For the second time in two years, Real Salt Lake was the unlikely winner of an MLS weighted lottery on Friday, landing former Everton reserve and Vancouver Whitecaps pro Cody Arnoux.
RSL boasted just a 5.4 percent chance of winning the lottery this time around after snagging Kyle Davies despite similarly long odds in 2009.
“We did not have a very good chance,” RSL GM Garth Lagerwey told MLSsoccer.com. “Miracles never cease.”
The immediate question resulting from the Arnoux lottery is whether or not RSL intend to keep their newest player, despite salary cap issues.
“With any player we acquire, we want to understand what we have,” Lagerwey said. “There’s certainly no rush to do anything.
“The reason we entered the lottery was because we feel he’s a good player that can make a difference for us.”
Lagerwey also distinguished this acquisition from the Davies situation, in which the team traded the player shortly after winning his rights via lottery. The coaching staff was divided on the potential of Davies.
That’s not the case with Arnoux.
“Everybody on our staff likes Cody Arnoux,” Lagerwey said. “Good young players like Cody – a player that’s very inexpensive on the salary cap, and especially forwards at that price - are very hard to find. It is adding cap to us, but we just have to look at the whole picture of the team and decide what’s best for the team.”
Although Arnoux is coming off a knee-injury last fall, this isn’t likely an issue to RSL.
“He’s a potential long-term contributor,” Lagerwey said. “ I would look at him as any other draft pick. He is a player that is very talented that can help us a year or two from now.”
