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Gordon won't be playing as he recovers from surgery for that misdiagnosed injury, but he was spotted by a few people sheltering under the stands at the aborted Dallas game, so is here to cheer his new team on. As for Attakora and Peterson, well their arrival hasn't really helped out as San Jose are currently riding a 12 game winless streak. Attakora in particular seems to have struggled, but both of them have missed time with injuries recently, so Sam Cronin might be the only former Red playing, making this whole intro maybe the world's dampest squib, but too late now.
On the other side of this equation is of course Ryan Johnson who came back to Toronto in exchange for Gordon, Peterson and Attakora. Johnson's brief spell so far with TFC has matched his San Jose career, a great start with plenty of goals, followed by a settling down into much less effective performances. Danny Koevermans is more than likely still out with a dodgy ankle so Johnson will be at Centre Forward again, where he's so far struggled against MLS defences, let's hope he can improve, it would be sweet to be on the other side of the 'scoring against your old team' phenomenon for once.
Fatigue is the other big factor in play here, San Jose haven't played since Saturday while for TFC of course this will be their 2 1/2th game in 3 days. If not for that stat I'd be very confident that TFC could get 3 points and overtake the Earthquakes in the overall standings. Oh well, it's just one more game then the vast majority of the squad gets a couple of weeks off while the international games happen, so hopefully they can dredge up one more big effort for this one.
It's difficult to guess what kind of lineup we'll see given the midweek games, and the fact this is a fairly meaningless game with two weeks off coming up. Is it worth bringing Stefan Frei or Danny Koevermans back or is it best to make sure they've had a good long break? Does Aron Winter stick with the 3-4-3, or is a home game against a struggling team considered a good opportunity to get back to the 4-3-3 plan, and have the defence cope by themselves without Torsten Frings to hold their hand?
Chris Wondolowski will obviously be a threat, but aside from that, the earthquakes don't really have much going on up front, so I'd hope we go with the 4-3-3 and really go for the win. Who'll get the call to play in that 4-3-3 is anybody's guess, but I'll go with the following.
As for a prediction, I think two poor teams will actually produce an entertaining game, whoever ends up playing in defence will just be good enough, and if Joao Plata can remember how to be a little bit less selfish, there should be a goal or two in it for TFC. I'm confident of a feel good victory to take us through the next two weeks.