HUGE game for the Nats tonight. If they lose they're in a precarious position to even gain an automatic qualifying spot, which would be embarrassing result considering the weakness of CONCACAF. The U.S. could be tied for 3rd w/ Honduras if they lose, behind in goal differential, and w/ an upcoming game at their place. So we at least better come away with a point, although anything less than a win would still be disappointing and put us up against it.
Not good that DeMerit is injured and we might have the tentative challenges, clearances, passing, and one touches of Jon Bornstein to look forward to tonight. I watched a Chivas USA/LA Galaxy game a couple weeks ago, and he wasn't even one of the better players on the field on a night where most everybody played below average for themselves. Yet he still got called up by Bob Bradley who was in the crowd (must be lazy scouting on his part) and proceeded to stink up the place against El Salvador, which included a relinquishing of the only goal for the opponent from a clearance by Bornstein that inexplicably went toward the top of the box. And he was wiffing on balls, kicking them directly out of bounds, slowing down the counter attack, etc. It was bad.
Considering team USA has only 3 reliable defenders at this point (Onyewu, Boca, Spector), I'd go to a 3-4-3 or 3-5-2. 4-4-2 w/ a diamond midfield would be my ideal formation also, but you have to adapt to your personnel. Right now we don't have the troops to pull it off. I think about 8-9 of our 15 or so best players right now might be midfielders. And we have 3 or 4 legit forwards when we're healthy. Quite a contrast to our makeup earlier this decade when we had McBride and nothing else to the point where we were forced to employ Donovan up front.
When healthy the ideal lineup for me would be:
Forwards: Davies, Altidore, Dempsey
Midfield: Torres, J. Jones, Donovan, Holden
Defense: Boca, Onyewu, Spector
K: Howard
bench: Bradley, Edu, Zizzo, Cherundolo, DeMerit, Guzan, Feilhaber
Tonight I badly want to see Holden (Harkes said it best when he said he likes everything about Holden, major catalyst), Torres, and/or Feilhaber over the likes of Bornstein and Bradley; but I doubt Bob can be unbiased toward his son and has the guts to change to a more aggressive formation.