Umpteenth Verse, Same As The First

20-30 minutes of great play, 60-70 minutes of the same dreck we've seen all season, and a horrible, horrible outing by James Riley led to an expected loss against an almost full strength Galaxy Saturday night.  After a nice July August looks like every other month we've seen in the last year.

General impressions:

• The Rapids looked good in the first 20 minutes and got a deserved goal from Sarvas.  After that though they seemed to think they had done enough and stopped playing as a team.
• I was surprised by how much Sarvas celebrated scoring against his old team.
• Colorado probably should have had a PK int he first half.  There were two questionable plays in the box that went uncalled.
• The officiating in general sucked, but that's not why we lost.
• Pablo got outcoached at halftime AGAIN.  It was pretty clear the halftime adjustment from Bruce Arena was to attack our right side and they did for two easy goals.
• Goal 1, Riley is on Lletget on the sideline.  Sarvas drifts over and iley drops off.  Lletget sends it to Juninho and continues down the sideline.  Sarvas kind of slowly slides over to Juninho but not fast enough for Riley who steps up to take him.  As soon as that happens Juninho sends it behind Riley to the unmarked Lletget who beats a stranded Irwin.
• Goal 2, Gerrard just works Riley over and gets a good shot off that Irwin saves but the rebound falls right to Gordon who slipped away from Moor and was held onside by Watts.
• Goal 3, Cronin dumps an easy throw-in back to Riley, who dilly-dally's on the ball and is put under pressure by Keane.  Riley coughs the ball up and then its a jailbreak as the rest of the team was forward waiting for Riley to send in the ball looking for the tying goal.  Riley falls back, falls back, falls back some more and by this time Keane has been joined by Gerrard and Buddle.  Easy 3 on 2 and Keane finds the back of the net.
• So yeah, the Galaxy saw James Riley was the weak point and abused him.  Pablo did nothing to counter and we lost.
• Pablo's one tactical move was immediately after LA scored teh first time he brought Powers off and put LaBrocca on.  Not sure what going more defensive at that point was going to get us.  I think Pablo had sent the sub in before the goal and failed to pull it back when the game situation changed.
• Other than that the two subs were to replace our wingers with fresher wingers.  Not surprisingly that didn't help.
• Other than Irwin the only other player I really thought played decently was Doyle.  Clearly the top of the 4-3-3 is the right place to play him.
• The Bodmer line now sits between 1.69 and 1.77 pts/game

Man of the Match: Clint Irwin.  Not to blame for any of the 3 goals and made some big saves.