Teal Bunbury’s Absence Might Not Be As Bad As You Think, The Daily Wiz Says

Teal Bunbury is going to be out 2-4 weeks, maybe longer. Considering how much people have been starting to expect from him this year, you'd think even that relatively positive diagnosis would have Sporting Kansas City supporters freaking out. At least at The Daily Wiz, SB Nation's Sporting Kansas City blog, that couldn't be further from the truth.

The striker position has been the subject of many debates amongst SKC fans. My opinion is that Vermes plans to start Kei Kamara and have Bunbury be that dynamic player off the bench. While that could change for the first couple games of the year, the team shouldn't hurt all that much. For a team that scored very few goals last year, Sporting KC have plenty of attacking options. Bunbury, Kamara, Omar Bravo, Birahim Diop, C.J. Sapong and Davy Arnaud are all capable of leading the line. Without Teal, I expect Kamara to start with Smith and Bravo on the wings.

From here, where we aren't necessarily paying attention to the ins and outs of SKC's daily lineup battles, it's hard to believe that Bunbury wouldn't be the starter from Day 1. But maybe it's not so clear after all. Bunbury made just 13 starts last year and there very capable players competing for time at all three forward positions. Kamara is just 26 and coming off a season in which he scored 10 goals and had six assists. Bravo is the team's Designated Player, and surely wasn't brought in to ride the bench. Even Ryan Smith, who plays on the left side and probably isn't competing with Bunbury anyway, is one of the league's more exciting players and had three goals and seven assists in his first MLS season. If Bunbury is, indeed, as good as many of us believe, he should be starting soon enough. Maybe that time wasn't ever going to be Week 1, though.