Nasujak: Guess the Starting XI - Match 26 vs. Houston

Welcome back everyone.

The Vancouver Whitecaps took advantage of an FC Dallas’ team in flux this past weekend. Although it wasn’t a perfect performance, it was a respectable showing that along with the outstanding keeping of Maxime Crepeau, helped push the ‘Caps to all three points as well as 8th position in the Western Conference in terms of points per game.

The heavy lifting is far from over though. On Wednesday, the Whitecaps face another struggling team in Texas, the Houston Dynamo.

The Tim Parker led side has actually been in decent form of late, picking up two wins in their last four matches, albeit against FC Dallas and Austin FC.

Fafa Picault and Darwin Quintero (who is finally playing regular minutes) have been doing most of the offensive work for the Dynamo recently, and for the most part, this has been a team that looks to hit on the counter rather than maintain possession.

Turning to the Whitecaps, the health status of defensive players remains a big question, Florian Jungwirth, Cristian Gutierrez and Erik Godoy were all out of the mix against FC Dallas, so we’ll have to wait and see how they progress in the lead up to this one.

Another question is at the striker spot, where Brian White has been outplaying Lucas Cavallini, which could make things rather challenging when picking a starting XI, especially if Vanni Sartini goes away from two up front, favouring a single striking option.

A final consideration is squad rotation, with travel midweek and a home match on Saturday night, it will be interesting to see how the Whitecaps try to get the most out of their limited squad depth for both of these crucial matchups.

Ok, let’s get on to the rules and standings:

Predictions will be ‘valid’ if posted HERE (or more accurately, the correct match thread) prior to the lineup being officially announced, usually about an hour before kickoff.
You receive 1 point for every player you correctly guess to be in the Starting XI. You receive 4 bonus points for correctly predicting all 11 starters.
You get 5 points for correctly guessing Win/Lose/Draw, this doubles to 10 if you also predict the right score-line along with the result.
That means, if you correctly predict the Starting XI, Final Score, and Winner, you can earn 25 points!
At the end of each quarter, the contestants lowest score of that period will be deducted from the cumulative standings.