Colorado Tries To Get Chivas' Goat

You're getting my game preview a day early because I have concert tickets tomorrow night and won't be around. ;) Saturday night the Rapids make their first road trip of the season, heading to LA to face the Under-A-Chivas, now coached by former Rapid Robin Fraser.

Kickoff is at 8:30pm MDT and the game is on Altitude 2. For those of you on Comcast like me there's no dedicated Altitude 2 channel, instead it shares with the Colorado Entertainment Channel on 105. Unfortunately we're going to have to live with SD this week. Class VI and the Pid Army are hosting a viewing party at the Celtic in downtown Denver and up North at CB & Potts in Collinsdale. The MLS Cup will be in attendance at CB & Potts!

Injury Report:

OUT: FW Macoumba Kandji (L knee ACL tear)

DOUBTFUL: FW Andre Akpan (L hamstring strain)

International Absences:

MF Sanna Nyassi - Gambia

FW Omar Cummings - Jamaica

The drawback to the grown of Omar Cummings is weekends like this, where Cummings plays for Jamaica instead of Colorado. The flip side is that Chivas has 3 players on international duty including 2 of last week's starting defenders. Their injury report is equal to ours, so we're pretty much at equal strength. My guess at the linup:

Pickens

Kimura - Wynne - Moor - Wallace

Mullan - Mastroeni - Larentowicz - Smith

Folan - Casey

The Rapids posted a video of Gary Smith today talking about how Folan is in the mix for this weekend. Games like this is why we signed him, and being at sea level I think we see him get the start. The other choice, with two forwards on the injury report, is Amarikwa and I don't think he's ready to be starting yet. Otherwise there's no reason to make any changes.

Key To Look For: Cummings replacement, be it Folan or Amarikwa. We made our good run last year by being consistent in our lineup, especially up front. This will be an adjustment for the team and for the new starter. If they can't threaten or work with the team the Chivas defense will close down on Casey and frustrate our offense.

Prediction: 2-1 Rapids win. Goals by Folan and Mullan. Chivas' defense looked pretty questionable last week, and it gets worse with their international losses. The focus will be on Casey and I think that will allow a couple of other players to get on the scoreboard. Its hard to predict the first road game of the year, but I don't think we'll get a shutout.