Jacksonville has had a pretty bad year so far, and this is a match Indy needs 3 points in. We have a bad habit of playing down to our competition though, so we need to come focused and prepared.
This is a must-win for Indy. Jacksonville has been very poor--they've lost four in a row, and haven't scored in that time; their only win of thee year came against expansion Miami, and their only draw against a poor Fort Lauderdale side. We need to beat them, or last week's heroics will have been for naught. Greg Janicki apparently is out for this one, so Cory Miller will get the start. I thought that Miller was by far the better of the two last year, but Hankinson seems to know how to get the best out of Janicki, so we may feel his loss. Ring is also still out. After the first twenty minutes or so last week, Indy's approach seemed to be to yield possession, try to soak up Minnesota's pressure, and to hit on the counterattack. And it worked, sort of (Minnesota did score twice during that stretch). But I suspect we'll have a different approach this week, because I don't think Jacksonville is as likely to try to take the game to us as a strong Minnesota side was. And that's probably okay--we proved in the first twnty minutes last week that we're capable of controlling the game, at least for a stretch.
Also, injury update, Lovel Palmer is apparently hurt and expected to miss this game. Franco is his replacement I would think.
We just can't seem to break out of this playing down to the level of our competition trend which is worrying.
Disappointing result but we're 2nd in the standings as of now, though only a point ahead of Minnesota who is sitting at 7 games played.
So frustrating. The Cosmos now control their own fate: they win next week, and we can't catch them, even though we have a game in the hand. Two big results went our way: Edmonton lost, Minnesota lost. But we couldn't take advantage. Like you said, this playing to the level of our opponents is maddening.
Also someone I think we miss a lot especially with how much our central midfield can struggle to control the game at times: Brad Ring.