Okay so we knew the defense was bad, but clearly Aron Winter thought it was worse still, what with the recent overhaul we’ve seen. In the space of a week a second new player has been brought in to bolster the backline. His name is Miguel Aceval and like our other new signing Geovanny Caicedo before him, he’s a man who has spent his entire career in South America. Aveval is 29 and from Chile and at 6’2 and 210lbs should be quite the physical presence at the back.

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You spend one weekend away from the hurricane that is the Toronto FC news making machine and return to find all sorts of little stories to read about as the season draws closer by the day. From the great news that defender come midfielder Richard Eckersley is on the verge of leaving English side Burnley and signing on a full-time basis for TFC to the fantastic news that the CCL quarter final game at the Sky Dome against LA has now sold more than 35,000 tickets. Fears of large collections of empty seats are subsiding by the day it would appear as the club have even taken the step of releasing an extra 1,000 tickets.

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Following last weeks Super-Duper Draft the MLS teams were back at it this week in the Supplemental Draft. Joining last weeks draft picks Luis Silva and Aaron Maund were midfielders Michael Green (New Mexico), Arthur Ivo (Southern Methodist) and Mike Mazzullo (Columbia), and defenders Nickardo Blake (Connecticut) and Mykell Bates (Santa Clara). All are likely to be invited to training camp though none from the Supplemental Draft are likely to make the team for 2012.

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Defender come midfielder, Mikael Yourassowsky looks resigned to become little more than a footnote in the history of Toronto FC after the club announced today that the 28-year old Belgian had been waived. Playing in 21 league games and making just 13 starts the footnote in which I refer to will be his loan goal for the club in the Canadian Championship against Vancouver that won the team the competition. For that I thank him and wish him well wherever he ends up (Montreal and Vancouver aside!).

Concacaf have made a minor tweak to the Champions League from next season reverting to eight groups of three teams and doing away with the qualification round. It means that should TFC win their Canadian Championship group against Edmonton, Montreal and Vancouver they will progress into one of the eight groups. The new format which is being brought in to ease fixture congestion for the sides involved, will not allow American and Mexican teams to meet one another in the group stages from which the top side from each group will qualify.

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This is always one of the business weeks of the MLS off-season, highlighted of course by the Super Draft on Thursday. Toronto went into the draft with two first round picks up their sleeve and despite questions as to whether they might trade one or both, they held onto them and picked up two young prospects — Luis Silva (no relation to David!) with the fourth overall pick, and Aaron Maund with the 12th overall pick.

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The tall guy in this picture has signed on long-term

One of the bigger signing speculations of this 2011/12 offseason has been whether the club could secure the resigning of little forward, Joao Plata heading into the new season. Plata had arrived at TFC on loan from Ecuadorian side Liga, but today TFC announced that they had come to terms on multi-year deal with the player. It’ll be great news for fans on the week that the Champions League quarter-final tickets go on sale watering everyones mouths for the season ahead.

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As those who frequent this parish with any regularity will know, I wasn’t the biggest fan of taking the CCL quarter-final game on March 7 to the Rogers Centre Sky Dome, but I guess one of the good things to come out of having to fill 45,000 seats rather than a little over 20,000, is that it’s pushed the ticket prices down. By comparison to what you might pay to a regular season game at BMO field, never mind had this game been held at our regular home, these prices are very reasonable indeed. Anywhere between $12 and $69 with about 70 per cent being under $30.

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Toronto FC’s head coach for the 2013 season, David Beckham, appears set to stay in the MLS for the 2012 season with news this week that his expected move to Paris St. Germain has collapsed. The French team said they expected him to stay in Los Angeles after Beckham decided he didn’t fancy uprooting his family yet again to move to a new country. The news will come as music to the ears of the LA money men, and given his performances this season I would imagine the majority of their fans. It’ll also come as sweet news to the money folk at TFC who can be sure that an extra few thousand seats at the Rogers Centre Sky Dome will now be sold for the CCL game in March.

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