Next up is an all-Eastern Conference clash between 9th placed Columbus Crew, and 6th placed New York City at the MAPFRE Stadium with the hosts looking to avoid a fourth league defeat on the trot.
It’s been a pretty poor start to the campaign for Columbus Crew despite winning 4 of their 8 home matches to date at their MAPFRE Stadium with most of the damage being done on the road, losing 6 of their first 7 matches so far this season.
However, having lost 8 of their last 9 matches overall and 3 of their last 4 at home, the rot seems to have well and truly set in for The Crew as they’ve been dealt recent defeats at home by Portland Timbers 3-1, DC United 1-0 and a heavy 3-0 loss by Los Angeles.
With 3 wins from their first 4 home matches it looked like Columbus Crew had made a solid start to their season, but recent weeks have seen their form slump in alarming fashion.
New York City FC occupy 6th place in the Eastern Conference and therefore sit in one of the play-off spots prior to their trip to Ohio on Saturday, and they head into this clash having suffered just 1 defeat all season to date in this new MLS season.
That defeat came in the shape of a heavy 4-0 thrashing away at Toronto back at the end of March but Domenec Torrent’s side have since steadied the ship by putting together an 8-match unbeaten sequence which includes wins against DC United, Chicago Fire, Montreal Impact and LA Galaxy.
The most impressive aspect of these recent wins were that, with the exception of Chicago Fire, were all away from home, along with 5 of their unbeaten 8 matches seeing New York City keep clean sheets.
New York City are also unbeaten in their last 5 away matches too, so the visitors will be confident of picking up further points here against a Columbus Crew side who look to be lacking any sort of confidence right now.
New York City’s attacking trio of Heber, Tajouri and Mitrita (3 goals apiece) look to be the visitors’ most dangerous attacking threats in the final third, as New York City look set to take the spoils here.