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With all of the furor or sturm und drang or whatever you want want to call the aftermath of Sunday's game still boiling my blood a little bit, I completely forgot to get you fine folks a predicted lineup for today's game. This sort of outrage shall not happen again (and you'll be getting another one of these posts on Friday!)
That said, the red cards from the game against the Philadelphia Union make predicting the lineup for tonight's game fairly straight-forward. And perhaps that is a good thing: having depth and tinkering is all well and good, but we keep hearing from the coaching staff that players need time to gel and get used to each other. Perhaps it's time for Ben Olsen to pick his best eleven players and go to war with them down the stretch, using the depth when players are suspended or injured.
Is that group the players that will face the Chicago Fire tonight? Let's find out.
Even with the red card suspensions of Emiliano Dudar and Branko Boskovic, this lineup is fairly close to one of D.C. United's best. Yes, there are hard decisions to be made about attacking players, but that is why the coaching staff gets the big bucks and I'm a blogger with a day job. It is not a stretch, though, to think that this be the lineup that United goes with for the rest of the season, baring returns from injury from Daniel Woolard and Maicon Santos. Players like Boskovic, Salihi, Dudar, and the rest need to grab ahold of staring spots and not let them go or they risk being left behind the rest of the season. Let me know who your starting 11 for the rest of the season is in the comments.
As for the subs for this game, it looks like they will have to be Joe Willis, Ethan White, Lewis Neal, Hamdi Salihi, Marcelo Saragosa, Josh Wolff, and Long Tan. However, I think I have found a culprit for United's current run of form: before Nick DeLeon cut his hair on July 13, the team had earned 33 points from 16 games; since cutting his hair, United have earned 4 points from 5 games. Somebody get the man some Rogaine.