I’m still hoping Brandon Barklage is going to step up and stake his claim as a potential starter. We lined up with Quaranta in the middle and Barklage on the right in the last preseason game. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense at the time, but now it does.

From what we’ve seen in past seasons, it would seem as if Quaranta is better suited for the wing than the middle. But if his game has improved significantly over the offseason and its become apparent that he is our best offensive weapon, maybe it is actually a good idea to put him in the middle to maximize his number of touches.

Shame on me for omitting Barklage, whom I loved last season before he tore his Hummel ligament. (Sorry for the basketball reference, but I’m still reeling over that loss for my Boilers.)

At the moment, I’m also curious who will deputize for Clyde Simms for the first week or three – Flo? Szetela? Barklage? McT?

This sort of points to my main problem with the move. We have “options”, but are any of them really that enticing?

Khumalo is probably the closest to being a true wide man out of the group you mention, but as we all know, he’s wildly inconsistent. As depth, I’m OK with him. As a starter, not so much.

Szetela isn’t a natural wide player; he doesn’t have the speed or the inclination to run at people. His best strength in attack is playing combination passes. You put guys like that in the middle so they have more passing options, and so they don’t have to go 1v1 with defenders.

McTavish will do the defensive job well enough, but he is lacking in creativity and technical ability. It’s not that he’ll just lose the ball every time we attack; it’s that he’s not quite clever enough or skilled enough to create danger. Teams won’t have to worry about him going forward.

Pontius needs to be kept at forward. This was a pet peeve of mine last year, when it became obvious that our slow speed of play was killing us, and our one quick striker was playing in the midfield. We need to let him develop as a forward, because I think at this point he’s our most dangerous attacking player. I still see him as very capable of a season at our around 10 goals and 10 assists.

Barklage might be the best fit, but he seems more natural to me in the middle (just like Quaranta seems like a natural right midfielder). My preference for using guys where they’re best if at all possible is probably something I’ve brought up too often. We have a top-tier MLS right midfielder, and a promising MLS central midfielder, and we’re going to play the RM in central midfield and the CM on the wing. I just can’t bring myself to get behind it at this point. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems like a poor allocation of talent.

As for defensive midfield, I think at this point it’ll be McTavish or N’Galula. Normally I’d just say McTavish straight out, but Onalfo hasn’t used him in defensive midfield thus far in the preseason. He’s only been used as a center back and as a right back. That’s probably more related to the number of DMs in camp and the relative lack of CBs and RBs, but still.