Sunday marks the first match outside of Tampere in our competitive season. With just a 15 km (10 miles) distance from Tampere to Pirkkala, it is not a particularly long trip, but nevertheless the supporters will be arriving by a charter bus, which gives an entirely different feel to the day than taking carpools and public transit. And indeed, it looks like close to 40 seats have been sold on the bus, so this will be a good size away crowd. The second team of the local PJK has probably not seen something like this in a while.

The match itself sees the debut of the new striker signing Jan Irjala. He comes to us from TKT, where he already played last season scoring six goals in Kolmonen (fourth tier) and three goals in Regions’ Cup matches. This season he only played a couple matches for TKT before his transfer. He says that he wanted to transfer to TamU-K to help us in

our project of moving the club up the tiers of Finnish football. That has got to mean he is a long term prospect for our club.

Looking at the upcoming match though, Irjala gives an alternative up top to Mika Kytöviita. He is a tall guy (about 2 meters) and seems to set the kind of an aerial threat that we have not had before. A lot of supporters have also been talking about trying a 4-4-2 formation instead of our usual 4-5-1 (or 4-3-3 depending on the point of view). It would seem that the prospect of pairing up Irjala and Kytöviita gives coach Mika Suonsyrjä his best motivation for trying this so far. And indeed, if Irjala can take a target forward role, I would like to see that tried with a goal-hungry striker like Kytöviita alongside him.

The defensive line will most definitely consists of Kumara and Airesto in the middle, while Adeeb and Eijamo take the full back roles. This is due to necessity, as Timo Kauppinen is suspended due to the red card he took in the Regions’ Cup match last weekend, and Otto Pitkänen and Ahmed Lakra are still nursing their injuries. In the midfield the most notable absences are Jesse Kupiainen and Anssi Saiha, which leaves a creative hole that requires others to step up. Ilkka Innola is again out due to not being able to get time off work, so Kalle Heltonen gets another chance right after his solid performance in the Regions’ Cup.

The opponent PJK comes to the match with just four points from their first four matches this season. Last year they were one of the teams that got relegated from Vitonen with just 16 points in 22 matches, but in the end they were offered a spot in Vitonen for this season due to other teams folding. Our team needs to pay no attention to these stats though, as we have already seen that we cannot win anybody with a 90 % performance.

The match starts in Pirkkala at 5:30 pm on Sunday. Personally I cannot wait to see a new venue that I have not visited before. For others this is a return after four years, as in April 2009 Tampere United played a League Cup semifinal against TPS in Pirkkala, the result being 2-1 to TamU that time. There is indeed no need to tarnish our immaculate Pirkkala record.