The Morning Rekrap: July 18, 2017

Good news, MLS is back to spare us from the horror show that the Gold Cup usurped the season for over the past few weeks. 14 teams will play two games this week but the league decided that two Atlanta United games in a week would be too much excitement and people wouldn’t be able to handle that much good soccer so we’ll have to wait until Friday for United to take on Orlando.

With so many teams taking the field it may be difficult to breakdown who to take and inevitably some managers will have taken the two weeks between games and forgotten that midweek games and away matches are worth trying to win and will rest their good players. That said the teams playing this week should be very exciting for fantasy managers even with the potential for rotation.

Anyway, onto the Rekrap...

e tornato in Toronto: Week 19 seems like such a long time ago and it won’t surprise me if the Gold Cup never ends, maybe the U.S. and Mexico will enter a penalty kick shoot out in the final that will take several weeks to finish. Nothing would surprise me at this point. A high point was Giovinco looking like old Gio with an assist, two goals, and a bunch of bonus points. Add to it that TFC beat Orlando City and his 17 points look that much sweeter.

More like New England Submission: The Revolution have been bad this year. They aren’t terrible in any one aspect of the game and have an exciting attack but they can’t seem to put it together this year. They lost to the New York Red Bulls in a game that I’m writing off as two bad teams facing off, but if New York is taking off, look out they have the talent to make a sneaky run into the playoffs.

Weird: There was just one cleansheet kept last week thanks to a late goal in the Sporting Kansas City vs. Philadelphia Union game. Stranger still, it was kept by Columbus on the road to Minnesota. Otherwise, there were an onslaught of goals in the most recent gameweek, only two games had less than three goals scored in them. That’s a lot of goals. My bacon was really saved by the result in the SKC game, skipping one of their defenders was a risk and luckily it paid off.

Anyway, onto the picks...

Rekrap’s Roster:

Here’s how I’m rolling this week:

Or so I think.

It’s a lot of NYCFC, I know. The Pigeons have two tough games with Toronto and Chicago in town but they’ve won 3 in a row at home and think their good players will break through.

Aside from that I think Victor Vazquez and Sebastian Giovinco will tear apart the Colorado Rapids over the weekend and TFC and NYCFC have played some crazy games in the Bronx in the past.

With Darlington Nagbe out on USMNT duty, Diego Valeri will be running the show in Portland and I expect that he will have two great games against two lesser opponents when the Timbers take on Vancouver and Real Salt Lake. Valeri is captain material this weekend.

Blerim Dzemaili is home against Philadelphia and FC Dallas and he’s been an absolute menace to opposing defenses since joining the Montreal Impact. He’s not very expensive at $9 and his ownership is at 10% right now. He’s a player it looks like not a lot of people know about so get him in.

Defenders are less of a sure thing this week. There’s no way that I’m leaving Joevin Jones off my squad after he’s been playing on the wing for Seattle lately. Other than him, I’m not so sure of the players I want so this could be subject to change.

Rekrap’s Rejects: I’m staying away from the NY Red Bulls, they have OK fixtures with San Jose at home and then at Minnesota, but I just don’t see them figuring it out this year and am staying away. Aside from them, the Houston Dynamo are atrocious away from home and they’ll be travelling for both games this week while missing many of their key players due to the Gold Cup.