This Sunday (Sunday, SUNDAY!) DC United gets back to MLS action and travels to the Pacific Northwest to take on the DC United West, who are undefeated at home. Two reasons for that are the play of Troy Perkins and Rodney Wallace, both alums of the season that shall not be mentioned and now solid contributors to the Timbers. So far, the Timbers have looked like the expansion Seattle Sounders, currently sitting at 6th in the West with 17 points and, if the season ended today, would be in the playoffs. They are also tied on points with the 3rd, 4th, and 5th place teams in the West, sorted only by goal differential.
Injuries have made the lineup pretty easy to predict:
Hamid
Kitchen Jakovic White Woolard
Najar McCarty Simms Pontius
Brettschneider Ngwenya
I will continue to say that I would like to see more of the Stephen King Experiment, although getting a more creative central midfielder over the summer is still in the talks; unless United craters these next few weeks, they will still be in the hunt for the playoffs and the pressure will be on to make a move. Charlie Davies has been great, but it is too bad that United couldn’t have gotten Benny Feilhaber too; that is the kind of attacking midfielder they need in the middle. Will they go back to the South American pipeline and try to pull out an unknown player from Bolivia? Time will tell.
But back to this game. Portland’s weakness is its defense and offense is where United has all of their injuries. Portland has scored many of their recent goals off of headers and United is terrible at defending crosses. Portland has a rabid fanbase and United is on the road. This does not look good for the Black and Red. However, Portland’s streak has to end at some point: I am going out on a limb and saying that United will pull out a 1-1 draw, with BlakeBrett scoring his first league goal of the season. Any sort of point is a good result coming out of Portland, and maybe Perkins will have flashbacks to last year and let in some clunkers.
Before Extra Time 