Rapids Dealing With Reduced Wattage

In a bit of a surprising move the Rapids traded Jared Watts to Houston today in exchange for $100K of Targeted Allocation Money (TAM).  While many fans expected a trade most thought it would be Axel Sjoberg who was moved.  Watts proved himself, after some false starts, to be a capable MLS backup CB so $100K of TAM is probably a reasonable trade for him.

This leaves the Rapids with Smith, Wilson, Ford, Sjoberg, Miller, and (apparently) Wynne as center backs which is still pretty good depth.  This move gives us $100K in TAM and frees up Watts' $75K in salary, which means we should have room for a decent signing.  Since we acquired TAM that may be an indicator that we have a larger target in mind, though it may just be stockpiling it for a future move.

In unrelated news the team announced yesterday that the road trip to play the Galaxy, originally scheduled for Aug. 25th, will now be played on Aug 14th at 8:30pm.  No reason was given for the change.  This will have the Rapids California Dreamin' in August as in two weeks they host the Galaxy and San Jose, then travel out to LA to play both the Galaxy and LAFC in back-to-back games the same week (they finish the month hosting FSL).