ADVANTAGE: New England
This one is elementary folks. Conde is out. Miller is out. Solli appears to be out as well. Three quarters of New York’s starting defense will be unavailable, forcing the team to rely upon shaky newcomer Markus Holgersson to shore up a pair of rookies and an unproven commodity in Brandon Barklage. The team was already in dire straits when Conde was the only person unavailable.
This situation won’t be pretty.
The Revolution, meanwhile, seem set in the back. Sophomore AJ Soares leads a steady defensive line which includes Chris Tierney and Kevin Alston on the wings, and the towering 6’5″ Stephen McCarthy in the middle. They have given up eight goals through six games, but much like the offensive side, one performance skews their overall statistical profile. Take away a 3-1 drubbing to Kansas City, and the goals against average drops to one a game.
This one is going to be tough to watch. Dax is a hard worker but he’s going to struggle defending the midfield.
BlooCheez is incredibly consistant at making useless untimely backpasses. I am waiting to see what Backe sees in him, though he did manage to create a brilliant goal using his backpass technique recently. He’ll need to find himself inside the 18 to do it again.
In defense we can look forward to seeing Holgersson who is shaky and uncoordinated at the best of times and lucky at the best of times. He who inspires little confidence will be in charge of a backline of rookies. Rookies who, like Lade, I hope will be surprisingly steady.
I hope Lindpere makes attacking runs off the ball. That may not be his game but we need those runs into the box. They disrupt the D and create openings and opportunities for shots on goal.
I see a Henry playing the CM – CF role he played earlier this year during our losses. I see him playing pissed off
and scoring 1 late goal just to prove to himself that he can in spite of the whole team crumbling around him.
NE 3 – NY 1
the real punch in the face will come when a NE player who has never scored before drops a hat trick on us.
apologies for the pessimism but its not like i haven’t seen it before.
correction:
shaky and uncoordinated at the worst of times and lucky at the best of times
happy to be wrong