We have all read local articles suggesting that Real Salt Lake is standing pat with their current roster.  Sure there were a few garden variety trialists that showed up to rookie camp yesterday, but no signs of anything serious.  Maybe we should take these articles at face value and assume that the roster we will see on opening day will be largely the roster we have today plus a little tweaking down at the bottom of the roster.

However, I have a hunch – not a terribly informed one, but one built in the context of a number of discussions and observations that I have had over the past couple of months, and even the past couple of years.  This hunch tells me that there are often things percolating beneath the surface that we aren’t always aware of.  This hunch tells me that there may be more to this story.

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Coming into training camp position battles will be key in determining who stays and who goes. We here at Keepin’ It Real recently did an in depth look at the roster and who we think will stay and who we expect to be shown the door. I will do what I can to summarize that conversation below.

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Player acquisitions are the name of the game throughout the MLS off-season. GM’s and Coaches alike spend a good portion of their off-season scouting new talent and trying to find the missing pieces to their “championship puzzle.” Even with a championship winning team last season, Real Salt Lake is no exception to the oft spoken rule “Get better or get left behind!”

Our beloved RSL have already made some noise this off-season by trading away both backup keeper Chris Seitz and starting midfielder Clint Mathis. To go along with the loss of Yura Movsisyan the team appears to have taken a dramatic step backwards in talent and depth.  The loss of Seitz is offset by the stellar play of Nick Rimando over the last three years and somewhat by the surprising development of Kyle Reynish.  Seitz, once deemed the keeper of the future for Real, never was able to take the starting spot from Rimando and the few games he was called upon he struggled to live up to fan expectations. Under the current MLS rule-set a third keeper is a luxury the team shouldn’t need providing the injury bug doesn’t bite but if they do look for a replacement here it will be at the 3^rd keeper spot instead of the primary backup and shouldn’t be too hard to fill.

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The way I see it, with the 2010 season fast approaching, is that Real Salt Lake has some big decisions to make leading up to and throughout training camp. I would like to touch on a few of these over the next couple days, namely team formation, player acquisitions, and position battles. We’ll start off with formation today since I believe everything else needs to be determined by what formation Kreis sends out there.

In 2008 and 2009 coach Kreis grew very fond of a 4-4-2 formation that saw all four midfielders playing in a tight diamond shape up the middle. That formation served them well to end 2008 and then due to some issue’s integrating new players into the mid diamond it was abandoned early in 2009 for a 4-3-3 that lifted Real out of a disastrous month of May where they lost four games and tied two for a win less month. Read the rest of this entry »