Rapids Out Of Gas In Minnesota

Like we saw in KC a week and a half ago, the Rapids were tired to start the game and could never get in gear while Minnesota ran around them to the tune of a 3-0 win.  We're not going to go over the specifics of the game, if you saw SKC you saw this game.

Our road record isn't good this year but we've been particularly bad since the Leagues Cup, being outscored 9-4 and losing 2 of the 3 games, with our only win the last second escape in Dallas.  In Leagues Cup play we had a 2-2 draw in Philly, the scoreless draw against Club America in San Diego, and the 4-0 beat down in Portland.  Combined our last 6 road games are 1 win, 2 draws (with PK wins), and 3 losses and 6 goals scored with 15 allowed.

What I think we're running into is that our lack of rotation is catching up with us, and we see that more on the road due to the travel.  When you look at the minutes played by our main starters its not pretty.  A normal 34 game season has 3060 minutes of play.  Of course we played 7 extra games in Leagues Cup action.  Combined with our 31 league games so far we've had 3420 minutes of competitive football.

Steffen - 3420 minutes

Maxso - 3420 minutes

Bassett - 3185 minutes

Navarro - 3123 minutes

Mihailovic - 2751 minutes (plus 252 in the Olympics)

Vines - 2642 minutes

That's 4 players who have already played a full regular season and another that's about a half short if you include his trip to France.  In comparison I saw maybe a dozen non-goalkeepers in all of MLS who have over 3000 minutes already between the league and Leagues Cup.  Three of those guys are Maxso, Bassett, and Navarro (and unofficially Mihailovic).

We saw this same problem for years in Kansas City.  Peter Vermes would have his starters and run them into the ground and they would flame out late in the season.  This year the highest total for a KC player is a little over 2400 minutes.  The highest field player I could find other than the Rapids is Kai Wagner of Philly at 3257 minutes.  The highest for afield player who didn't make the semis of the Leagues Cup (so played at most 5 extra games) appears to be Thiago of NYCFC at 2969 minutes.

In the case down I-70 it was poor choices by the coach that put them in that situation.  In Colorado its a lack of roster depth.  Maxso's backup is Abubakar or Edwards.  Bassett's is KSB?  Navarro's is Yapi.  Mihalovic's is Bassett or maybe KSB too.  Vines has Jackson.  Other than Lalas these are all young kids.  We weren't expecting to be this competitive this quickly with the rebuild and our young guys just don't have the experience for Armas to throw them into the fire as often as the rotation would call for.

The success that we've had has put us in this situation.  An extra 7 games for the Leagues Cup added 630 minutes.  Being in the thick of the first-round home field race means we can't afford to take any games off and play for a draw while giving the backups some experience.  It does spotlight something we haven't had a chance to talk about here,  The fact that we took a pass on the summer transfer window.

I'm not suggesting we were in a position to win it all now and we needed to mortgage the future to cash in.  But how many summers have we seen the Front Office promise we're making moves and then sign 2 journeyman MLS players to short-term contracts for the cost of $150K of GAM and a 3rd round pick?  That's all we needed.  A experienced MLS defender who could take some of Maxso's minutes and an Alan Gordon-type to give Navarro a break without putting it all on Yapi would have gone a long way this season.  Without that I'm afraid we're going to run our legs off and flame out in the first round.