Well, first I think about players I think our team could do without. When I realise one of them is Douglas, that's how I say he's expendable.
"How is he expendable?" What a meaningless question. It's my opinion.
By your logic you wouldn't lose any sleep losing anyone bar Sloane/Danger/Tex/Talia/Jacobs/Betts?
Add Smith and maybe Jenkins to that list, and that's pretty well right. That's the core of the team. The rest of the guys, your Jaensch, Wright, Mackay, van Berlo, and yes Douglas types are a dime a dozen.
I'll acknowledge that Dougie is probably a good B grader, but he's certainly not an A grader.
Its all very well for people to use throw away lines about players that aren't elite and say they are easily expendable. His value to our side has been proven over the past 2 years. Was a top 10 player at our club both years.
"Top 10" is a vague and pretty unhelpful descriptor. 2nd is very good. 10th is middle of the road.
Now he had very well publicized problems last year which go some way to explaining a meh season, but the fact is we are not looking at a 22 year old kid anymore. His career hasn't taken the usual trajectory of improvement to a peak in his mid-late 20s. There have been two very sharp peaks amongst a whole pile of meh. Using history as a guide, he probably has another outstanding year left in his career and 3-4 reasonable ones.
I'm not saying he doesn't have value. Just that if there's a squeeze and somebody misses out, he's one who we can replace. You made the point yourself. He's not elite. Replace him with one of the guys I mention below, and we are not a whole lot worse. They may even improve to the point where we become better.
He is also a goalkicking midfielder - a very important aspect our side needs to improve on in 2015.
I'm not convinced "more goals from midfield" was top of Phil Walsh's whiteboard on day 1 of pre-season. Kicking goals is not this team's problem.
If he goes - who replaces him? Its not like we are an elite side with highly ranked juniors busting to get into the team.
Kerridge, Lyons, Grigg and the Crouch brothers played 52 games between the 5 of them last year. Charlie Cameron - if he's considered capable of rotating through - only played 7. I'm sure we could rustle someone up. Playing 4th banana midfield is not easy, but it's probably one area of our list where we do have some options.
If a team like ours doesn't have the cap space to retain Danger/Sloane then we are the worst salary cap managers in all of football.
That might be so. But let's say we are in a bind, who do you want to lose out of the three of them?
Considering we had all that cap room in 2013/2014 that we had kept aside for Tippett and the fact that we signed Walker to a deal that is well below his market value - we have ridiculous amounts of cap space.
This is just speculation. We have no idea (1) whether we still have Tippett cap space (2) whether Tex signed for below market value or (3) how much cap space we have, if any.
Our list doesn't need more cap space. It needs more quality players. Losing Douglas would be a terrible blow.
You know that cap space can be utilized to obtain services of football players, right? I'm not advocating that we try and win the salary cap space premiership. I'm advocating for using (probably about) half a million dollars of the space on better players than Richard Douglas - whether that is just retaining our best existing players or gives us the opportunity to recruit from elsewhere.