Guess the Starting XI - Match Eleven vs. FC Dallas

Welcome back everyone - hopefully this week with plenty of time to get your picks in!

Apologies for the struggles last week, but we should be back to regularly scheduled programming from here on out.

My thought for last week would be that we count it as a “no fault” week. This means that if you did get your prediction in, and managed to get a good haul of points, it could benefit you with a couple extra points down the road, if not, no worries.

Basically, everyone will get two bye weeks during this ten match period, but if you managed to get a prediction in for this past match as well, you can swap it with your lowest score of the period at the end (aka. I will be taking the eight highest scores of the ten matches). I hope that all makes sense.

Even though the Seattle scores are on the table, the cumulative standings will remain unchanged from the previous match against the Galaxy, and the Seattle scores won’t come into the calculation until after the August 8th match (aka the halfway point of the season).

Now, on to Dallas. Despite these two teams being at the bottom of the Western Conference, they are both coming off impressive showings against top teams in MLS.

18 year old Ricardo Pepi has been tearing it up for the Toro’s, and with a lot of roster turnover this offseason, they may only be starting to find their form as a team.

For the Whitecaps, hopefully a full week of rest and training allows some key players to return to the lineup. Jake Nerwinski, Javain Brown and Bruno Gaspar (definitely out - did not make the trip) have all struggled with fitness so far, and their status could really affect the way VWFC lines up this weekend. Michael Baldisimo also looks to be a question mark for this one, so maybe we see yet another rotated midfield as well.

It’s also worth considering that both Lucas Cavallini and Max Crepeau are departing on international duty, so this will impact their usage this weekend.

As always, here are the rules and current 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.