"At home they really come out and press the game. They want to pressure you," said forward Davy Arnaud. "[We've been] working on shape the last couple of weeks and how we want to approach the games on the road and going forward. It's important, especially this time in the season."
The Wizards have little wiggle room as they are presently seven points short of qualifying for the MLS Cup Playoffs with eight games remaining. Playing the Dynamo, currently top of the Western Conference, in Houston, is never a dream situation at anytime. Keeping the appropriate team shape to create turnovers and to attack quickly when taking possession will be imperative.
"Everybody knows that it is tough to go down and play in Houston," said Arnaud. "But we still feel like it's a place we can go and get points from, and that's the approach we're going to take."
The Wizards will be without midfielder Sasha Victorine due to injury, but their attack will be supplemented by Wednesday's addition of forward Herculez Gomez from the Colorado Rapids. It is unclear whether forward Abe Thompson, acquired Friday from FC Dallas for allocation money, will be on the gameday roster.
Houston's lineup will be shuffled on a grander scale though. Attacker Dwayne De Rosario and goalkeeper Pat Onstad (Canada) and forward Brian Ching and midfield enforcer Ricardo Clark (USA) will be on World Cup qualification duty. The loss of the four lynchpins is not as crippling as it might seem: a similarly depleted Dynamo team had no problem defeating Chivas USA 4-0 on Aug. 20.
The Dynamo still sport the second-lowest goals against average in MLS and are still deadly on restarts, thanks to the precise left foot of midfielder Brad Davis. For the Wizards, restarts remain a focus.
"We have to defend to the death when [they] have them. We've done better than last year in defending those, and, certainly, we've been very good on our attacking set pieces all year," said head coach Curt Onalfo.
Success on set pieces is underscored by central defender Jimmy Conrad topping the Wizards scoring chart with five goals. The team captain picked up a knock during the week but will be with the side in Dallas.
If the Wizards can keep their shape and take advantage of their opportunities on net, they are capable of taking a full three points, an accomplishment that would likely invigorate their run toward the playoffs as the Wizards return home for five of their final seven matches.
"This is the time where we need to get away from anything else but winning the game. We put ourselves in to a position where we have a long road to haul but it's in a short period of time if we're going to get to the playoffs," said technical director Peter Vermes. "If we're going to make some things happen, it has to be now. There's no more, 'Hey, we'll wait until the next game and hopefully we can get it there.' It's got to be now. So we have to make it happen."
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