Schedule Change And Reports Of Further Spread

Today the Rapids announced that the SKC match will be made up on Wednesday October 2st at 7pm, as expected.  Fans will be allowed to attend the rescheduled match, with ticket info coming shortly.

There were also two tweets about the situation today from outside sources.  First Jake Shapiro at the Denver Post tweeted that some of the Rapids players/staff who have tested positive are showing mild symptoms.  Obviously we with them all the best and hope for their quick recovery.  Second Sam Stejskal at the Athletic tweeted that another 2 players and another staff member has tested positive, brining the totals to 4 players and 10 staff members.  This latest report has not yet been confirmed by the team.  Sam also stated that the earliest the team will be able to train is Friday, and only if everyone continues to test negative.

The Rapids are scheduled to leave Saturday morning for their game in Portland Saturday night, which at this point is still on.  I don't see how that game gets played.  We know that the 14 positive members of the organization pretty much have no chance of making that trip, and the rest of the players won't have trained in a week at best.  Even if there's enough players to field a team, with 10 staff members missing is there enough coaches, trainers, equipment staff, and administrators to actually have a game?  I have my doubts.  I expect that tomorrow or Friday we'll hear the game is off.  The game will then be rescheduled for Wednesday November 5th.

What that means is that starting next Wednesday the team will play every Wednesday and every weekend until Decision Day on November 8th.  No breaks, a game every 3-4 days.  It also means that if the team isn't able to play LAFC at home next Wednesday there is no place on the schedule to make the game up.  Either the league will have to extend the season to allow us to make up the game, or the game will go un-played.  I doubt the league would force us to forfeit.  If you look at the schedules right now, the Sounders-Galaxy game that was scheduled for the night the players refused to play in support of the protests in Kenosha is not on the schedule to be made up (unlike the Colorado-Dallas game which we already made up).  I have heard that the only way that game will be made up is if it has a impact on the playoff picture.  I expect the same thing would apply to any game the Rapids may not be able to make up due to this outbreak.

Rapids' COVID Outbreak Spreads

After the Athletic reported it this afternoon the Rapids announced this evening that 7 more staffers and another player have tested positive for COVID-19, making 9 staffers and 2 players so far.  Team practices have been shut down since the first positives on Thursday and everyone is in isolation and conducting daily testing.  Standard quarantine rules makes it very unlikely that Saturday's game in Portland will be played.

Even if nobody else tests negative and the Rapids could return to practice before Saturday its unclear who would run the training.  Front Office staff (other than probably Padraig Smith) have not been allowed at the Dick since the pandemic started so the outbreak is almost certainly limited to the technical staff.  With Fraser only having 3 assistant coaches, 3 equipment staff, and up to 13 medical staff (though my guess is that a number of them aren't regularly at the Dick during pandemic) the odds are most of the coaching and leadership are part of those 9 staff members.  Hopefully there hasn't been overlap between the first team staff and the youth academy.

Wednesday Oct 21st and Wednesday November 5th are open dates for the Rapids, Timbers, and Sporting KC so look for make up dates for the missed games around then.  But those are the only open dates the Rapids have left, so its going to be weekend-Wednesday-weekend from hear on out once that return to play, hopefully, next Wednesday.  That assumes that the league decides to make up the games, they may make them optional and only played if they materially impact the playoff picture.

Game Off!

Tomorrow night's home game against SKC is off after a Rapids player and three Rapids staff members tested positive for COVID-19 during the most recent round of tests performed on Thursday and Friday.  A date for a reschedule will be determined at a later time.

Hitting The Easy Button

Well we knew going in San Jose was bad, but I don't think we realized they were that bad.  Colorado had very little issue controlling the game and tying their just set record of winning by 5 goals.  They had never won by 5 goals in their history, now they've done it twice in 11 days.  2020 everyone!  There was only one time where San Jose was really close to scoring, and somehow from a position most teams would have forced a highlight save at worst the Earthquakes didn't even get a shot off.  Meanwhile the Rapids were taking shot after shot on the E-Quakes goal.  They only converted one in the first half (after a borderline VAR call waved off a goal) but opened up for 4 in the second half.

Once again it was the young guys, Bassett, Lewis, Shinyashiki, and Mezquida being the old guy at 28.  Assists from Price (twice), Acosta, Trusty, and Bassett continued the youth movement.  There was also an own goal forced by a good pass from Shinyashiki and pressure from Bassett.  Lewis now leads the team Golden Boot race with 5, with Bassett one behind him, and Bassett and Price are tied for the assist lead at 4.  Bassett has had 4 goals and 3 assists in the last 7 games.

Really there's not a whole lot to break down on this one, because the teams were on two different levels.  Hard to say anyone on Colorado played poorly or that anyone on San Jose played well.  The biggest concerns for the Rapids are injury related, with both Namli and Wilson missing the game.  Hopefully they were just being smart and giving them a full week to recover before SKC on Sunday.

Man of the Match: Jack Price.  There were a number of choices, including Bassett, but Price was dealing last night, putting ball after ball into dangerous areas, and only a couple of good saves from the SJ keeper kept him form having more than two assists.

Movers & Shakers

 

The scores of the last 6 games the Earthquakes have played have been 1-5, 1-1, 1-7, 0-0, 1-1, and 1-6.  That's 5 goals for San Jose and 20 against.  One of those 1-1 score lines was our game in San Jose.  Almeyda has the Quakes playing a man marking system they're not up to playing and they're getting run.  The Rapids need to add to their misery tomorrow.  Play our fittest, fastest guys and make them work at altitude.  Kickoff is at 7pm and yes, still on Altitude.

This assumes Wilson's and Namli's knocks they picked up this weekend are enough to keep them from starting tomorrow.  If they're able to go Wilson goes in for Moor and Namli for Lewis, with Shinyashiki moving to the left.  Expect us to play an un-tempo high-press game as we try to beat the Quakes man-making system and run them out of gas at elevation.

Prediction: 3-1 win, goals by Bassett, Rubio, and Lewis.  I think, even on short rest, the Rapids can punish San Jose at home.  While they hang in for a while, getting a goal to keep things interesting, we put it away with a late goal.

Schedule Finally Complete

 MLS released the last of the regular season schedule today, getting us to 23 games before the playoffs start.  In addition to the San Jose and KC games this week the Rapids will play Portland (A), LAFC (H), Galaxy (H), Seattle (H, A), KC (A), Minnesota (A), and Houston (A),  We also host FSL again.  To be very clear, the Rocky Mountain Cup is done for 2020, this upcoming game will not count towards it.

So over the 23 game season we'll have played DC, Orlando, FSL (4 times), SKC (4 times), Minnesota (2 times), San Jose (2 times), Houston (2 times), Dallas, the Galaxy (2 times),  Portland, LAFC, and Seattle (2 times).  We won't play Vancouver at all, or anyone in the East outside of our opening two games.  The lack of Vancouver is surprising, I'm assuming that since they're only in the States for 12 games and sharing a stadium with Portland the scheduling just didn't work out.

Look, there's nothing "fair" about this season.  Some teams are going to get screwed on the scheduling.  All we can do is make it work for us.  At the moment, leaving out the first two games, we'll have gotten 9 of 21 games against the bottom 4 teams in the division.  That's 42% of our games against the lower 36% of the table.  So we did pretty good.  The downside is that only 4 of those games remain, the other 7 are against teams also currently in a playoff spot.  We also have 6 of the last 11 at home, but that will flip to 4 of 9 after this week.

We can make the playoffs with this schedule, we should make the playoffs with this schedule, but we have to pick up at least 4 and preferably 6 points this week.

Well, I Didn't See That Coming

Ok, that was an impressive performance from the Rapids.  Their second best game of the year continued an undefeated streak against the Galaxy.  Colorado controlled the game almost from start to finish, outshot and out possessed the Galaxy, and never really felt in that much danger of losing the game.  A first ever homegrown to homegrown goal got the burgundy boys on the board as Bassett one-timed a Vines cross into the net in the first half, and then a favorable VAR ruling in the second half found the Lewis' team leading 4th goal was not offside as first ruled.  In-between the Galaxy's Araujo managed 2 yellow cards in 3 minutes, putting the Galaxy down a goal and a man.

The big takeaway from this game is that the kids are alright.  After Kamara's departure the 'old man' in the starting XI was goalkeeper William Yarbrough...at 31.  Everyone else was 27 or younger.  Mezquida (28) and Benezet (29) brought the average age of the players who appeared up a bit but still pretty young.  The age of the players who ended up on the boxscore (goals or assists) was 19, 19, 21, 23 and 23.  That looks good.  Right now the Rapids only have 5 players over the age of 29 on the roster, 4 of which (Irwin, Moor, Beitashour, and Warner) are pretty clearly backups at this point, with only Yarbrough likely to get significant minutes if anyone is available.

We've talked a lot about the attack, but credit goes to the defense as well.  Rosenberry had Pavon locked down all night.  That let Abubakar and Wilson really focus on the center of the field and keep anything from getting too dangerous.  And the few times they weren't able to do that Yarbrough was up to the task.  The only real negative from the game was injuries, both Wilson and Namli left after taking knocks.  We'll have to see what their availability is for the next couple of games this week.

BTW I said the VAR ruling was favorable earlier.  Not because it was a questionable call, but because the offside that was overturned was very close and VAR in MLS doesn't use the Hawkeye line-drawing system you see in the EPL, so the VAR is still eyeballing it from a screen.  The player that held Galvan onside was far enough away from him that it entered into a grey area of being a clearly wrong call that should have been reviewed, since its not obvious it was that close.  So the favorable call was that they agreed to review it, not that they made a favorable decision.  Given how the game was going though I don't think it changed the outcome of the match.

Man of the Match: Cole Bassett.  Had the most shots on the team, a goal, and honestly, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to name him MotM.  I don't think he's going anywhere this year, but I'm not 100% he'll be around when we start the 2021 season.  European teams have to be sniffing around at this point.  If it weren't for Lewis' goal Bassett would be tied for the team lead in goals and the team lead in assists.

Galaxy Tomorrow

With the news tonight I don't have it in me to do a normal game preview.  Kickoff is at 8:30pm in LA and TV is still screwed.  Oh, and we're going to lose.

Vote.  Vote like your life depends on it.  Because even if yours doesn't, odds are a family member's, friend's, coworker's, or employee's does.

Rapids In, Rapids Out

A couple of reported but not announced roster moves by the Rapids today.  The big one is that we've sent Kamara to Minnesota for a reported $150K in allocation money and United's 2nd round pick in 2022.

Obviously trading the best scorer in the last decade is a big move for the Rapids, but the comments Robun Fraser made after the trade suggests something was not right between Kamara and the locker room and/or coaches.  Fraser said "it was evident that it was time for a move" and some rumors suggest that Kamara was demanding to start the rest of the season post-MLS Is Back tournament.  Now both the Rapids and Kamara have histories of problems in the player/club relationship.  The list of players the Rapids have left go that later came out were unhappy is long, and Kamara has played for 10 teams before today and only once has he made it past 2 years with a team.  I doubt we'll ever get a real good feel for what happened here, but suffice it to say its quite likely that things weren't good and a change needed to be made.

The other piece of this puzzle is that Kamara's contract is expiring and only has 12 games left on it.  If he wasn't likely to start as the rumors suggest and recent games have shown, how much playing time was Kamara going to get in those 12 games?  Would that playing time have made the difference in this season being successful?  It seems unlikely.  He isn't even making a strong case to start, while his numbers are better than Shinyashiki the rest of the attacking players are all putting up numbers similar to his.

So we have a possibly unhappy player that isn't likely to turn this season around and isn't an obvious starter.  Trading him is a logical step then.  Of course all those things also impact what we can get for him, driving down his price.  Despite that I would have liked to see us do a bit better than $125K in allocation money and a draft pick that we're likely to get no value out of.  Kamara is the 5th leading goal scorer in MLS history and has been successful wherever he's gone, at least in the first season.  I was really hoping to see us hit 200K at least.  In the end this is a pretty meh trade where we dump salary and potentially a problem player and get some value out of him, but doesn't help us greatly short or long term.

The other reported news just broke but the team has apparently signed 33 year old free agent fullback Steven Beitashour.  He's spent the last 10 years playing for San Jose, Toronto (where he was coached by Fraser), Vancouver, and LAFC and represented Iran at the 2014 World Cup, though didn't get any playing time.  This is a solid backup signing, giving some experience to the outside of the defense and somebody reliable when Rosenberry or (more likely) Vines needs a night off.  But that's all it is.

I Think We've Been Here Before Too...

Well, any hope we had turned a corner in Sandy over the weekend were dismissed by the Rapids play last night.  A 4-1 loss and a second half where the team was just run over means that we failed in reaching the bare minimum of 7 points in the 6 Phase 1 games and we're currently no longer in a playoff position.  We now need 5 points in the upcoming 3 games to get back above the Bodmer Line.

The first half had some similarities to the Houston game, as a fan in the Facebook discussion pointed out.  Colorado had good control of the match, made some chances, but couldn't finish.  And much like the Houston game Dallas got a goal against the run of play to take a lead into the locker room.

The second half was a lot like the first FSL game, where we just folded.  Dallas got two goals in the first 15 minutes of the half and that was the game.  Shinyashiki got one back for the Rapids, giving fans slight hope, but Dallas closed that door with another goal about 15 minutes after it.  Colorad outshot Dallas 22-15, but Dallas had the edge in shots on target 7-5.

This game featured a new core in defense. with Trusty and Moor starting in front of Irwin in net.  It didn't work.  A number of fans have suggested Trusty should be starting over Wilson and/or Irwin should be seeing more time.  Last night t hey showed why they weren't getting much playing time.  Irwin was slow to react and had questionable positioning, while Trusty didn't add much either on defense or going forward.

Not that they were only to blame.  They didn't get much help from the midfield in front of them.  Somehow Jack Price, who carries a reputation for a bit of a harsh tackle, didn't get called for a single foul all night.  I don't remember the ref swallowing his whistle either.  For whatever reason Price was standing off far too much last night, and Acosta wasn't doing much better.  Meanwhile in the attack Namli had the quietest night we've seen so far and Lewis was ineffectual as a starter.  He is much better as a super sub off the bench where he can use all his energy in a limited time than trying to pace himself for 90 minutes.

Its off to LA to face the Galaxy on Saturday, then home to see KC and SJ.  We need a win and two draws or two wins to stay in the playoff hunt.  We need to win all three if we're going to live up to the "Rapids Way" mentality we were promised in 2020, but at this point, at the middle of the rearranged season of 23 games, its pretty clear we're not getting that.

Man of the Match: Andre Shinyahiki.  Yeah, I took the easy route on this one and picked the goal scorer.

I Think We've Been Here Before....

In Dallas on a Wednesday night after a blowout game against FSL.  Wait, this seems familiar.  It was three weeks ago that the Rapids had gone to Dallas after getting blown out by FSL on the weekend.  The players refused to play that game to support the protests in Kenosha and the greater movement for racial justice.  Tomorrow night they're back in Dallas but this time they're coming off blowing out FSL on the weekend.  Needless to say the whole tone around the game feels better.  Kickoff tomorrow is at 6:30pm and you know the deal with TV.

Even though this is the middle of our 7 games in just over 3 weeks I think Fraser is going to want to keep things a similar as he can given the success on Saturday.  Lewis for Shinyashiki might be the only change, though I expect liberal subbing in the second half like we saw on Saturday.  Otherwise I think we'll ride the success as long as we can.

Prediction: 1-1 draw, goal by Kamara.  Dallas has a good defense but a meh offense.  Outside of Saturday our offense is pretty similar to theirs.  We've got tome confidence now, so I think we can score one, but not more than that.  It will be late and probably off of Kei's head.

Do You Believe In Miracles? Yes!

 

Yeah, I never saw that coming.  In one of the great Rapids regular season games of all-time the burgundy boys went into Sandy, Utah and ran the locals out of town.  Then they took our Cup back and came home.  Just a few of the historic stats from Saturday night:

• Biggest win in team history
• Sixth time the Rapids scored 5 goals in a match (plus the Montreal game last year where we scored 6)
• Second time the Rapids scored 5 goals on the road (5-4 win at RBNY in 2008)
• First time we ever led FSL by more than 2 at any point in a game
• First time we ever scored more than 3 against FSL
• First win at Rio Tinto Stadium
• First time two homegrown players scored in the same game (Vines and Bassett)

It was also FSL's worst home loss in its history.  Interestingly, both teams are now responsible for the other's worst home loss.  Along with the 3 points the 5 goals meant that the Rapids outscored FSL 6-4 over the two games and won the Rocky Mountain Cup.  Colorado also jumped up to a playoff spot on PPG.  I said that to maintain a playoff spot we needed 7 points out of the 6 Phase 1 games, and we currently have 6 with one game remaining.  So we're meeting the minimum expectation at this point and are now undefeated in the last 4 games.

Clearly with a win this big everyone did a great job so its hard to call out any one thing, but there are a few moments to highlight.  Sam Vines got his first career goal after Namli once again broke some ankles for his second assist of the night.  Jeremy Kelly slalomed through the FSL defense to set up Bassett's goal.  Braian Galvan had his first MLS goal and somehow didn't have a second, hitting the post from 5 feet when the goal was wide open.  Honestly when that happened I thought our RMC curse had gotten us again and we were going to give up a Cup winning goal in another heartbreaker instead of salting it away by going up an extra goal.  A really important note, the ages of the players that appeared on the scoresheet (goals or assists) were 19, 19, 21, 22, 26,  and 27.  Collen Warner's 13 minutes at age 32 was the only player over the age of 28 to see the field.  The kids are all right.

I wanted to give Lalas Abubakar a shout-out after being on him for some poor performances.  He was everywhere on defense on Saturday night, and more than once threw himself in front of shots to keep the shutout.  Because of his work, and the rest of the defense, Yarbrough only faced two shots on target, both easy saves.

Man of the Match:  Diego Rubio, obviously.  He became the first Rapid to score two goals in one game against FSL.  Doing it inside the first 10 minutes of the match was just the cherry on top.  But even after the second goal I don't think anyone really believed we were going to find the two more we needed to get the Cup, much less 3.

Once More Unto The Breach Dear Friends

 Well, here we are again.  A trip to Utah to face FSL, a place we haven't won in what feels like 50 years (40 of those passing in the unending time that is 2020).  Theoretically the Rocky Mountain Cup is on the line, but even me, who always stays optimistic about this competition, knows it would take a miracle for the Rapids to win it.  After the 4-1 loss in Colorado we have to win by 4 goals tomorrow.  We've scored 4 goals in all of the Phase I restart, and we have never scored 4 goals against FSL, and we've never beaten them by more than 2.  To go to a place we haven't won in a decade and win by the biggest margin ever isn't happening.  Kickoff tomorrow is at 7:30pm and you all know what the TV situation is.  Helpful tip, FSL games are streamed online for free by the network that has their contract and for the last game they weren't blacked out in Denver.

This is a bit of a mixed lineup but I'm getting the feeling Fraser is modifying his strategy this year towards something more like this formation, with only one d-mid type player and two central midfielders in front of him.  Based on their availability on Wednesday night I'm guessing/hoping that Kamara and Benezet are available to start.  Warner seems to play the true 6 better than Price has.  And the back 4 is the one Fraser has preferred in recent games.

Prediction: 2-1 loss, goal by Namli.  Its really hard to expect anything but a loss in this game, given how badly they beat us a couple of weeks ago and our long track record of failure in Sandy.  Even a 1-1 draw seems crazily optimistic right now.  its been a long time since I predicted a loss in an RMC game, but I can't see any other result based on what we know.

Next 3 Games On The Schedule Announced

MLS announced the next 3 games in the season schedule, taking us through the end of September.  For the Rapids we have:

• @LA Galaxy, Sat Sept. 19th, 8:30pm MT
• San Jose, Wed Sept 23rd, 7pm MT
• Kansas City, Sun Sept 27th, 7pm MT

With that added to this past week we'll have played Sat (Away) - Wed (Home) - Sat (A) - Wed (A) - Sat (A) - Wed (H) - Sun (H) by the end of this group of matches.  7 games in 23 days.  That's a tough schedule in normal times.  Expect lots of player rotation by the end.

With that many games in such a short time this blog will be pretty much just game previews and reviews.  I was hoping to take stock of where we were between Phase I and Phase II but I don't think we'll get that in.

Deja Deja Vu

For the third game in a row we ended with the 1-1 draw I predicted.  I still haven't gotten the goal scorer right though.  This time the Rapids looked like the better team, but moral victories are hollow when you're a single goal in goal differential above last place.  It has now been 7 games and 188 days since our last win, an in-season record but obviously the oddity of COVID is largely responsible for that.  Our longest stretch was 249 days from the end of 2014 through the beginning of 2015, Pablo's infamous 18 game winless streak.  Hat-tip to Richard Fleming for both those numbers.

Last night the Rapids dominated the stat sheet,  outshooting the Dynamo 26 to 10 (7-3 on target), having almost 2/3rds of the possession, and winning a majority of the duels.  All it took is 20 seconds of inattentiveness though for Houston to score, and an inability to finish (along with some pretty good saves by Houston's keeper) meant that the only stat that mattered was even.

Lets talk about both goals, starting with the Dynamo.  Coming straight out of halftime the Dynamo went down our left side and then crossed to the far post where Ramirez was waiting to head it home,  Last night I thought Abubakar had gotten sloppy again, but watching the replay today that's probably unfair. While Ramirez does get a step on him, it was really a perfectly placed cross that beat Lalas.   Yarbrough probably should have come out to make a play, but again, the ball was put in the perfect place to handcuff him.  Really the failure was at the point of the cross from Rodriguez who had received a little nothing pass in space between Trusty and Price.  Trusty dropped off with the rest of the back line and Price kind of spun in a circle and waited too long to put pressure on Rodriguez, which let him set up that cross.

The Rapids got there's from an equally good pass though.  After a Colorado corner was cleared in the final minute of stoppage back upfield to Vines who was playing free safety on the kick he dropped a pass over the Dynamo back line right to Abubakar's foot.  Lalas could give some strikers lessons on one-touch control of the ball, bringing it down right where he needed it to nutmeg the keeper and level the score.  He also beat the offside trap perfectly on the pass.  Vines+Lalas, because they're the offense the Rapids deserve, but not the one they need right now.

Man of the Match: Younes Namli.  Kamara had a great early game (he was a combined foot away from a hat-trick in the first 20 minutes) and Lalas got the goal, but Namli was the best player by far.  He's shown flashed of what he can do this season but last night was the first time where he was the best player on the field for either team.  His footwork and ball control are as good as I've seen on the Rapids since Valderrama retired.  He got absolutely crunched on a tackle that many of the fans thought signaled the end of his night (if not worse) but he got right back up and a minute later was breaking Dynamo ankles again.  He had a gorgeous effortless shot that dipped and swerved and just missed going inside the post, one of the best missed shots I've seen in this league.  If he keeps doing that he'll meet the expectations that we put on him when we signed him as a DP.

Semi-Snow Clasico Tomorrow

Right now it sounds like the snow will end tomorrow morning, and without fans in the stands it can't really be a Snow Clasico, but it will be close tomorrow night.  Certainly a team from Houston wasn't looking to play a game in near-freezing temps in the first half of September, but welcome to Colorado!  Kickoff tomorrow is at 7pm and no, the TV situation hasn't changed.

With squad rotation its a bit hard to really know what's going to happen with the lineup, but this is my best guess.  Price wasn't used on Saturday so I'm guessing he comes back in for Warner.  When we had 3 games in a week in Dallas when the players decided not to play we saw a leaked lineup of Moor and Trusty in the back so I'm thinking we see that again tomorrow.  Kei gets the start over Rubio while the attacking mids is really a best guess of staying with the hot players and resting some as well.

Prediction: 1-1 draw, goal by Kamara.  Houston is hot and better than us, but the weather will equalize things a bit, along with being at home.  We need to win, but the best we can hope for is a draw.

Second Verse, Same As The First

Another week, another predicted 1-1 draw, another actual 1-1 draw.  Still didn't get the goal scorer right.  While a point on the road is normally a good result its not good enough for where the team is right now and where it was expected to be.  We're tied for last place in the West but winning the goal differential tiebreaker over San Jose.  In the East only Chicago and expansion Inter Miami have less points than us.

Over the last two games we seem to have solved our defensive liabilities.  The KC goal came off a long-range shot that was perfectly hit and partially screened.  The SJ goal on Saturday came off a PK called from a dumb handball by Vines.  Sam slid in to block a cross with his arm raised and the ball hit it.  Not only was it bad positioning but it was unnecessary as the cross was going towards a single Earthquake in the box who was bracketed by Abubakar and Wilson.  It wasn't going to be dangerous.  Outside of that SJ only really had one dangerous attack and Abubakar ended that with an inch-perfect tackle.  Yarbrough didn't have to make a tough save all night.

The cost of solving our defense seems to be a complete lack of attacking ideas though.  For two games the plan seems to be "get the ball to Namli and hope he can make something happen".  That and set pieces.  The latter worked this week as Kamara came off the bench and scored a header from a corner kick to level the score.  The  Rapids should have had a goal right after half as all Acosta had to do was play a simple 12 yard pass to Rubio and he was in, but over hit it.

The Rapids best hope right now might be to get their senior players back in the starting lineup.  Rubio has had a good run as starter and not produced, so lets put Kamara back in.  Benezet is hopefully going to be healthy soon, as one of our two "difference makers" acquired this offseason, only being available for the 3 games in Orlando hasn't made much of a difference.  Warner started over Price this game, I'm not sure if it was due t performance or because of the compressed schedule, but getting the 2019 Price back would be helpful.

Man of the Match: Cole Bassett.  I was originally going to take the easy route and give the award to Kei but I realized that over the last two games we've scored two goals, and Bassett has a goal and an assist on them.  He's clearly having an impact and as long as Benezet is out Bassett should be starting.

Play To Win

The album title would also work for the title of this preview.  The Rapids need to cut the crap and play to win in San Jose tomorrow night.  MLSSoccer.com had another one of those articles where the Rapids coach talks about how we just need to focus and we're almost over the hump and that they're keeping the faith, the same sort of thing we've heard from Pareja, and Pablo, and Hudson, and now Fraser for a decade now.  Talk is cheap.  Show it on the field.  If you don't tomorrow, on the easiest road trip in Phase 1, then we might as well call the season over.  Kickoff tomorrow is at 8:30pm and the game is on Altitude, or wherever you choose to find it by other means.

Something tells me Fraser was overall fairly happy with how last week's game went, except for the result.  I think we largely see the same lineup, though I'm predicting Mezquida gets a shot over Shinyashiki, who has not been good as a starter for a few games.  I figure Namli gets put out on the wing again and Bassett gets rewarded for his goal last week with another start.  If Kamara or Benezet are finally healthy then they could start, Kamara replacing Rubio and Benezet possibly replacing Mezquida and putting Namli back in the middle.

Prediction: 1-1 draw, goal by Namli.  These are two equal teams, tied on points, with the Rapids being one better in goal differential after San Jose got wrecked by LAFC in midweek.  That will make them tired but they're at home which should balance out.  The Rapids really need to win this game if they want to have a serious chance of a playoff spot, but I don't see them doing that.