Forwards (4): Kenny Cooper, Bright Dike, Eddie Johnson, Jorge Perlaza