Vancouver vs San Jose
By: Chris | May 10th, 2011
The Quakes play their first midweek MLS game tomorrow night in Vancouver. The Quakes sit on 5 points and Vancouver have 7. If the Quakes can win they can leapfrog Vancouver in the standings in the West, as well as Chicago in the overall standings. The Quakes are going to be feeling good after their victory over Portland last week and hope it can propel them to some better form in the next weeks as the summer schedule begins.
Courtesy of soccerway.com, this snazzy league table:
The Last 5 Matches category reads from left to right by the way. So both teams have only managed 2 points in their last 5 games, but the Quakes have lost their last 3 MLS matches. Last week the Quakes were able to defeat Portland 1-0, in Portland, in the 120th minute thanks to an Opara header. The Quakes reverted to their more defensive 4-4-2 for the Philadelphia and Portland matches. And with the unfortunate injury to Simon Dawkins, the Quakes will most likely keep utilizing the 4-4-2 until they can figure out how to get their offense clicking again.
Dawkins had surgery on his calves last week. He had a fasciotomy surgery on his calves to relieve some pressure. Be warned, googling fasciotomy surgery will come up with some disturbing pictures. Anyways Dawkins is going to be out 4-8 weeks, but since his surgery was pretty small and localized, hopefully it’ll be closer to 4 weeks than 8. Lenhart and Opara have been getting more playing time and both say they are getting close to 100%.
Tomorrow night the Quakes will need to take advantage of Vancouver’s slumping defense while keeping theirs solid. Vancouver forward Eric Hassli hasn’t been the same since the start of the season and if the Quakes can keep him off his game they will have a huge advantage over Vancouver’s offensive efforts. That being said, the Quakes will need to find their offensive spark. Brad Ring is working to be the temporary replacement for Dawkins in the midfield. I think a lot of fans would like to see a midfield comprised of Convey on the left, Ampai on the right and Cronin in defensive mid. It seems that Stephenson and Ring will be fighting for that attacking mid spot. In defense, Yallop will have to decide how to manage his central defenders. Opara and Burling have played well together while McDonald and Hernandez are in a bit of a fog right now. Corrales is also facing pressure from Morrow who proved he can handle himself against an attack minded squad in Philadelphia.
It’ll be a tough match and that’s not taking into consideration the fact that the Quakes are playing in Empire Field, which has one of the best crowds in MLS this season. My prediction is for a 1-1 draw.
Quakes Exclusive 9
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