LAFC, with a good ownership, a top level coach, and some of the best talent in the league around you or RSL, with a (at the time) privately racist owner, coaching carousel, and some of the most overpaid talent in the league around you real tough decision
There's an interview with Elliot Fall on the team website here. But as the team website, there are no follow-up questions of any sort, so when Fall says he and his associates made some mistakes they need to learn from, there's no query asking what mistakes he means. For all I know, they don't consider what we see as the mistakes. I would love a robust conversation there.
Have no fear, the hard hitting RSL Show guys are interviewing Fall next week. We'll learn the answer to such pressing questions such as: Would Elliott Fall play in a pub league? How bad is DLH? How much can we blame DLH? DLH is the excuse for how many years? Which youtube account does the best scouting? Do you think Chicharito is over hyped? How much are we going to pay KB?
An interesting study is to look at the various roster decisions so far, and compare them to how those teams performed in 2020. I see the league cut into roughly 4 groups: (1) teams that didn't make the playoffs, (2) those that barely made the playoffs, (3) those that are mid level playoff teams that were decent this year, and (4) those that are going deep into the playoffs/finished high in the season. Comparing how those rosters are looking going into 2021, compared to their ranking in 2020, shows a pretty strong correlation with just a handful of outliers. RSL being one of them. We've elected to keep 25 players, tied for third most in the league, despite being in the lowest rated group. To me, that sends a very strange and, IMO, wrong message. This roster wasn't a player or two away from jumping groups. Fall seems committed to the idea that the roster is just about there. That's... interesting. And look, I know each team's situation has very unique aspects to it to make this not a very easy side by side comparison. But, at the same time, Fall didn't have 25 guys on guaranteed contracts for 2021. That can't be stressed enough. Fall picked up a whopping 8 contract options and only declined on 4. He is very much putting his eggs in this rosters basket, with the belief that we're just one or two guys away from being a top end team. So many other club's are showing their ambition in how many players they are keeping around, and RSL is too, just not in the way you'd hope. Atlanta and LA Galaxy are burning it down. LAFC, who I would argue is still much better than us, will have double the open roster spots. We're in the same company, roster wise, as teams like Vancouver (notoriously poorly ran from the GM spot), Nashville (a decent team that I would believe is a piece or two from contending), Orlando (a team with a hell of a coach that had a really good year), Philly (they won shit), and TFC (a team with loads of talent who had a down year despite finishing second in the East). We're on level with Vancouver in that group, nobody else. The data: RSL: 25 players under contract for 2021 Outside the Playoff Group: Atlanta United: 17 players under contract for 2021 Chicago Fire: 23 players under contract for 2021 FC Cinci: 19 players under contract for 2021 DC United: 19 players under contract for 2021 Houston Dynamo: 22 players under contract for 2021 Vancouver: 25 players under contract for 2021 LA Galaxy: 13 players under contract for 2021 Barely in the Playoff Group Inter Miami: 18 players under contract for 2021 Montreal Impact: 22 players under contract for 2021 San Jose: Not Announced cRapids: Not Announced Mid Level Playoff/Decent Year Group LAFC: 20 players under contract for 2021 Nashville SC: 26 players under contract for 2021 NYCFC: 23 players under contract for 2021 NYRB: 22 players under contract for 2021 Orlando City: 25 players under contract for 2021 FC Dallas: Not Announced New England: Not Announced Minnesota United: Not Announced Top of the League Group Philly Union: 25 players under contract for 2021 TFC: 28 players under contract for 2021 Sporting KC: Not Announced Seattle Sounders: Not Announced Portland Timbers: Not Announced Columbus Crew: Not Announced
Should Luke Mulholland be our next head coach? Why didn't the players practice harder so that Freddy could sub them in? Why didn't Petke's old assistant coaches let him know he could use 5 subs? Sabotage? Could I BE wearing any more clothes? Which player will have the most shootings at or near their house party next year? Should Toia get a USMNT call up? Does a British accent always make you a better player? Name the two best RSL academy players we wont sign but will go on to play in Europe or for LAFC? Is it live or is it Memorex? How could anything in 2020 be Freddy's fault?
That does suck. Quad strains aren't something you typically see for gk's. Hope he gets another chance really quick and he recovers before preseason starts
Stooping to Dumb Dwyer would be a new low. But frankly he might be the best option for us at striker unfortunately. MLS journeymen that are relatively safe picks to contribute something. And ATTACKING MID is our biggest position of need. We go as Rusnak goes in most games. He is invisible for 70% of our games on a good night. 90% on a normal night. It doesn't work. He would be better as a lazy striker who doesn't defend than an attacking mid.
Attacking mid is what someone with a critical eye of this team would call our weak spot. I don't see that from Fall or Freddy. Further, I think the very best spot for Kreilach is actually attacking mid, given the 4-2-3-1 Freddy continues to play and the rest of the roster. Which becomes a mess when you try to figure out what that does for Rusnak. If he is mostly invisible at AM, he is even worse as a winger - especially with what Freddy wants out of his wingers.
Rusnak needs to be sold, traded or whatever it takes to leave RSL. Not because he isn’t incredibly talented, he is, or the the fact he’s just here cashing checks, he is, but he needs to go because RSL and the brain trust that is the Freddy coaching team have no ********ing idea what to do with him. At all. They have no idea where he needs to play on the pitch or in a formation, they have no idea how to motivate him to lead this team, and for those reasons among others he has absolutely no respect for this coaching staff. Just look how effective he can be for his country compared to his play here. Get as much as you can for him and say thank you very much. Kreilach is much the same in Freddy and company not knowing where to play him but to Damirs credit he doesn’t just disappear 90% of the time he isn’t on the ball. He is a leader. Half decent coaching and he will really be able increase his ability to effect games. With Freddy coming back don’t hold your breath.
With Rusnak and Kreilach, they just don't work well together, IMO. Rusnak should be the AM, but then where does Kreilach go? He's not a striker. He's not really the box to box guy in a 3 man midfield. I feel like he'd be better served in a 4 man mid, where he's not required to run all over, but gives him the freedom to make late runs into the box. But then that means running some kind of 4-4-2, which kills off all our wingers, and puts us in the situation of needing a good hold up striker, like Sabo (which we could still use regardless). We just have a mess of a team. There's a fair amount of talent on it, but a lot of it doesn't fit into any cohesive formation. It's like we looked at how good the player is, without thinking about where they fit into the formation you want to play. We really need to get rid of Rusnak or Kreilach. I lean towards Rusnak since he's likely got better value for a team. But I also know how good he can be if we actually try and play to his strengths.
Rusnak needs other players around him to be effective. We have not built a team to highlight his abilities. As such, its time to cut our losses or build around him. Given the state of the team, I would say, sell. Unfortunately, even saying SELL gives me the jibblies right now. DLH so help me...
It's not the official roster from the league website, but the rsl page is showing 5 international players. Surprising that Silva and Kreilach are still among them. I'm hopeful there can be at least one impact signing this offseason. Next week it starts to get interesting.
The two players that are not listed as "international" on the league site are Rusnak and Luiz. Rusnak has the "Designated Player" title under his name. it might just be a case of only including one thing there. I didn't pay attention to that previously so wouldn't know. Luiz not being counted as an International would shock me. I feel that is more someone forgot to keep that item in their coding. How did he jump others in obtaining a green card or whatever?
My bigger question is how did Ramirez already get his? But maybe you are right about Albert and so it applies to Jeizon, too.
Good catch - and yeah, no way that kid got his status flipped with how little time he was actually in the country compared to others. My guess is we're maxed out, save maybe Luiz actually getting his green card. That would be nice
The RSL Show dropped their promised interview with Elliott Fall today. It is unlike other RSL Show podcasts, at least 20 minutes in, as it's more on topic and has content worth listening to.
I would like them to try to do a few more like this. That being said, I'm kind of annoyed with the hosts. Week after week you hear them complain about the team and players. I know they can't bite the hand that feeds them, but they literally didn't ask him any hard questions. For example, Fall mentions they had plans for International spots to open up. The roster was full though, how do you not follow up with that and grille him a bit? Second, how do you not ask him about the highly questionable roster decisions for next year like Portillo, Schmitt and especially Morgan. He also mentions that he doesn't think this team is very far away (not sure if he means playoffs, cup contention or what. He acknowledges that they need more than just players (good to hear), but I'm not convinced that a TAM level CB and TAM striker get this team to the upper half of the West. There's too many holes. I know they won't bring in a LB that is better than Toia because that would be LB #4, that would be really bad roster management, right? I'm usually hopeful for this team, I like that they have access to guys like Fall, but these conversations need to be more, for me at least.
Fall claims the club had "multiple" players set to get green cards in April. I do not buy this. The claim is the pandemic threw all of those plans out the window. Which, yeah, that would definitely happen. But nothing snice? How is there not a "so where is that now?" question after? Why can he not just say "player x, y, and z"? I also think his take on Glad is ridiculous. The question being why can't Glad get minutes at the end of the season was met with "Glad is great, it was all a matchup thing". No. Just ******** no. We played like 7 different teams this year with the setup. This wasn't a matchup thing. And if it is believed that Glad was not the right option, Freddy should be grilled because our stats with him on the field were so significantly better. It also scares me that the player Fall decided to highlight when talking about difficult situations was Alvin Jones. Uh... dude, you cut academy products. That dude was a USL guy. That shouldn't be the one you struggled with. Everyone knew Jones was leaving the club... right? Holy ********, this is depressing
I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but I will. I still maintain that there is room for a good RSL podcast. I listened to the latest Soapbox episode and I don'ty think that they started talking about RSL until after the 30th minute or so.
This showed the annoyance of the RSL Show because they have tremendous access and rapport with folks in the club. In fact, I think had they pushed Fall a bit, he would have divulged more. Fall wasn't holding much back with the basic questions that were asked of him. I haven't been able to find the Soapbox guys on a streaming platform I care to listen to/install on my phone. So... can't give much there
So from listening to the RSL Show podcast interview with Elliot and one thing that I found interesting was the RSL player development plan. 1. Get players into the academy 2. Work on developing said players 3. Develop players that other clubs would like to sign 4. Let those players go for free to other clubs 5. Keep in contact with the players and their people so that in the future we could buy them back for a ton of money. Did I miss any steps? Also, did you know we have a 50 page document on how to be an RSL player? So 2020 wasn't a total waste. Thanks Tony. No really. All we are missing is a new mantra. The best thing about the interview was it only wasted an hour of my time I didn't have to hear about anything other than RSL for a change. I'm sure that Elliott is a decent guy but if he is in charge this team ain't going anywhere any time soon. Wow, if you need to spend 10 minutes trying to decide who is or isn't the face of the team/organization then maybe you don't have a face of the team/organization. The new ownership has so much to do to fix this team but what a great opportunity as a new owner to have such a challenge.