Well, we’re at it again. After the gut-wrenching home loss to the Red Bulls, it’s probably good we don’t have any sort of by-week, as we’ll want to forget the calamity that was last weekend as soon as possible.

We’ve played Montreal quite recently, which takes a good amount of intrigue out of this game. As an expansion team, we haven’t played any MLS teams before, thus any matchup is usually the first time we’ve ever played them.

But anyway, we beat Montreal 3-1 at home last time. It was easily our most impressive game of the season, and we’ll hope we can manage another win in Canada tomorrow night.

Form

As I said last time, Montreal are a hugely eclectic team. After losing to us they went on to impressively beat Orlando City, only to get destroyed by Toronto 3-1, a team we had just recently beaten. For every MLS match they play, it all depends on which Montreal side decides to show up.

NYC were in a nice run of form before getting ripped apart by the Red Bulls. I’m fairly confident heading into this match, though. With Lampard, Iraola, and Angelino on the horizon and South African player of the year Tefu Mashamaite training with us, competition for spots in our admittedly sub-par team will be fierce. It seems like NYC have taken notice of the fact that our team is generally bad and in this Montreal game, expect players to fight hard to cement their place in the starting XI.

Lineups

Montreal (4-2-3-1): Bush (GK), Tola (LB), Soumare (CB), Ciman (CB), Oyongo (RB), Donadel (CM), Reo-Coker (CM), Tissot (LM), Piatti (CAM), Romero (RM), McInerney (ST)

-Defenders Camara and Miller are still out.

-Striker Kenny Cooper just underwent knee surgery, as did fellow striker Cameron Porter

NYCFC (4-5-1): Saunders (GK), Calle (LB), Facey (CB), Hernandez (CB), RJ Allen (RB), McNamara (LM), Grabavoy (CM), Jacobson (CM), Poku (CM), Ballouchy (RM), Villa (ST)

-Shelton is very close to a return and could even start this match, but will most lilkely come off the bench

-If Kreis knows what’s good for him, he’ll start Poku, with Mix Diskerud off for the Gold Cup. Mix will miss around 4 MLS games. The question is where Poku will play, as a slot at CM makes sense, but he’s been more effective in an attacking position. Even so, with Grabavoy and Jacobson behind him, he might be given free reign to wreak havoc.

Final Thoughts

New York City is about to go through a heavy transition phase with so many new faces coming into the starting lineup. This will be the last game for players who’ve been here since day 1 to prove that they’re worth starting. And not a lot of them are.

Montreal have their ups and downs, and we expect this game to go NYC’s way, however unlikely that sentence is in any other circumstance.

We’ve beaten them before, we need a bounce back from last week, lets beat them again.