Monday, August 2, 2010

Stop Me If You've Seen This Before

The Rapids tied Dallas 1-1 on an own goal by Julian Baudet and a PK by Mehdi Ballouchy. Other than the difference in the goal scorers you can just read my recap of the Kansas City game two weeks ago to see what happened this game. Same result, same order of goals scored, same uninspired play.

My key to the game was being able to score more than one goal. Well we did! Only problem is that one of them was in our own net. As predicted, only scoring one on our side of the scoreboard only got us a draw.

Other Observations:
  • Winless streak now at 7 games.
  • Larentowicz of Thompson when tied 1-1 at home? Way to play for the win Gary.
  • Rumor has it that the 2pm kickoff on the last day of July was an experiment by the Rapids to see if TV ratings were better on Saturday afternoon over Saturday night. FO, consider the experiment a failure. I don't want to sit through another sauna like that unless its for national TV.
  • Rough that Casey wasn't even able to play after his collision last Saturday, hopefully he gets better soon.
  • At points during the game it felt like we were playing a 4-6-0 as Omar drifted out to his normal position out wide and nobody filled the gap in the center.
  • Koz is not the answer on the left.
Player of the Game: Matt Pickens. He had 3 great saves that preserved the draw and gave the team the chance (even if they didn't take it) to take all 3 points. Nothing he could have done about Baudet's own goal, he was surprised as anyone.

1 comment:

Jester said...

Baudet now has had 2 games back from injury, and has personally cost us 3 points (at least). Unfortunately, he is one of Smith's favorites so I don't see him being benched any time soon.

I agree with you on the 4-6-0. I made the same comment at the game.

I thought Smith would have pulled Ballouchy rather than Thompson. Ballouchy wasn't near as active. Of course, I thought Lopez would come on instead of Larentowicz since we needed a goal.

So, our 6-3-1 record is now 6-5-6. So much for great improvement this season. Right now we sit in the fourth seed of the eastern conference. The way we are playing, I don't see us holding on to that for very long.

We need to figure out how to score more goals. What we got is another untested left back. I keep wondering why we left Jordan Harvey unprotected in the expansion draft when we protected Peterson, then let him go for a hotdog and half a glass of Coke.