The away match against the bottom-dwelling Vesilahden Visa (VesVi) on Saturday afternoon comes between two big matches, and this has me a little worried. It would be easy to look past this match in the anticipation of the top-of-the-table clash against Viialan Peli-Veikot just two days later. On the other hand, TamU-K goes into the match with a record number of absences, which might also complicate things. The unusually early kickoff time at 2 pm might be a worry too.

VesVi has only won one match this season. However, none of their six losses had larger than a three goal margin, and in fact three of the losses werr by just one goal. This would seem to indicate that they are not a bad team, just one that has had a very bad start to their season.

Here are the absences for this match: Innola, Kauppinen, Oksanen, Lakra, Kupiainen Jr, Harju, Dedic, and Kytöviita. This could be the backbone of a successful team in Vitonen, and many are indeed our key players. However, such is the depth of our team that we get a high-quality team of 16 players into Vesilahti anyway. On the positive side Otto Pitkänen returns from injury, so our defensive line in front of backup keeper Kalle Heltonen looks very solid. The rest of it does not have any real compromises either, as it looks like we can field our usual 4-3-3 formation with players who have very solid minutes in the positions that they will take.

The trip to Vesilahti is about 35 km (20 mi), so we are getting the first real away trip of the season. There will be longer ones too, but as of now this is going to be the longest trip for a competitive match in TamU-K’s history. For supporters this is life getting better, but for the team it can be a challenge, even if this first one is not that much longer than a trip across town, at least if you measure it in time rather than distance.

Regardless of the circumstances, my old advice of scoring early and scoring often applies here. We do have the

quality of making this very easy for us, and if we do that, it might go a long way towards helping us win the big match on Monday.