2014 Player Of The Year

I'm a little late getting to this, but I need a break after he way the season ended.  Reviewing my Man of the Match awards:

1 award - Berner, Jose Mari, Nasco, Piermayr, Torres, the fans (the Mother's Day blizzard loss to Chivas USA), and the fan who paid for the plane at the final game

2 awards - Buddle, Eloundou, Moor, Sanchez

3 awards - Irwin, Powers, Serna

5 awards - Brown

Well, that makes this decision easy, and right in line with my gut feeling.  My Player of the Year is Deshorn Brown.

This season Brown was the only thing close to consistent on the offensive end.  He could be maddening at times but he still managed to finish 10 times for the second year in a row.  Only two other Rapids players have ever had back-to-back double-digit scoring seasons, Mark Chung and Conor Casey.  He's also the only player other than C+C Goal Factory to get to double-digits since Cunningham in 2005.  Over his first two seasons he's already 9th on the Rapids all-time list, and his current rate of scoring (a goal in just over every 3 appearances) is behind only Conor Casey and John Spencer all-time.

This year he had 4 more goals than Sanchez, and 5 of Sanchez's 6 were from the PK spot.  Powers was third with 5.  Essentially Brown doubled the goals of the next closest player.  Given how bad our defense was, nobody on that half of the field could be PotY and Brown is clearly the offensive PotY.

Despite my Man of the Match awards I'd give Jose Mari the runner-up spot.  He was 4th on the team with goals (with 4) including some absolute stunners.  He also was a sold distributor in midfield and largely wasn't at fault in our defensive breakdowns, other than the team is used to playing with hard-man defensive mid like Pablo and Thomas which isn't Jose Mari's game.

Not surprisingly Brown's season has continued after the season.  He's currently with the Jamaican National Team which is playing Martinique this evening (right now actually) in Caribbean Cup competition.  The Caribbean Cup is the qualification tournament for next summer's Gold Cup.  They will also play Haiti and Antigua and Barbuda later this week.  The top two teams in that group will qualify for the 2015 Gold Cup and the 3rd placed team will have a chance (if they're better than the 3rd place team in the other group) to play Honduras for the final spot.  Also the winners of the two groups will play for the Caribbean Cup championship and a spot in 2016's Copa America Centenario.