It would be very easy to fall into the trap of underestimating our next opponent FJK. They were very close to getting relegated last season – in fact they were only saved by a series of wins during the last third of the season – and this year they started with three straight losses. Last weekend they finally ended their bad streak by beating Sastamalan Woima, now the only team to have lost all their matches.

The reality is that even the so-called bottom teams in Nelonen are tough teams, who are able to take advantage of any lapses in concentration. The difference between the top and the bottom does not really manifest itself unless the better team is playing at 100 per cent. In fact, we saw this even in Vitonen when we lost to FC Rellu and later tied with PJK’s second team. Back then the team understandably had some difficulties in finding motivation when promotion was all but confirmed anyway. Now there are no excuses.

The loss against VaKP in our last match was a huge disappointment. In retrospect it is easy to say that if we hadn’t made the couple mistakes that cost us goals early on, we would have been very likely to win that match. On Monday NePa did just that, which means that now each of the three teams has three points from our mutual meetings. This actually gives LeKi-futis the edge if they can win their games in hand, but given how evenly fought Nelonen is this year, that is probably a much too hasty of an assumption. This is especially true since they face NePa and VaKP in their next two matches.

The best advice is, in fact, to just worry about our own matches. Control the controllables, as the legendary Sounders player and coach Brian Schmetzer likes to say. If we take care of business on our end by winning the so-called easier matches, we are likely to come out on top as all others will drop points elsewhere. The depth that we have in our team is our best asset this year.

Rumors from the practice field tell us that there will be changes in how we will play tactically speaking. It will be interesting to see if that means changes into the starting lineup, which will be published sometime on Saturday morning. On the player department, Jan Riikonen is (again) expected to be back, but Andrea Milanti is out due to a work-related reason. Perhaps our most notable absence though is captain and goalie Ilkka Innola, who is out indefinitely due to happy family matters. Kalle Heltonen will be on goal, and from what I hear we will have 17 other players in the lineup as well. We like to talk about our depth a lot, and tomorrow it will be tested once again.

We will have an early kick-off at 2 pm. The match is again streamed live at tamu-k.com/live, but for our friends in Seattle it is a bit of an inconvenient time at 4 am. Respect to anybody who gets up for this match at that hour.