RIFC return home to Smithfield to take on FC Tulsa on Saturday night. We’re coming off of a rough two game road trip that saw us lose at Pittsburgh Riverhounds and Orange County SC. Tulsa are coming off of a narrow 1-0 defeat at home to Louisville City. It goes without saying that this is a massive game for us, but it’s also a big game for Tulsa. They are currently sitting 9th in the Western Conference, level on points with San Antonio FC in 10th and Orange County SC in 8th. Here’s what to look out for as we head into this weekend.

As I just said in the intro, it’s been a rough past two weeks for us. If for some reason you want to relive those past two matches, you can check out the Postmatch Beacon and Player Ratings. But I’ll just say here that overall I thought our performance in Pittsburgh was really bad and our performance in Orange County was an improvement. The reason I say that we were better against Orange County is because we created several chances. But regardless of that, we didn’t score. You can’t win games if you don’t score.

So, the big question is of course, how do we start scoring again?! We’ve scored 7 goals in our last 8 games, going back to the draw at Detroit City FC on August 3rd. Our record during that stretch was 2 wins, 3 draws and 3 losses. For comparison, over the 8 games before that stretch, we scored 21 goals and won 5, drew 2 and lost 1. While I don’t expect us to hit those heights again, we should be able to settle somewhere in the middle of those two stretches.

For us to start getting some more goals, this is the lineup I’m hoping to see on Saturday night:

You may notice someone missing from this 11. I know for sure that a certain member of Tide Talk must be thinking:

Yes, I have Noah Fuson on the bench. This isn’t a reflection on how I feel about him as a player or his recent performances. I would just rather see one number 10 and two strikers. That then leaves the tough decision of whether to start Jack P or Noah and I think Panayotou makes more sense here, especially with what we’ve seen from Noah off the bench at times this season. With Noah’s versatility, we could use him as a 2nd half sub for either of our wingbacks or for Panayotou in the middle.

This lineup all really depends on the fitness of JJ Williams. JJ started every game during our magical 8 game unbeaten run this summer. But in our last 6 games, he’s only started once. That start was against Pittsburgh, which we all know was not great. There’s been some talk of JJ still dealing with a lingering injury, but hopefully he’s fully ready to go. I think we desperately need his presence in the box as well as his hold up play.

The other changes from our last match would be Clay Holstad starting over Marc Ybarra, Jojea Kwizera returning to his LWB spot, and Koke returning in goal. I really like Ybarra, but I wrote in the last Postmatch Beacon that I want to see what Holstad and Herivaux can do together. I think having two strong ball carrying midfielders would be a huge benefit for us going forward. Both players can also cover defensively, so I don’t think we lose a lot on that side of things if they both play. As for Kwizera, it’s really a no-brainer. He missed the Pittsburgh match due to being away on international duty and he wasn’t fully fit to start last time out against Orange County. He should be good to go for this one and I’m hopeful that he can perform just like he did the last time he came back after playing for his country. And lastly, Koke was out last match due to personal reasons but if he’s good to go, I think he should come right back in.

The last lineup note to make is that Morris Duggan likely won’t be available for this game. He showed up on the injury report last week with a lower body injury. If he were fit, I would have had to think hard about bringing him in for Frank Nodarse in this one. Despite being Frank’s #1 fan, I think his poor positioning on the goal against Orange County played a huge part in us not getting anything out of that game.

Overall, I’m really interested to see what Khano ends up doing tactically. I think it’s too late in the season now for any drastic changes, but we still have time to tweak some things to get the team back on track. I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but on paper we have the players to turn this back around. They just need to go out and do it.

FC Tulsa come into this game with some strong similarities to RIFC. They hit a good run of form during the summer but have fallen off lately. Earlier I mentioned our record in our last 8 games, where we’ve picked up 9 points. During their last 8 games, Tulsa have 6 points, winning only once, drawing 3 times and losing 4 times. Unlike with RIFC however, there’s a fairly obvious contributing factor to Tulsa’s recent struggles. They sent star forward Phillip Goodrum to Louisville City on August 14th and have never replaced him.

Goodrum’s last game for FC Tulsa was their 0-0 draw at home against Orange County, which was the first game of that 8 game stretch I just mentioned. Since that game Tulsa have largely struggled to score, outside of a 3 goal performance in a draw with New Mexico United. Sound familiar? During our recent goal scoring troubles, we got 3 against Hartford Athletic but not much outside of that game.

It’s difficult to see where FC Tulsa are going to get goals from. Goodrum still leads the team in goals with 5, so that’s all you really need to know. I would keep an eye out for Diogo Pacheco though, usually deployed on their left wing. His matchup with Turnbull will be a good one to watch. Pacheco has the most goals and the most assists of anyone currently in the Tulsa squad and is likely to be their most dangerous player.

The other player to look out for is goalkeeper Johan Peñaranda. Peñaranda didn’t start the season for Tulsa, but has been solid since coming in back in June. He’s played 15 games and conceded 15 goals. This is a massive improvement from earlier this season, when Tulsa played Michael Creek (8 games) and Joey Roggeveen (4 games) in goal. In those 12 games, Tulsa conceded 24 goals! The easy math here shows that they’re now giving up 1 goal a game vs 2 goals a game from earlier this season. Obviously this isn’t solely down to the goalkeeper, but clearly Peñaranda has made a massive difference.

As I mentioned at the top, FC Tulsa are currently in 9th place. They’re going to come in to this game just as hungry as RIFC. If they want to make the playoffs, they need to end the poor run of form they’ve been on. It’s looking like in the Western Conference, there’s a 5 team race between Phoenix, Orange County, Tulsa, San Antonio and Monterey Bay for the last 2 playoff spots. This should lead to a contentious game, with both teams needing a win.

This is the part where I give my score prediction, which may or may not contradict everything I’ve said so far. I’m going to go with a 2-1 RIFC win in this one. I know I’ve spent a large part of this blog talking about how we haven’t been able to score lately and how Tulsa have been good defensively. But I think that Khano is going to read the blog and set the team up exactly how I suggested.

Ok, maybe not. But I do think playing at home will be a major boost for us after our two games away. We did win our last home match 2-0 against Birmingham Legion. I can’t tell you how we’re going to score in this one, but I’m trying to manifest it into a reality. I also think we’ll probably concede a goal, despite Tulsa’s recent struggles. The most likely way they could score would be getting Pacheco into some space out wide, which they might be able to do if they can catch Turnbull too far forward.

I’m going to leave you with this: I’m going into this game with the mindset that it’s a must-win. And I’m hoping the team does too. Yes, this is against a Western Conference opponent and mathematically we’re not eliminated if we don’t win. But with only 6 games left in the season, we need to keep pace with and make up some ground on the teams around us. The only way to do that is with a win on Saturday night. I can’t wait to get to a sold out Beirne Stadium to cheer on the boys. UP THE TIDE!