Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Back at Home

KC is almost half way done with the season, after tomorrow's game against Colorado, KC will officially hit the half way point of the season, playing 17 games. The second half of the season will see KC play 13 of 17 games at home as the team only has 4 road games left. First though they have to get through Colorado. The defending champs come into the game with one less day off than KC, having played to a 0-0 draw with Houston on Sunday at home. They will have Conor Casey back from his red card suspension. They'll also have Omar Cummings available, as he's returned from injury. This will be the first time since early this season that Casey and Cummings could potentially start together. But with Colorado also having a second game this weekend, they could possibly rest a starter or two in preparation for their game against Vancouver this weekend.

Sporting KC continues their busy stretch of games as they continue to have 2 games a week. They'll host Chivas on Saturday before an Open cup game next Tuesday. So I'm sure we'll begin to see a little rotation here. I think we could see more on the weekend though. I think tomorrow KC is going to put out a similar lineup to the one that took the field against Portland as Colorado is likely seen as a more challenging opponent than Chivas USA. KC should have the same guys available tomorrow as they did on the weekend. The only big question may be if Seth Sinovic is ready to go and if he's going to get his starting spot back from Michael Harrington.

Nielsen
Myers - Collin - Besler - Harrington
Zusi - Cesar - Espinoza
Stojcev - Sapong - Bravo

Number to Remember - 1 - The number of winning streaks that are longer than KC's current 10 game unbeaten run. That run occurred in 2000 when KC had a 12 game unbeaten run.

Key Match Up - Aurelien Collin and Matt Besler vs Conor Casey and Omar Cummings - Between the two last year, Casey and Cummings scored 27 goals, they haven't gotten a ton of time together this season due to injury mainly. Meanwhile the defensive pairing of Collin and Besler has done extremely well for KC, basically since the two became the number 1 centerback pairing after the LA game, they've allowed a total of 5 goals in 9 league games.

PREDICTION - KC is busy right now, they've played 2 games a week 3 of the last 4 weeks, and counting this week have 3 more weeks of two games (one of those is the Newcastle friendly). So the team has to be starting to get a little tired, how much longer can guys like CJ Sapong continue to play at the level he has been? Hopefully they can, but this will be a big test for KC. They still should be able to pull out a win against a Rapids side that has not scored more than one goal in a game since May 25th. That said they've also only been shutout once since May 22nd. It'll be tough for KC but I think they can pull it out.

SKC - 2 (Zusi, Bravo)
COL - 1 (Casey)

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