Friday 18 July 2014

Match Preview: FC Dallas v Aston Villa

Who are we playing?
FC Dallas, Wednesday July 23rd - 8.00pm CDT (Thursday 24th July 2.00am BST)

Where are we playing?
Toyota Stadium
9200 World Cup Way, Frisco, TX 75033


Toyota Stadium
Can I go?
Ticketmaster flogging tickets: Ticketmaster

Can I watch it on telly?
Good question. This one isn't live on AVTV so unless you can find a dodgy stream, probably not.

Big game?
Important for Lambert, he has to fashion a team from last year's remnants, returning bomb squad members, cheap and freebie transfers and the creme of the development squad.

We fully expect a bit of experimentation here and he will use as many players as he is able to.

FC Dallas are right in the middle of their season so should be fitter and more cohesive than us, so don't necessarily expect us to get a runaway victory.




Who's playing for us?
Probably everyone who's fit and in Lambert's thinking, which only rules out Benteke and Kozak, though both recovering strikers have made the trip anyway, which will be good for team morale.

Ron Vlaar is still on leave after his World Cup exertions, Samir Carruthers and Callum Robinson have been left behind to play in the development squad prep games while Aleksander Tonev and Tony Moon miss out and must be considered the new bomb squad. Dame Edna does make the trip.

Squad: Brad Guzan, Jed Steer, Shay Given, Matt Lowton, Alan Hutton, Jores Okore, Ciaran Clark, Philippe Senderos, Nathan Baker, Chris Herd, Joe Bennett, Kieran Richardson, Enda Stevens, Fabian Delph, Ashley Westwood, Karim El Ahmadi, Leandro Bacuna, Gary Gardner, Charles N’Zogbia, Joe Cole, Jack Grealish, Andi Weimann, Gabby Agbonlahor, Christian Benteke, Darren Bent, Libor Kozak.

Of more interest than the personnel will be the formation and we'll be looking for more signs of Roy Keane's input having an impact on the play. There were certainly encouraging signs of movement and running off the ball at Field Mill.

Who's playing for them?
The short bird out of Dallas
Mauro Diaz is the player that makes FC Dallas tick, Matt Hedges and Stephen Keel have formed a decent partnership in defence, while young Tesho Akindele has been making a name for himself up front.

Any useless stats?
We have no history against FC Dallas so no interesting snippets or stats for this section.

Sorry.

Prediction
Don't expect a classic. We'd expect our host to use this opportunity to give some of their squad players game time, while we are likely to field a different team in each half. Going for a 2-2 draw.


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