Friday, June 04, 2010

Up to the Great White North

The Wizards will reach the 1/3rd point of their season tomorrow afternoon after taking on Toronto FC at BMO Field. Toronto has been an effective team at home this season, having taken 12 of the available 12 points that have been available for them at home. In all competitions they've only dropped two points and that was on Wednesday night in a Canadian Championship game that meant nothing to TFC as they'd already clinched that tournament. So for the second week in a row KC plays one of the best home teams in the league. With that draw on Wednesday against Vancouver, the Reds moved to being unbeaten in 7 in all competitions. Along with that, TFC is 4 unbeaten in league play. On Wednesday, few of TFC's regulars got much playing time, although both Julian De Guzman and Dwayne De Rosario played at least a portion of that game. Still they should be fairly fresh for the game tomorrow.

The Wizards on the other hand will be without two of their best midfielders. Stephane Auvray is still out after having the scope done on his knee, and captain, Davy Arnaud is suspended after picking up two yellow cards in the team's game last week in Salt Lake. With Arnaud out that becomes the big question of week with quite a few questions of the lineup. Along with the question of who will replace Arnaud, the other lineup question has to do with the back line. Jonathan Leather had a very poor game getting beat bad a few times against Salt Lake. Other questions have to come up about the back line after giving up 4 goals against Salt Lake.

Nielsen
Myers - Conrad - Besler - Harrington
Jewsbury - Rocastle - Wolff
Bunbury - Kamara - Smith

Key Match Up - Jack Jewsbury /Craig Rocaslte vs Dwayne De Rosario - De Rosario is still one of the best players in MLS and he is TFC's leading scorer, he'll be a handful for either Jewsbury or Rocastle (if he plays), and frankly I don't favor the Wizards in that match up.

PREDICTION - Once again the Wizards find themselves on the road against a very tough opponent. TFC is a very tough side at home, they have been since they came into the league. With KC on a seven game winless streak and TFC on a 7 game undefeated streak the stats are not in the Wizards favor. Everything is just stacked against the Wizards at this point, hopefully they can break the winless streak.

KC - 1 (Bunbury)
TFC - 2 (De Rosario, Barrett)

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