Saturday, September 15 • Kickoff: 7:30 PM • Silverbacks Park Could be the last time the Strikers ever play the Silverbacks, they might be called the Chiefs or something else next year. That aside, this could definitely be a trap game. They are last place, out of playoff contention, but could play spoiler in our quest to hosting in round one. We suck on the road, and we won't have Sparky for the last game in Edmonton, so 3 points here will be essential to help secure that 4th place or better finish. Edmonton just drew Carolina 2-2 tonight so the RailHawks are now ahead of us in 4th on goal difference, and they sill have 1 game in hand on us. We need 3 points!
The news actually gets a little worse...Mark just tweeted that he will not be making the trip to ATL either due to an injury. We have to win these last two games against the two non-playoff teams. No excuses. Even without Mark and Restrepo we should be able to take care of business against the cellar dwellers. Will be interesting to see what Shore does now. I think part of the reason Mark's scoring has been down since Restrepo went out, besides the obvious that Walter was the NASL assist leader, is that it seems to me like he's had Anderson take on a lot of Walter's role of distributing from MF to the forwards. Who is going to fill this role now? Obviously Tetteh was acquired with this role in mind, but he's out again this week thanks to his stupid reaction to the dirty tampon. I'll take a stab at what we'll see, and I expect the Strikers to try and make defending their top priority: Glaeser Blake - Gordon - Stahl - Laing Motagalvan - Shanosky - Ramos - Pecka Herron - Abe Ramos has ball skills and speed, don't know if his passing is good enough to be in the play-making role. But I'm not sure who else he might try. Honestly I'd prefer Lorenz, but he seems to have fallen out of favor and seen less minutes. Maybe King? And even if Abe does start up front, I'd expect we would see either King or Hassan in the second half for him. Goota have this. No excuses. We need to stay ahead of the Stars which we can control ourselves by just winning. And we need to jump over either the Railhawks or the Islanders. Railhawks have the toughest schedule to finish, and I think if we can get these last six points, we have a solid shot to be in the top four. Come on Strikers, get it done!!!
Gotta get King in the lineup I think. Either up top as a scoring threat or somewhere in the midfield. Abe or Hassan can come of the bench late if necessary.
Really embarrassing performance last night. This team has a serious discipline issue that needs to be addressed. We've had far too many needless stupid yellow and red cards this year. Coupled with Carolina win vs. SAS tonight, a home game in round one, and based on our performance away from home this year, the rest of 2012, is highly unlikely at this point. Carolina would need to lose both of their remaining games to a TB team looking to catch San Antonio for the points title, and we'd have to beat Edmonton while making up the goal difference. We could still wind up facing anyone but SA in round one, but it's likely gonna be Carolina or Puerto Rico. I'd rather get PR considering they're playing Metapan in CCL two days before what would be a round one matchup.