Looking to Win Again

The Wizards stay at home and play New England this week, in their last league game until the 4th of July, with SuperLiga and Open Cup games coming up. This game with New England will be the Wizards first of 3 meetings in the span of a month against the Revolution. Two of those meetings will be in league play, while the 3rd will be in SuperLiga. New England will be without Taylor Twellman, the reigning MLS player of the week. He is still suffering from some post concussion syndrome symptoms.

The Wizards come into the game without a win since defeating Salt Lake 2-0 almost a month ago. A win tomorrow is needed to go into the upcoming league break with some momentum. A loss this weekend could see KC fall all the way down to 6th. The regular 3 injured players (Adam Cristman, Eric Kronberg, and Chance Myers) are joined on the injury list this week by Jimmy Conrad, Claudio Lopez, and Santiago Hirsig. All 3 of those guys practiced yesterday and looked to be just fine. I'd expect all 3 of them to still be in the lineup come Saturday. Usually after loses, Coach Onalfo likes to make some changes to the lineup to try and make up for the errors this previous week. Having been out to practice this week, though, I don't know if we'll see any changes to last week's lineup.

Hartman
Watson - Conrad - Hohlbein - Besler
Hirsig
Jewsbury - Arnaud - Gomez
Wolff - Lopez

Key Match Up - Jimmy Conrad vs Shalrie Joseph - With Twellman not traveling to KC this week, it likely means that Joseph will take up his emergency role as a striker again this weekend. He's a big, strong bodied, player and will be a handful for Conrad to cover not just in open play, but on set pieces as well.

PREDICTION - The away team has traditionally done pretty well in this series, going 9-3-7 since 2003. Of the 3 wins by home teams in this series, KC has 2 of them, one coming last year late in the season. New England comes in after 2 home wins, including a 4-0 dismantling of New York. A win is needed by KC or they risk falling behind in league play while they are playing in the SuperLiga. Unfortunately with the game at the small confines of CAB and the way the team has played lately I have trouble seeing a win.

KC - 1 (Lopez)
NE - 1 (Ralston)