Gameday Thread: Columbus Crew SC vs Toronto ButterBoyz FC (Match 15 | June 2, 2018 7:30 PM ET)

Kempin
Afful - William - Abubakar - Valenzuela
Artur - Clark
Hansen - Sosa/Argudo - Grella
Zardes

That will do.

 

One thing I won't b*tch at MLS for.

Martinez deserved it.

 

I was in a meeting so I did not thoroughly read through the poll options... And now I feel like one of my students.

Penance to Crew fans for missing that PK will be given by Hype Train this Saturday.

 

That is the most like for like way to do it. You could also start Abu & move Artur to CAM.

This could also work, though defensive, 3-5-2:

-------------------Kempin-------------
-----Williams---Sauro--Abubakar------
Afful-----Clark-------Artur------Valenzuela
----------------------Grella-------------------------
-------------Zardes--------Hansen---------

Bench: Ketterer; Jimenez, Crognale, Abu, Argudo, Jahn + Sosa/Opoku.

 

man, when i was 1 for 13 and 52nd place in the grouchy point table, voting in the poll was easy. now that ive rocketed up the table with a magnificent two match streak, i feel more pressure than precum does when he talks about metrics.

 

Sad there is no eighth "we deserve butter" option...

 

I see you, @hangthadj.

 

I'm assuming this will be the lineup. Gregg seems to have a lot of faith in Argudo so I bet he starts for Pipa....and then well probably see Sosa in the Open Cup.

 

Of the three upcoming games the open cup means the most to me. Rest the few people we have vs TFC and go strong vs Chicago

 

Not sure we have that many folks to rest.

Can Martinez play in the Open Cup? I'd assume yes.

 

I know we are missing a bunch of players, but looking at Toronto's injury list this still is a winnable game. Especially with 10k plus at MAPFRE rocking the stands. Jozy and Moor are obviously the biggest losses for Toronto, but their depth is hurting too. If Morrow can't go, that's a significant loss. If he can go he's probably a bit rusty with only 1 MLS game under his belt this season.

A win would put us 18 points ahead of Toronto. Granted they have 3 games in hand, but 18 points at this point in the season would be a significant gap. And it should be enough to hold them off and possibly have home field advantage for any possible playoff match-up down the road.

 

I'm really baffled by TFC. They were clearly the best team in the league last season. What the heck happened to them this year??

Yes, I realize we were saying the same thing about the Penguins at a similar point in the NHL season--but that's a longer grind and you can afford to pace yourselves a bit.

...and 18 points is a significant gap at any point in the season....

 

Well, they've had significant injuries is the biggest one. And similar to our schedule run that we're on now, at the beginning of the season they were playing 2 games a week with Champions League. I think, despite the league count, they've played 3 or 4 games MORE than we have to this point.

I've watched a lot of their games, they look pretty decent going forward. They are just getting carved up at the back. Bradley is either covering for everyone that makes a mistake or getting torched himself because he's a step slow or not fully engaged.

It's a bit of a self perpetuating cycle. There are some tired legs, they're mentally drained and a the team is banged up. It's hard to right the ship.

I'm really looking forward to this one.

 

One goal win for the Crew! Our depth players have got a lot of minutes lately, and I think that will give us just enough confidence to top a surprisingly struggling Toronto team.

 

I know this will probably come back to bite me but TFC look like they just don't care about the MLS this year.

Maybe play the kids because the old guys just don't care.

 

We killed ourselves going after the CCL both in the toll in took on the first team in and by basically throwing three league matches by starting complete back up rosters.

Then we were hit by a ridiculous number of injuries including Altidore basically everyone who would normally start or even be on the bench in defence.

The team is slowly reassembling itself but it will still be two or three more games before it's really TFC out there. I suspect the Crew are going to win this weekend's game pretty handily.

At this point TFC's league goal for the season is simply to make the playoffs since anything near the top of the table is out of reach. Of course, by playoff time the full team should be back and firing so they should have a shot at the Cup regardless of whether they entered as the top team or in the knockout round.

I'd look forward to another Crew-TFC playoff match up (and especially to being able to continue them in the future after this Austin thing hopefully dies).

 

Hardhead, I am not changing my vote. No matter how many of our starting players are not playing.

 

"He came from a club in Venezuela
We chant his name, It's Eduardo Sosa, S O S A Sosa!"

Needs some work....

 

I kinda expected it would be. You are not going to make your reply system look worse than it does by rescinding that card. It was an pretty iffy call--but justifiable enough to leave it stand.

 

******** this league