The Real Questions: March 21, 2019

Real Salt Lake : What can Real Salt Lake do to field a quality starting 11 with four international call-ups and 2 players on red card suspension?

Looking at this, it seems tough. Sure, our roster is deep, but we’re essentially out five starters this week. Although we’re yet to see Sam Johnson start, had he not been called up he too likely would have started. So we’re currently out Corey Baird, Albert Rusnak, Jefferson Savarino, Marcelo Silva and Johnson. On top of all that, Justen Glad is still out with a broken toe and Joao Plata is doubtful.

Now, all that news is bad, but there’s still hope. This game will allow players like Luke Mulholland, Nick Besler, Tate Schmitt and Bofo Saucedo to get starts. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty excited to see what those 4 could do with an opportunity. Throw in having the presence of Everton Luiz, Damir Kreilach, and Kyle Beckerman, that’s not a bad place to look. You’ll likely see Tony Beltran get minutes too. So no, this isn’t ideal, but it’s not the end of the world either. This team is deep. It’s going to be a tough game, but don’t lose all hope yet.

Utah Royals FC: What do we need to see out of URFC’s two preseason games?

Knowing how Laura Harvey likes to keep things quiet during preseason, we likely won’t know very much about what happens in these two games. We may get a score, but who knows. However, we can still speculate.

In these two games it’s important, to me at least, that we see some cohesion among the attackers. URFC’s team has had very few changes in the offseason so far, especially defensively. The defensive side of things were pretty solid last year and there’s no reason to expect any differently. But it’s no secret URFC didn’t score a ton of goals last year. If we can get some good looks and maybe even 3 or 4 goals in these two preseason games I think that would set URFC up very nicely going forward into the remainder of the preseason.

Real Monarchs: What is causing the Real Monarchs scoring woes, and who can potentially help?

If you look at the 2018 Real Monarchs SLC and the 2019 Real Monarchs SLC, these are two completely different teams. In between these two seasons you lost veteran presences like Chandler Hoffman, Sebastian Velasquez, Charlie Adams, and more.

On top of all that, you lost most your goalkeepers too. Now the Monarchs seem to have the goalkeeping figured out in David Ochoa, but what about the goalscoring?

When you look at the Real Monarchs SLC lineup, they play a almost 4-5-1 or a 4-2-3-1 but the main point here is they largely leave the attack all up to Douglas Martinez. He’s pretty much the only true striker on the field. So a lot of the Monarchs attack has to come from the midfield. This is part of why they are struggling, this midfield is a mix of old and new guys. You still have Maikel Chang and Jack Blake, but they work alongside guys they’ve never played before. As much as this answer isn’t what we want, it’s probably just going to take some time. It’s not quite time to panic yet, we’re 2 games into the season with an almost entirely new roster. Now, if we haven’t scored more than once by the end of March then we can worry.