Real Salt Lake vs. Toronto FC (WWID edition)

Well one thing will be sure for this weekend’s matchup with TFC, RSL will be missing a lot of players. Gone on suspension Jamison Olave, gone for Gold Cup duty with their national teams; Jean Alexandre (Haiti) and Will Johnson (Canada), and gone for next weekend’s match up with San Jose on July 3rd will be, Kyle Beckerman (USA) and Andy Williams (Jamaica). Injuries are hitting our forwards as much as national team call ups are hitting our midfield, with Fabian Espindola, and Robbie Findley all are listed as questionable for the match on Saturday and rumors are that Luis Miguel Escalada has been released from the team (a move I think is a mistake). Meanwhile Nat Borchers, Ian Joy and Robbie Russell are listed as probable.

One of the most shocking announcements this week is the fact that the Canadian Gold Cup roster doesn’t include Dwayne De Rosario (52 caps and 15 goals) wasn’t included, in fact the only TFC player on the team is Ali Gerba, but Sam Cronin was named to the US roster. TFC is listing O’Brian White (their 4th round 2009 draft pick) as out, while Amado Guevara and Adrian Serious are listed as questionable.

So what would I do? Well a lot will depend on injury updates and any additional national team call ups for either team, but assuming that one of our two injured strikers is available and that no more players are called up for national team duty, here is my lineup:

Rimando
Wingert-Russell-Borchers-Beltran
Beckerman-Williams-Morales
Mathis-Movsisyan-Findley or Espindola

I went with Andy over Ned at least to start, because I would rather see us take the aggressive and attacking approach at least for the first 45 minutes. In the past few matches with the 4-3-3 lineup Tony Beltran has pushed up as often as possible into the midfield, but with Olave out and a very good outside attacking team in Toronto I would have Tony stay back a bit more and support Kyle in the defensive effort. A major key will be putting TFC on their heels as quickly as possible, so we will need to bust out the attack early and often to keep TFC focused on defending and chasing the ball. This means a style much more like the LA match than the Houston match.

Scenario number one has RSL taking an early lead and being up at the half, knowing that Andy will be going on national team duty and hasn’t played a full 90 I bring in Ned at the half and use him to shore up the midfield and defensive efforts, to keep the offensive threat, I let Tony start moving up and attacking more. At 75 if we are still ahead I bring in Tino Nunez to spell Espindola or Findley since neither is 100% and use Tino’s ability to control the ball to help RSL withstand the TFC attack which will step up as they look to capture a point on the road. At 80-85 I bring in Cox to spell Mathis and add some defensive bite for the remainder of the match.

Scenario number two sees RSL even or behind at the half, I stick with my lineup until the 60th minute and if still even or behind I see if Findley or Espindola (whoever doesn’t start) is fit enough to step in and boost the attack as I pull Williams. If neither is on the bench or healthy enough, then I put a lot of faith in Nunez, who has always looked solid to me and with LME gone he must have impressed someone enough on the staff to let Luis go. I also let Tony know that it is time to push up and look to help create some chances, if we still don’t have a lead at 75 then I bring in Nunez or whoever is left on the bench and able to give me 15 solid minutes. If at 80-85 we are still even or behind, then I have to pull Wingert or Russell and go to a 3-4-3 in order to create some more chances and bring in Grabavoy to give us some fresh legs.

Either scenario has one simple principle, keep the ball, pass sharply and make TFC chase, it won’t be too warm (80 is the forecast) but we can use the elevation and fact that TFC isn’t used to playing on real grass to wear them down. This will be an interesting match as TFC appears to be playing better after losses to Houston on the road and LA at home, they have two straight MLS wins and have moved up to second in the East. One has to remember that their last two wins both come over a very bad New York side, in fact New York’s 10 points and 27 goals allowed are the worst in MLS.

So perhaps the recent wins aren’t quite what people think, one thing is sure that TFC is again making a lot of midseason moves. One of last years bright spots for TFC was Rohan ricketts, who was released last week. Also gone is Johann Smith, Greg Sutton and Kevin Harmse was traded to Chivas, but they have brought in Ali Gerba and Nick Garcia, so it looks like another year of TFC making a lot of move trying to find the pieces that fit.

Roster issues?

Speaking of finding the pieces that fit, I wish that the communications between RSL and Luis Miguel Escalada had worked out better. He is a talented player but I think the mentality of having to work very hard in practice to get playing time was hard for a former star player to understand. So with an open roster spot, what does RSL do? The transfer window opens on July 15th and is the visit of Club America a chance to look at some talent? There are a lot of clubs with a lot of players and given the worldwide financial troubles, a lot of clubs are letting players go? Since the announcement of Bill Manning that RSL was finally starting to see some profits as a club a few weeks ago, perhaps the time to look for a DP is closer at hand than we have been lead to believe?

So what are our needs? Our defense still looks sound as we are close to getting a healthy Ian Joy back, and hopefully Olave will get his head back into the game, but not a lot of depth. Our midfield is stacked with guys like Williams, Grabavoy, Cox, and Alexandre sitting in the wings, so I wouldn’t focus here. Forwards, I know that Jason believes that we don’t need a 10 goal scorer but with a number of guys like Mathis, Johnson, Williams all more suited to the midfield or creative positions, we now have just 4 real strikers on the roster with Findley, Movsisyan, Espindola, and Nunez. Injuries could be a problem as all of our strikers missed time in the last 12 months with injuries, RSL could do with a real impact striker.

Where do you look for a player? Most quality players in Europe are simply too expensive for RSL, US players that are playing in Europe that want to come back to the states? There are issues there with MLS allocations and such that complicate those types of moves. Do we follow the example of other teams and look to Africa where talent abounds and players can still be found at a reasonable price? What about the South America connections, some hits Morales, Olave and Espindola, but others have not done so well. Perhaps we look beyond Columbia and Argentina to other nations like Brazil which seems to have so much talent that their players impact leagues around the globe? So I have some ideas that I will share over the next couple weeks as we get closer to the July 15th transfer window opening, but ask yourself this, What Would You Do?

OFF MY SOAPBOX

This entry was posted on June 25, 2009 at 10:50 pm and is filed under The soapbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.