when Riera went down we fell to pieces. We have now fixed that problem with roly. I don't see that as a waste at all, who else would you sign as backup for him?
Following from that, you're not going to change your entire shape and play 2 DMs just because of some notion that your foreign players need to start every game.
Then why sign a foreign player?
When you assume that every team in the HAL competes for the same AU player as the other, then the difference in the league is the quality of imports you sign (along with the quality of locals too I guess but that's a separate issue to this one) because they should be better than any other player in your team. You are not restricted in signing the best locals, you can sign the best of what you can get for your budgetary constraints (ADP). Sign 5 numpties and where do you finish? Look back at the history of the league and teams that win, have signed good imports. Alex Smith I am sure was a lovely lad and his Dad defended him well but was a rubbish import and it showed on the table. Sanchez too. We also had Totori. Where did we finish?
We actually have 4 decent imports in Riera, Roly, Cunningham and Rogriguez. Why sit any of them on the bench and hand the opposition a competitive advantage when the likelihood is that those 4 will probably be better than at least 6-7 opposition players on the pitch. In the case of Riera, he is likely to be the best player on the park. That's what you want from imports - to be the difference maker to your team and give you that advantage. Its recognised that Riera is probably the best DM in the league and I think any other team would have him in a heartbeat because he is up there in terms of quality of imports in the league. What if Roly is a better player? Do we then sit Riera on the bench and tell him is the back up because we don't play two DMs? If Riera does not fall over this year, then having Roly as a back up is just a waste. The truth to it is, while he is a good player, it was a poor recruitment (as was Krishna but my bias against him and being a flop is well documented) because we need an out and out striker. You sign good imports because they make the difference for your team and you play them because they give you that advantage over your opponents. We went and signed a player that is good and has pedigree to be a fail safe......
Think back to when you were at school and you had to pick kids to be in your team. You always picked the best players because you wanted to beat the other team. The crap kids got picked last. We seem to want to pick a decent player and then keep him for a rainy day which may not come. The McGlichey signing is a brilliant signing for us because he was good enough to be considered as an import for the other sides - for us he is a local so that gives us a competitive boost in that looking at it from a CCM perspective, he is a 6th import for us.
If you are going to sign an import, sign a starter, not a back up bench player because the locals can and will fill the role judging by the mix you need to have across your squad. I respect your argument that you don't change your starting shape and I largely agree with you, but then don't sign players you don't intend to use to any degree. Roly, good player but why the hell did we sign him? The need to potentially cover an injury to Riera (and I am sure Rodriguez could have done it at a guess) that may not happen vs our need to sign a goal scoring the striker, the likes we have not had since Smeltz, well I shake my head at that. Its just handed a competitive advantage to the opponents.
To answer your question, I think Tim Payne could have done a job if needed to fill in for Riera if he got injured and sat on the bench as a back up. Not the same quality but then Riera is not exactly a typical import recruit in that we lucked in to him big time. Before you get up in arms about that answer, if Riera never gets injured, Payne never plays which is ideal and then we have that spot Roly occupies to sign a gun striker.