Happy Friday, all! It’s a beautiful one in sunny southern Utah — a balmy 79 degrees right now — and the day before the match, so I’m buzzing like a bee with excitement. We’ll be facing the oh-so-scary Seattle Sounders, who are apparently being tipped for excellence this season. We’ll be hearing about their vaunted home record, which, in truth, is worse than ours, and we’ll also be hearing about our dreadful road form. But you know what? Neither of those are actual, tangible factors tomorrow.
At any rate, let’s go through a bit of the news for today and then we’ll move on to the predicted lineup.
Kyle Beckerman’s beauty of a strike from distance, with over 50 percent of the vote, has been named the MLS Goal of the Week. To be fair, there weren’t a huge number of goals for the week, but Kyle’s was brilliant and would have been named Goal of the Week in practically any week this season, excepting maybe that tired old Eric Hassli goal. Really, can we stop seeing that now?
Jamison Olave, the beast of a defender he is, the verb himself, has hit the top of the Castrol Index, ahead of sorts like the legendary Henry. Now, I’m not entirely sure what the Castrol Index consists of (ancient Chinese secret, huh?) but it surely must be something good. And if Olave wasn’t top of the Castrol Index, I’m sure he’d be the one pushing the car with only one finger uphill both ways in the snow. He’s that good.
Right, I’m not sure if there’s any team news of note yet, so let’s move on to the ever-present predicted lineup. The MLS injury reports come out later today, so you may see a different lineup tomorrow. Who knows? I certainly don’t, though my prediction track record has improved. This is largely because there were not many options, so this return from the injury crisis will probably affect that. Anyhow, I’ll stop rambling and get on with it.
Rimando
Beltran - Olave - Borchers - Wagner
Beckerman - Grabavoy - Johnson - Gil
Saborio - Espindola
We should know today if Robbie Russell will be able to take part tomorrow, so I predict that Blake Wagner will get his first chance to actually show what he’s made of. Of course, that free kick he won on the edge of the box last week sort of sealed the game for us, so he’s well on his way on in my book. We should also see the triumphant return of the one and only BORLAVE at the back. I’m excited, so long as nobody gets an early red card. (Hint, hint, Nat!) Really, though, we’ll need a backline that’s aware and awake, and I think Borchers will have been done well by a short rest. In the middle, I fancy a return to the Grabavoy-Johnson combination, which has worked rather well this season, and Luis Gil may get a chance to impress in the diamond. Up front, the combination of Saborio and Espindola should be more than enough to throw Seattle into disarray.
So let’s see if we can quiet down that noisy crowd at the LousyInternetConnection Field and put a huge roadblock in the Sounders’ season.
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