Roots fans it’s game day! The Roots travel to Hartford, Connecticut to face Athletic at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time at Trinity Health Stadium. The match will be broadcast on ESPN+ and KTVU Plus, and the team watch party will be at Plank in Jack London Square.
Work, travel, and a 4-month old means this is going to be a brief one. Also the music from Connecticut is sliiiiiim pickings. KISS is from Long Island, which is basically the same thing, but KISS sucks, so we’re going to do near-KISS.
Around the Western Conference
Dropping those points against San Antonio was inadvisable:
In relevant part, Monterey and Vegas drew, which is helpful, with Vegas only moving up to even points with the Roots. Memphis and Colorado Springs both won, though, knocking the Roots down to a tie for fifth with Vegas. Roots have a game on Memphis, though. The Roots’ cushion on Rising is 7 points, but note that Rising have two games in hand, which could cut that to only 1. Eeesh.
Hartford Athletic
Hartford have 27 goals on the season, which is not quite the worst in the league, but not is not much above it. Unfortunately, it’s not a huge number less than the Roots have. Hartford’s offense should be better than it is, though, as they have two forwards combining for 3 goals this season who combined last season for 24 (Romario Williams and Marcus Epps). Athletic’s goals this season have come from USL veteran Michee Ngalina and Senegalese youngster Mamadou Dieng with 8 and 9, respectively.
Their defense has conceded 41, which is almost as many as the Roots.
The annoying thing is that Athletic are on a 6-game undefeated stretch, and have only one loss in their last ten. In that stretch they have home wins over Detroit City, Las Vegas, and Louisville. Ah, shit.
Roots’ Form
I mean, it wasn’t great.
Roots gotta stop making mistakes when they don’t score any goals. Roots should also score some goals. Preferably a lot more, but I’d take a few more if that’s all that’s available. Will Riley be out on suspension from two yellows? Ah, shit.
Let’s hope Baca is ready to go because we might f-ed in the b if he’s not.
Lineup and Score Predictions
Bloom
I don’t know, I predicted a strong defensive lineup against North Carolina and we didn’t get one. We should probably do that this time. On the other hand, without Riley, maybe we just can’t play that defensively. Maybe Gavin will run out all our forwards at once. That would be fun, right?
1-0 Roots and it’s miserable the whole time.
Jon
No huge surprises in my group. Without Riley, I’m slotting in the recent signee Rafa Baca into the CM role opposite of Danny Gomez. At LW, I’m going Reid over Njie because of Tray’s performance against San Antonio in the second half. If he does get the start, it’s important for Reid to show he can out two good games together. I’m also curious about the RWB spot and whether Memo Diaz made the trip given his baby is just a few weeks old. If Memo is unavailable, I’m starting Ilya Alekseev and feel pretty comfortable with him.
Cmon Roots, beat em like you’re pissed off. 4-1, Roots.
Aaron
Well, here we are: In order to beat expectations, a team that in the very recent past had a legitimate claim to being second-best in the West merely has to lose by fewer than 5 goals. What a world. What Gavin tries to do, and what the Roots actually do, is honestly a complete mystery to me here. So let’s talk about something else: I was lucky enough to see Green Day last night, and it was fucking awesome.
Some relevant thoughts: (1) To the person who was right in front of the stage in the Roots shirt, presumably in an attempt to capture Billie Joe’s attention and maybe get on stage, I thought it was a good idea, at least. (2) The fella next to me did not cheer at all when Billie Joe discussed voting against fascists. Tbh, “voting against fascists” is a solid idea, and the Blog agrees with Green Day that we should be doing it. I am deeply suspicious of that guy who sat/stood next to me. (3) I may be the only person in the world who considers “She” one of the better songs on Dookie. If you also think “She” is one of the better songs on that album, please find me at a game or watch party so we can discuss our superior musical tastes. (4) These guys are 51 and 52 and rocked out for nearly three solid hours. It was truly impressive, and really makes me wonder why our lads seem seem so sluggish when traveling east. They should ask owner Billie Joe for some pointers. Maybe its the coffee.
1-0 Roots.