Whitecap Stuart Armstrong on Sheffield move: 'Too good to turn down'

Stuart Armstrong had a dream. It didn’t matter that he had a contract.

When English football knocked on his door, he had to answer, even if he’d committed his name to a three-year deal with the Vancouver Whitecaps.

On Tuesday, his agent told the Whitecaps an English team was interested in signing Armstrong. On Wednesday, while the 32-year-old was playing against St. Patricks in pre-season action in Marbella, Spain, an email with an official offer from Sheffield Wednesday FC landed in the inbox of Whitecaps sporting director Axel Schuster.

Armstrong departed Spain for England and a medical that day, and on Friday, it was made official. The transfer fee could hit above $500,000 should Armstrong reach playing time clauses and if Sheffield is promoted in his time there.

Schuster said he knew Armstrong always held out hope of returning to play in England’s top league — the Owls are in playoff contention for promotion from the English Championship — but that he was also happy in Vancouver.

“We knew from the beginning, and I knew from the beginning, that there is a dream that he has that he would like to play once again in the Prem and that he told me he will not give up on this dream,” Schuster told media in Marbella, adding they had previously prepared for the scenario of losing Armstrong.

“We were coming closer to the (transfer window) deadline day in England, and I was always hoping it might not happen, because he was happy here. … But you have your dreams, and then luckily for him, unfortunately for us, it (happened).

“There was no chance to stop this process to hold Stu back. If somebody has a dream and it can get fulfilled, there’s nothing you can do. It would almost be a negative if you would block it, because then you will have somebody who is very disappointed.”

The Whitecaps had looked ahead to 2025 with confidence and a plan: two superlative Scots running the midfield, a diminutive Argentine/Paraguayan destroyer pulling strings and protecting the field behind them, and a tireless Yankee striker pressing backlines and potting goals up front.

Then Sheffield entered the chat and dropped a proton torpedo down their thermal exhaust port, removing the key figure from the mix and atomizing those plans.

Armstrong was supposed to be the missing link, the offensive partner Ryan Gauld needed to help propel the Whitecaps to the next level. He signed a three-year deal, espousing his love for Vancouver, its perfect fit for his family, and chance to play with his old buddy, Gauld.

And he looked the fit for the team in the four playoff games he started, and 2025 began with optimism: the Caps feeling they had all the pieces they needed, and being relatively quiet on the transfer front.

Armstrong was reunited in Sheffield with Danny R?hl, his former coach at Southampton, his most recent stop in English football.

“I loved my time away in Canada, really enjoyed myself, an amazing group of people. But yeah, missed the English game a bit, and the opportunity came up with Sheffield Wednesday, so I had to do a lot of thinking. Very grateful to have the opportunity,” Armstrong said in his first appearance for the club on Friday.

“It’s been 24 hours, 48 hours, a lot of thinking, a lot of speaking to family, and obviously it’s a big decision. Just moved not that long ago, so (it was) a big choice to bring the family back.

“The opportunity was too good to turn down.”

Sheffield are in 10th place in the English Championship, three points behind sixth-place Middlesbrough, currently occupying the final place in the promotion playoff. He’s eligible to play for Sheffield against relegation-threatened Luton Town on Saturday morning.

“When you join somewhere new, I think you just want to get started as soon as possible. So hopefully, into the thick of it as soon as possible,” Armstrong said.

Meanwhile, the playoffs aren’t just the goal for the Whitecaps in this upcoming Major League Soccer season, it’s the bare minimum. They fired coach Vanni Sartini because they didn’t think he could get them to the next level, bringing in Jesper Sorensen in mid-January to replace him. Two straight seasons of exiting in the first round against Los Angeles FC after mid-pack conference finishes, no matter how they played, was deemed insufficient.

With Armstrong gone, the Whitecaps have to look at their plans and decide what their course of action will be with this new, unwanted, roster flexibility. The players they had on their short list before Armstrong signed last year are back to the top, and Schuster said they’re reaching out to them.

This season, all MLS clubs have until Feb. 21, the roster compliance date, to declare their roster construction model. It can be changed in the middle of the season — July 1 to Aug. 21 — at the end of the secondary transfer window, but teams are locked in for the first six months of the year to a single model.

The Whitecaps currently have two Designated Players Ryan Gauld and Andres Cubas and two U22 Initiative players in Edier Ocampo and Pedro Vite. They have a choice as to their path ahead: the DP model, or U22 model.

The first choice would mean they could sign three DPs and up to three U22 players.

The latter, they can have two DPs, up to four U22 players, and then get an additional $2M in General Allocation Money (GAM), which can be used to buy down any player’s budget charge, sign new players, re-sign players and more.

What the team needs most is scoring and offensive creativity. They haven’t addressed the first need so far this off-season, with former Middlesbrough striker Matthew Hoppe opting to join Danish Superliga side Sonderjyske Fodbold?after being on trial with the Whitecaps in Marbella.

Former TFC forward Jayden Nelson, the only signing so far, is a reclamation project, not an answer. The 22-year-old had one MLS goal and two assists in 45 MLS appearances before heading to Europe, where he had little playing time between Rosenborg in Norway and SSV Ulm in Germany’s second division.

The Whitecaps were mid-pack in the Western Conference in just about every category, from goals scored (54), expected goals (49.4), to goals conceded (49). They didn’t have the most possession, sitting 20th out of 29 teams (47.6) with their progressive carries and passes sitting among the lowest in the league, as they opted for a more turnover-to-transition philosophy.

Their most pressing need was, and remains, another striker to take the scoring load off of Brian White, who has been the best American striker in the league since joining Vancouver. He and Gauld have chemistry, but now the creativity and passing ability of Armstrong — one of the best progressive passers in the Championship before coming to Vancouver — has been taken out of the mix. So add in another No. 8 to go alongside White, who needs both help and a player to spell his high-minute, high-energy workload.

The U22 model seems to make the most sense for the Whitecaps. They now have around $3M in cap space, and with the extra $2 million in GAM, they can spread that money around the roster.

A decent attacker or striker can be found for the Max TAM level of around $1.7 million, leaving them room to operate with two more U22 spots — whose acquisition costs don’t count against the cap.

“Definitely both,” Schuster said Friday afternoon, when asked which need — striker or attacker — would be prioritized.

“We have enough space in our roster, in our cap. We have also two in the two international spots open. We will go for both, no question. We will fill both roles.”

And make no mistake, on-field success is the No. 1 goal for this club, as it seeks to raise its market value while on the market. There has been little news on the potential sale of the club, with a few local groups expressing some minor interest early, though many observers around the league think relocation is a distinct possibility.

Schuster remains optimistic, and he’s bullish on his team’s ability to find the talent they need, and solutions when they need one. Cubas and Gauld have been home runs. They made money on both Sergio Cordova and Caio Alexandre, who players who flopped here but found success after.

“I’m very confident,” he said. “Of course, we’ve made mistakes, and we will also continue to make mistakes. I don’t know if it is a mistake to sign somebody where we don’t lose any dollars … I think the big mistakes are there where you really burn a lot of money.

“Everyone in this business, every successful club, even the most successful clubs, have to be have to be judged on the percentage of the percentage of rightness … in their decisions. … The same scouting group identified players that have been really, really good for us and are really good for us.

“A very good club probably signs four players, and three of them are working and one is not working. It’s also a quality to find that out very early and then to to move on and to find a solution for that problem.”

jadams@postmedia.com

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