TFC's Promising First Season De-railed by Injuries

Already without the services of starting goalkeeper Greg Sutton, perhaps for the rest of the season as he plays the waiting game of Post-Concussion Syndrome, Toronto FC finds themselves short several key players at all positions. All-Star midfielder Ronnie O'brien re-injured his knee in the friendly against Aston Villa, speedy wingback Marvell Wynne pulled his hamstring in the same game and will require 3-4 weeks to recover, and finally, striker, and 2006 Golden Boot Award winner, Jeff Cunningham will be out at least a month as he takes the time to properly heal a lower-abdominal injury.

As a result, the depleted Toronto squad that took to the field Sunday afternoon against the Chicago Fire was trounced convincingly, coming up on the embarrassing end of a 3-0 loss. Manager Mo Johnston's adjustments were completely ineffective, and saw the likes of Colin Samuel, Andy Welsh, and Jim Brennan shuffling around the field as if they were playing musical chairs (or positions in this case). The sight of left-footed Andy Welsh taking the ball into the corner on his off-wing was an easy target for Chicago to mark, holding him to short passes and defending the off-foot cross. Even worse was the play of Colin Samuel on the wing, as he spent a good 20 minutes just wandering around in no-mans land, before being moved back up front to striker. Jim Brennan lacks the pace and ball handling skills to be effective as anything more than a ball distributer, but with Samuel's poor off-the-ball play and Dichio's lack of pace, he has no real options. Without strong play on the wing, TFC was doomed to a lack of quality scoring chances.

On the otherside of the ball, Marvell Wynne's pace was sorely missed, as Chicago exploited Toronto's defence with fast-paced attacks. If it were not for some strong saves by young goaltender David Monsalve, the score could very easily have been 5 or 6 to nil.

In short, if we put in an effort such as this against Beckham and the LA Galaxy it will be one hell of an embarrassing evening at BMO Field in front of the biggest audience TFC has ever seen.