The five most asked questions

In lieu of doing a standard mailbag column, let's instead tackle the questions I keep getting asked the most. Out of all the questions I get e-mailed to me on a daily basis, here are the five toughest:

Which team is the favorite going into this MLS season?

Now that Landon is gone, who is the top player in MLS

How will Peter Nowak deal find enough playing time for Freddy Adu, Alecko Eskandarian and Jaime Moreno?

How is San Jose even going to make the playoffs this year now that they've lost so much talent?

Why don't all the teams spend the preseason together in Florida like they used to?

Let's take these babies one at a time &

1. It's nearly impossible to answer this type of question at this juncture. I mean, it's February. Let's wait until we're eating corned beef and cabbage to go with our green-tinted beer to make this sort of prediction.

I will say this: I can't imagine too many pundits will pick the defending champion to win back-to-back titles. D.C. United returns with as strong as an attack as anyone in the league, but the loss of Ryan Nelsen in the back will have opposing strikers licking their chops when they see last year's Cup winners on the schedule.

No offense, guys, but when one of your only off-season additions is Kenny Arena, you haven't exactly upgraded.

It also won't be one of the expansion teams. Chivas USA will be much stronger than Real Salt Lake, but I can't imagine we're ever going to see a repeat of what the Chicago Fire did in their first year back in 1998. As good of a job that Thomas Rongen and the front-office staff did with putting together a solid group that will compete on a week-to-week level with every team in the league, there is not a Peter Nowak or a Lubos Kubik on that squad.

That's three teams out of the way. Add Colorado, FC Dallas, Los Angeles and San Jose to that list, as well. That leaves us with five teams: Columbus, Chicago, Kansas City, MetroStars and New England. And, yes, with the Wizards moving to the Eastern Conference this year to make room for the two expansion franchises in the West, that means that I'm expecting a race of epic proportions in the East.

As of the moment, I'd be inclined to take Kansas City -- last year's finalist -- to emerge in the East and beat whichever team gets through in the West. Perhaps it'll be the retooled and renamed side in Dallas that will be much better in '05 than it was the past few seasons. Or maybe Carlos Ruiz returns to the form that saw him score 39 goals in his first two seasons in the league, and carries the Galaxy to another Western Conference title.

Either way, the safest bet is to pick a winner from the Eastern Conference, which should have an upper-hand this season much like the way the Western Conference did in the NBA up until the Detroit Pistons came through to win the title last summer.

2. It's not just Landon gone as the top player. You can add DaMarcus Beasley to this question, since he was probably the second player most coveted around the league before he headed to PSV Eindhoven last summer.

Whenever this topic is discussed or bandied about in e-mail conversations, I always see the names of Ruiz, Amado Guevara and Joe Cannon thrown around. I e-mailed two General Managers about this, asking them to name the one player they would take if money, allocations, roster slots and everything else that prevents player movement in this league were not an issue. Here were the responses:

-- "If I were certain he had another season left in his tank like the one he had last year, it'd be Robin Fraser. Everyone needs an organizer in the back. It's so important."

-- "Damani Ralph. There are not enough dangerous scorers in the league, and he's one of them."

Not exactly the names or responses I expected.

The top all-around player could very well come from the group listed above or from one of the U.S. national team regulars who play in a central role like Eddie Pope in the defense or Pablo Mastroeni in the middle. But if you have one game to play and everyone is lined up across the field waiting to get selected, it'd be hard not to take Eddie Johnson right now. EJ isn't nearly as dynamic or well-rounded as Donovan, but he might be the single biggest weapon in MLS now that Donovan is playing in Germany.

3. Play them all. Freddy now has a full season under his belt and has developed too much to sit him down. The same goes for Eskandarian. And how do you bring a player who should have been the MVP of the league last season off the bench?

Whether Adu has to play out wide or as a winger, or Moreno has a free role to pick and choose his spot on the field in a 3-4-2-and-Moreno type of formation, Nowak has to find a way to use all three at the same time this season.

4. San Jose is helped by a few factors, including the addition of two expansion teams to the conference, Kansas City moving to the East, and the fact that the conference as a whole is much weaker than it has ever been. Losing Donovan, Richard Mulrooney, Jeff Agoos, Ronnie Ekelund and most likely Dwayne DeRosario, among others, doesn't make this the easiest of situations for Dom Kinnear and his staff. However, the group they've assembled looks, on paper, like a side that will be able to make the playoffs.

Wade Barrett might be the key figure in all of this. By coming back to MLS after playing abroad for the past two seasons, San Jose was able to trade Todd Dunivant. Dunivant was a player they liked, yet the team knew he had trade value and would be expendable with the likely return of Barrett. Getting Alejandro Moreno, an exciting midfielder who is just coming into his own now that he enters his fourth season in the league, might turn out to be a steal.

While losing Mulrooney and Alvarez in a trade with FC Dallas will affect the side in many ways, this club has added Brad Davis, Ricardo Clark, Ronald Cerritos, and first-round draft pick Danny O'Rourke through various different avenues. Unless Brian Ching stops scoring goals or Ryan Cochrane doesn't continue to improve after a very promising rookie campaign, San Jose will still be one of the better teams in the West.

5. In a perfect world, all the MLS teams would not only spend the majority of their preseason in Florida, but would also have their own complexes to travel to each spring. There would have to be a Grapefruit League type of setup, as well, which could attract fans to possibly be another revenue-maker for the league.

In addition to the overseas trips each team takes during the winter, there have been several other money-making opportunities for the clubs to take advantage of by traveling elsewhere to play one or two exhibition matches. That's why you are seeing teams play in locales such as Charleston, S.C., Ridgeland, Miss., Cary, N.C., and Honolulu, Hawaii, which is where the L.A. Galaxy and D.C. United are right now to play an exhibition on Saturday. It also helps market the league and spread the reach of the game to areas of the country that do not have a franchise to call their own.

While having one spot for preseason would make it easier on fans and the media - believe me - several of the coaches around the league have told me that they prefer to be separate during the winter since they don't want to give anything away during head-to-head matches or allow for the other teams to easily scout every match that they play.

Marc Connolly covers soccer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at: marc@oakwoodsoccer.com.