F*C* Dallas

Well those family and work obligations kept me away from the blog longer than I expected.  I was in Seattle two weekends ago and spent the last week in London with some of my engineers.  I'm back now and luckily after tonight there's a two week international break where we can get caught up on Leagues Cup, the transfer window, and a long-simmering apology I need to make on the Armas hiring.  I might even throw up some photos of the Wealdstone FC - AFC Fylde non-league match I saw in England.

So on to the league restart.  The Rapids are down in Dallas, aka DSG Park South come playoff time, to see our old friends Dallas don't call us the Burn.  This is going to be a battle of rust versus fatigue as Dallas didn't play between losing to FC Juarez (remember them) on July 31st and last weekend against DC.  Meanwhile the Rapids played their first Leagues Cup the day after that Dallas-Juarez game and played 6 others as well.  Kickoff in Texas is at 6:30 tonight.

Player Availability:

OUT: D Sam Vines (hamstring),  M Kevin Cabral (arm), M Kimani Stewart-Baynes (illness)

We saw Sammy come of in the Leagues Cup 3rd place game with the hamstring issue so not a surprise to see him unavailable.  Hopefully its a short term injury.

I think the lineup is fairly obvious today.  Really its just a matter of if Fernandez starts over one of the other wingers and if Ronan goes in for Larraz instead.

Prediction: 2-1 win, goals by Navarro and Mihailovic.  We are a better team than Dallas, its really just a matter of how tired we are.  I think we have it in us to win this one.