Real Salt Lake -vs- Toronto FC
from the perspective of Big Soccer poster LFC4life
Real Salt Lake could not have picked a better time to play Toronto FC this season. The club is coming off the worst result in club history after 1-1 draw with USL side Montreal Impact which meant Montreal won the Canadian Club Championship. As far as league form goes Toronto FC has not won in the last 4 league games and has a terrible record of 1 win, 0 draws and 6 losses away from home.
Start the breakdown in goalkeeping where Greg Sutton has done a decent job this season overall. He is the type of keeper who has made some great saves during games when needed but sometimes he tends to give away some cheap goals.
The back-line has been one of the major differences when you compare away form this season to the form at BMO. We tend to give away more goals and these goals are down to silly mistakes. Velez and Marshall are the center pairing for us in most games and they tend to be good but are prone to the odd mistake. Wynne has hit a bit of bad form the last month after doing very well at the start of the season and Brennan has been consistently good all season long.
In the middle we use two holding mid-fielders in Robinson and Edu. Robinson has been one of the better players of late; he does a lot of good things in the middle of the park which seem to go unnoticed by many supporters and really is the type of player you don’t enjoy until he is gone. Edu form this season has been up and down, he seems to be more attacking of late scoring some goals but overall this season I think a lot of the supporters expected a bit more from the rookie of the season last year.
Attacking from the mid-field is the trio of Robert, Ricketts and Guevara. Robert and Ricketts have shown some moments of class in making goals and scoring them while at other times they are very ineffective. Guevara is a player who has a big reputation in the league and for the first while was doing quite well but in the past few games has shown down a bit in influencing the game attacking wise. I think when Guevara is doing well the team is getting points.
As far as strikers go this is the weakest part of the team. With our main striker Danny Dichio out we are stuck with Cunningham who has been stuck at 99 career MLS goals forever it seems, Smith who works hard and can make stuff happen but lacks a finishing touch and Ibbey who is a player with potential but is still only a teenager. It doesn’t seem to matter who Carver puts out there it doesn’t work so until rumors of Barrett coming in or another striker being brought in from the open market we will have to try and get something from what we got.
Probable Line-up
----------------------Sutton------------------------
Wynne------Marshall-----Velez-------Brennan
---------------Robinson------Edu-----------------
Ricketts-------------Guevara-------------Robert
-----------------------Ibbey------------------------
Last season in this fixture we won and it was the only away win of the season but I think we would be doing well if we were to come out of this with a draw. My prediction will be 1-0 RSL.
