A winning culture is a good culture for fostering development of younger players. Much better than seeing teenagers walk out and get solidly beat week in and week out. Also, having young players have to fight to get minutes can be a positive development tool as well. Not everything should be handed to them. That all being said. For all of this to work, you still need to have room for the youth as well as opportunities for them to earn positions when they do fight for it. I think the Monarchs started 100% trying to force young unprepared guys to play in the USL, it didn't work at all, and now they have over corrected the other way.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. If the Monarchs are going to be successful winning is pretty damn important in this market. If they don't win no one comes to the games. If no one comes to the games then maybe RSL follows suit with other MLS teams and ends having their own USL team and simply partner with a non MLS USL side. As I have proven over and over here I'm no expert but I do see some logic in establishing a "winning" tradition or culture in the club from top to bottom. I like second place as much as the next fan but winning is better. The Monarchs have gone from one extreme to the other. In the first two seasons they won 17 games total and then 20 games this year. I think it's fair to say that they are still trying to figure out what this team is going to be and how best for it to serve the overall mission for club in its entirety. I don't know that having a team full of young players getting the ever living crap kicked out of them every game is incredibly helpful for their development. Losing sucks and usually losing breeds more losing. Also having a "veteran" heavy team probably doesn't helps RSL in the long run develop young talent either. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Establish a winning mentality and introduce young talent into a winning organization would probably pay off in the long run. But again, what do I know? Rhetorical question.
That's my issue. I don't mind the occasional signing of a Besler, Hoffman, Seba. It's that that's exclusively who the Monarchs sign. They managed to find about 200 minutes for young, developing players last year (almost all Saucedo), while other "2" teams found thousands. I've said in a few other comments the kinds of things the Monarchs could do. They could try to sign freshman and sophomores in college that don't get GA deals. They could try to sign players from other DA teams in the country. They could try to find young international players (they dipped a toe into this pool last year). But the only players they seem to have any interest in are the mid-20s USL journeyman. If that's what they want, we should stop calling them a developmental team.
The balance is somewhere in the middle. The Monarchs need some older players to help guide the younger guys, but the squad needs to be a majority of young players. Otherwise you're killing the pyramid you sought out to build when you formed the team. Two interesting notes about the Monarchs: - Attendance has been lower each season. Even with how solid 2017 was (and the weather typically better for games than it was in 15 and 16) the average attendance was 333 people less than 2016 and less than half of what it was in 2015. - The average age of the entire Monarchs roster hasn't spiked all that much. (22.5 years in 2015, 23 years in 2016, and 24.25 years in 2017) So winning, from a butts in seats perspective, meant jack shit. I think people choosing to go to Monarchs games are going regardless. Hell, most of the people I know that go to these things fall into one of two categories. (a) they know a player through relation or interaction (b) they are extremely passionate fans of the club. This is a very incomplete sample size, but the end result numbers indicate that people really don't care if the team wins. They're going for different reasons. Lastly: The price point between RSL and Monarchs simply isn't strong enough, unless you have a large family/group, to make a common person pick one over the other. Given the quality you get at the RSL game (in so many different ways) the choice is obvious. Go to the RSL game. It will be really interesting to me, seeing as the Royals seats appear to be very similarly aligned with Monarchs, just how much attendance is effected. Ok really lastly: more to that: A small fear I have is that the RSL brand as a whole is ending up like the NFL in terms of over-saturation. Games on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday
So they are getting 1 year older every year? Will the Monarchs run into the same thing RSL did when they kept the same foundation and just grew too old?
if they kept the same group of players (at least a core) around each year, then it would make sense. Instead they're offloading guys and bringing in just as old of players
The Monarchs really need to find a middle ground. The push should be on youth, which IMO, means that half the team should be youth prospects that aren't quite ready for time with RSL, but have the potential to be. If you keep filling the team with players that have no to little chance of making the jump, then it just limits the chances of those youth players getting minutes. Add in the players from RSL either coming back from injury, or aren't quite making the 18, and you're giving even less time to those players. Hopefully they can strike a balance within the next few years. I don't think the Monarchs necessarily need to have winning seasons, but I do feel like they need to be mirroring the formation and tactics of RSL, while giving the more promising youth minutes to prove they're worth promoting. There's never going to be a lot of money coming from the Monarchs, so the whole setup should be about giving these guys some minutes.
Just want to harp on this point again. I mentioned before that Portland quietly signed Harold Hanson to their USL team. Hansen was from a non-MLS DA team in California, 17 years old at the time. There is no mechanism where the Timbers first team could sign him, but it's a loophole that you can sign players like that to your USL affiliate, and move them up that way. Hanson is a fine player, but he has no YNT appearances, and so he didn't attract much attention. Atlanta just kinda blew this out of the water. They signed Diego Lopez to their USL team, a U17 international striker from California, who was at the recent 153 player YNT summit. They literally just snagged a YNT-caliber striker for almost nothing. It's a friendly reminder that literally nothing is keeping RSL from signing promising young talent to the Monarchs, except we apparently don't have the interest. There are tons of players at that recent summit who aren't in MLS academies or on pro deals, and there's nothing stopping us from trying to sign them. Atlanta just proved that.
Well, the monarchs are now playing in claret this season. Similar look to the first team shirts. So there goes the idea that each team has its color.
RSL media reporting that former Monarchs assistant Liam Miller died last week in his native Ireland. He spent last season with the team before getting sick with pancreatic cancer. RIP.
It's not often that my Manchester United news collides with my RSL news (well, outside of when they played each other last year). I'm sad that I'm just learning now that he played for MUFC.
The Monarchs have signed another alum of the 2013 University of Washington team, Josh Heard. I think that makes 5 signings from the team that Craig Waibel coached 5 years ago. Next guy to watch is Andy Thoma, who has played 3 years in USL but is currently out of contract. Time to snap him up! https://www.rsl.com/post/2018/02/15/real-monarchs-slc-sign-josh-heard-rhys-williams