Coaching Update

The Denver Post is reporting that Gary Smith has been signed to a 3 year deal with Steve Guppy as his assistant. This is based on comments that Guppy made on a NY radio show this weekend and an interview with the current Rochester Rhinos coach. The Rapids only comment is from Jeff Plush, who states that the rapids have 0 coaches under contract at the current time.

Along with the coaching comments Steve Guppy says he wants to bring Irish winger Danny Earls with him form Rochester to Colorado. Earls can play left back or left mid, so some competition for Harvey and Clark. At 19-years old he may not be ready to start right away, but building up our youth never hurt. Earls played for the Aston Villa Reserves before moving to Rochester, and on July 29th was named USL-1 Player of the Week.

UPDATE: An anonymous source has told me the coaching situation should be official by the end of the week.

If somebody comments on the Rapids and the FO doesn't respond, did it really happen?

On Wednesday the Rhinos released a statement saying that Steve Guppy was leaving the team to join the Rapids as assistant coach and help Gary Smith. As this was obviously significant Rapids news I wrote a post about it, as did Bonji at Class VI. We both believed that the press release and the information contained in it meant that it was likely the Rapids had chosen Smith as the next head coach.

Since then we have both received comments in private from the Rapids Front Office saying that we're assuming things or that the we don't know the full story, etc. While that might be the case, the problem is that the Rhinos and Guppy are the only ones talking in public. The press release stated that Guppy will be joining Smith with the Rapids. Given that its not assumptions on our part, its going with the facts that we know.

This is hardly the first time that a rumor about the Rapids has been circulating, and instead of making a formal statement about it all we see is comments from well-connected fans saying they've heard the rumor is wrong. Very often these comments come from people in the Front Office that, at least from their job titles, aren't involved with the rumor. The comments are always somewhat cloudy, with things only half said.

It appears the the Rapids and/or KSE do not want people talking about the Rapids or their off-season news. They prefer that everyone go follow the Avalanche and Nuggets and ignore whatever the Rapids must be doing. This is misguided at best, and stupid at worst. You want your fans following the team in the off-season, you want to keep the team in the news, you want people thinking about buying tickets and merchandise. The two most followed leagues in this country, NFL and MLB, have figured this out and welcomed it. MLB has the whole Hot Stove League that's been built up around its offseason. The NFL has made an event out of the Draft, not to mention unending minicamps and workouts.

The cynic in me says the reason that KSE doesn't want anyone following the Rapids offseason news is that they don't want the lack of news to be noticed. Last offseason they refused to even discuss the terms of the Gomez trade, even to the point that they've still never officially stated what they traded for Gomez though everyone can see that suddenly DC has two DP slots. The die-hard fans know the Rapids have a great deal to do this offseason. They need to get the coaching situation settled, deal with out of contract players like Pablo and Bouna, and figure out what they're going to do about Christian Gomez. If KSE doesn't have a plan then the less attention paid to the Rapids the better for KSE.

Fan relations have never been a strong suit for the Rapids either under AEG or KSE. While there are individuals in the Front Office who go out of their way to try to work with the supporters there's never been a coherent strategy for fan-team relations. The ongoing silence out of the Front Office about any news story of interest is just one more indication that KSE is not focused on, and quite possibly not interested in, making the Rapids a top-notch MLS organization.

Assistant Coach Steve Guppy = Head Coach Gary Smith

The Rochester Rhinos have announced that player/assistant coach Steve Guppy is leaving the team and joining the Rapids as an assistant coach in January.

Guppy has a long history of 17 years playing in England and Scotland, spending time with Southampton, Wycombe, Newcastle, Port Vale, Leicester City, Celtic, Leeds, and Stoke City. He then played with DC before a brief stop back in England before joining Rochester. One of the first EPL tams I followed was Leicester City when Kasey Keller was there, which coincided with Guppy's time at left wing with the club. Guppy followed Martin O'Neil to Celtic in 2001.

The big part of this news is that it almost assuredly means that Gary Smith has been given the Head Coach position. If the Rapids are already signing Assistant Coaches they probably have figured out who the head coach is going to be. Given that to the best of our knowledge the Rapids haven't talked to anyone, and Steve Guppy is a long time friend of Smith and a fellow Englishman, the logical conclusion is that Smith has been given the job. I bet the Rhinos jumped the gun on the announcement and the Rapids are planning an official announcement between now and MLS Cup.

Weekend Roundup 11/1 - 11/2

Sorry for the delay, too busy following the election

We drop the Rapids from the Roundup this week, we'll pick them up again come March.

Queen of the South - QoS had their second straight road game, this time at Partick Thistle. Things did not go as well as they did in Dingwall last week. The Doonhamers were fairly disorganized at times in the first half, and it eventually cost them as on the stroke of halftime Thistle scored to take a 1-0 lead. After the break Queen's captain Jim Thomson picked up yellow cards in the 50th and 80th minute, leaving QoS shorthanded. Partick took advantage, getting a penalty called late and taking the game 2-0. With the loss QoS drops to 2nd in the table, 2 points behind St. Johnstone at the 1/3rd mark of the season.

Blackburn Rovers - An up and down game for Rovers this week as they travelled to WBA. Benni McCarthy staked Blackburn to an early lead from the spot, only to be sent off for a weak handball call and second yellow in the 36th minute. In the 10 minutes after half time WBA scored twice to take the lead. Blackburn never gave up though, and in the 89th minute Keith Andrews scored his first goal for Rovers to rescue a point. Its now been 5 games without a win, dropping Blackburn to 13th in the table after 11 games.

CD Tenerife - CDT hosted Rayo Vallecano, former home of USMNT star Kasey Keller, and fellow promotion challenger. Tenerife became third one of my teams this week to lose a player due to questionable double yellows, but they didn't let it stop them. A convincing 2-0 win at home for CDT puts them right back into the promotion race. This was also the 50th appearance of Juan Francisco Martínez Modesto, better known as Nino, for Tenerife. With the win CDT jump up to 6th in the table, 4 points behind leaders Hercules after 10 games.

Kildare County FC - Things just keep getting worse for County. They were forced to play 2 games in 3 days in order to make up for one of the postponed games from earlier in the season. A 2-1 loss and a 3-3 draw wasn't what they needed to salvage the season. In the 3-3 draw County had a player, you guessed it, sent off for a second yellow, though this one seems to be more deserved than the ones for the other teams. With the single point in the two games they are not assured of facing a playoff to stay in the lowest league of professional football in Ireland. They have 2 games left to figure out what they need to do, then the 2-leg playoff to try to survive and come back next year.

Thanks to the Rapids Ticket Office

As part of my ongoing goal to not paint the whole Rapids FO with the same brush when I get frustrated at a soccer-related decision I wanted to give my thanks to the Rapids Ticket Office, specifically Marcus Myrick and Abbey Gettler.

Marcus has been my long-time contact in the ticket office. He's always set me up with tickets and gone out of his way to make sure I got what I needed. It wasn't the easiest year for me, being laid off right after I got to Colorado, so I didn't buy the season ticket I was thinking about and I had a lot of last minute decisions to attend games based on $$$ until I got my new job at PaySimple figured out. Marcus was always responsive to last minute requests for Class VI tickets, and I probably took more of his time than I really should have in asking him questions about sell-outs and such.

Marcus and Abbey worked together on my season ticket renewal for 2009. I'm not in a position to buy a ticket right now, but expect to be after the holidays. I was willing just to let my seat go (Its not like we're real picky about sitting in our seats in Class VI) and buy a ticket to the USMNT game on my own. Instead Marcus decided to trust that I would buy a ticket and Abbey applied my unused playoff ticket (Damn you FaKe SaLt LaKe!) as my deposit and provided me with a USMNT ticket. It would have been easy for them to have let me go knowing I'd be back next season anyway and made some more money off of me by selling me a USMNT ticket, but instead they found a way to make it work for both the Rapids and me.

I come down on the Rapids FO a lot, and justifiably most of the time. From a soccer perspective there's a lot of work to be done to get the Rapids into a team that can challenge for the title. That doesn't mean that other parts of the organization aren't getting the job done though, and sometimes we as fans need to recognize that there are people in the FO getting the job done to make the game-day experience the best it can be for what they control.