The New Fire Starting XI

Well, at least we finally acquired an actual MLS player from another squad for the first time since we took Diego Gutierrez back. On the other hand, our last three non-Salvadoran pickups have been on players with questionable locker room attitudes, streaky goal-scoring records, and/or a history of injuries. We've got enough castaways from other clubs that we may want to rename Section 8 Gilligan's Island.

The lineup prognosis probably goes a little something like this:

F McBride Castillo
M Pappa Pause Ljungberg Nyarko
D Krol Conde Brown Ward
G Johnson

Regarding that goalkeeper choice, I was actually hoping we'd put a bit in for David James as our second DP. Collins John is the first man off the bench, I would guess. Stefan Dimitrov will probably not see another minute of playing time all year. Other losers in all this are Peter Lowry and Baggio Husidic, for sure, and probably Mike Banner as well, which brings me back to one of my initial concerns about Head Coach Carlos de los Cobos, in that my gut reaction was that he would be detrimental to player development for the younger guys. Now that we've crashed out of every extracurricular tournament we've been in, they're not going to see much of any playing time.

Still, that's lineup looks like it may be enough to get us back into the playoff picture. I just worry that the long-term sacrifice may be significant, and we'll get set on a path of having to buy quality players every year instead of developing them from within.

In other news, Wilman Conde brought his A-game to the All-Star Game on Wednesday night against Manchester United, which is to say he got burned twice for goals.