Viera needs to find a reasonable mix of what he wants to play and what we should play. MLS is evolving quick. It's still a fast & strong league...but now teams are combining that with a more evolved game play. If Viera is adaptable & walks away from this year being a learning experience, we are in good shape...if he is stubborn and thinks he's the smartest guy in the league, we're screwed.
So Lampard contract is up.
Villa has another year, negotiating for extension.
Pirlo signed a 2 1/2 year deal with next year as an option...if I remember right, it was his option?
If we have 2 DP slots open up, it gets interesting. Not coinciding with other leagues sucks for this. Maybe sign 1 before season, 1 during. Wonder how much influence Viera will have on it too.
So, assuming we have the 2 DP slots open (granted, it's not a small assumption to make but...), where do we use them? While I think it's extremely tempting to go search for another DP striker to help Villa carry the goal burden, I think our season dictates we use our 2 DP slots elsewhere. I think the 3 DPs in MLS are best used when you have one creating, one finishing, and one destroying.
I'd love to see one DP slot used on a young-ish creative midfielder. A number of teams in MLS have shown that having a Piatti, Valeri, Lodeiro type player works wonders.
With the 2nd open DP slot, I hope we find either a great defensive midfielder that can sit in front of our back line and destroy (a la Beckerman in his prime), or a great center back. Whichever we use the DP slot on, we should use all the TAM, GAM (and whatever other kind of -AM the MLS launches for 2017) for the other (e.g., if DP defensive mid, then TAM/GAM center back). Particularly with Vieira wanting to play out of the back, and on our tiny field (neither of which appear to be changing any time soon), we need quality in the back.
We could go out and find another attacking player, but goal scoring was not our problem... we gave up the third most goals in the regular season, and got crushed several times this year. You look at the teams left in the playoffs (Montreal, Toronto, Colorado and Seattle) and yes they can definitely score goals, but they have some of the best defenses in the league. Ciman shuts everything down for Montreal, Toronto plays solid team defense, Seattle has veteran chemistry with Scott and Marshall, and Colorado has the best defense in the league. You can attempt to build chemistry in the back over the longterm, but I think we need fixing now, so I'd say we need to spend money in the back.
Keith Putnam , will be interesting if Vieira goes out and tries to find the missing pieces for his preferred style or tries to build a team for a system that works within the constraints of MLS. 
