Rapids Fall On Their Face In The RMC, Again

We're going to do something a little different tonight.  I could rant, again, about how nobody in a leadership position seems to care about results against FSL.  When your second year sub (Shinyashiki) is the only one to come out and say he's embarrassed about the result, that says something.  Or I could rant about how we're 1-1-7 against FSL with 7 goals scored an 26 allowed since the infamous "Rapids Way" editorial.  But I've done all that before and thee's really no reason to spend any more time covering that.

Instead I want to look tactically at why we failed on all four goals.  We're going to see that the Rapids were consistently in a position to have the numbers, yet failed to stop anything FSL was doing.

Goal 1, in the 57th minute.  Meram is bringing the ball upfield with a couple of teammates against a flat back 4 for the Rapids.   Jack Price closes in but Meran executes a nice spin move away from him and lays a square ball across the field.  Here's the look at that moment:

See the problem?  Kreilach is approaching the box and has enough space to run the whole stock show through the gap.  In this shot you can see 9 of the 10 field players for the Rapids, the 10th (Lewis I believe) is off screen in the upper left.  There's an FSL player deep off the screen on the rightand midway on the left.  Including them there are 5 FSL players near the box and 7 Rapids. yet Kreliach has all day to hit his shot.  Danny Wilson recognizes the danger and tries to close him down but gets there too late.  Wilson was, correctly, covering the center space and the player making the run through it at the time of the pass.  The failure here is that all of Acosta, Price, and Abubakar ended up in the same space trying to close down Meram, leaving the rest of the center of the field wide open.

Goal 2, in the 76th minute.  The FSL attacker (Rusnak I believe, I'll assume its him going forward) is bringing the ball down the Rapids right side.  Rosenberry has him and while he allows Rusnak to cut inside the pass/shot he gets off is not very dangerous if the rest of the team is doing their job.  They weren't.

The problem is that Abubakar lost his man and now he has a easy run at the pass.  Yarbrough does correctly read the threat, comes out, and gets the ball first but he spills it right back into the center of the box.  Chang (seen here at center the top of the box, the one on the right of the two FSL attackers) has a free run at the rebound for an easy goal.  Again there are 4 FSL attackers and 8 Rapids in or around the box, yet nobody picks up the run from Chang.  It appears Vines has him early in the sequence but expects to hand him off to Wilson as he crosses through the box, while picking up the closer attacker (that's Vines at the top of the box with the other FSL attacker in the picture) but Wilson is trying to cover for Abubakar losing his man.

Goal 3, in the 85th minute.  This was after Wilson was subbed out and the Rapids went to a 3 man back line.  In this one Chang brings the ball in deep on the left, with Vines all over him.  Sam does a good job forcing him to give up the ball, using the end line to his advantage and leaving Chang nowhere to go. but backwards.  However...

Yeah, that's Corey Baird sitting right there, in the box, with nobody around him.  3 FSL attackers and 5 Rapids in or around the box and only Vines is anywhere closing down a man.  Price, seen at the top of the box on the left, starts the sequence outside the center circle as Chang starts to turn into the box and comes at a dead run to try to get to Baird but is still a good 3+ yards away at the shot.

Goal 4, in the 89th minute.  This one is a simple counter-attack coming out of midfield.  A FSL player plays the ball from the midfield stripe into Baird, who one-times it to the outside to Chang.  Chang gets into the corner again and...

The camera was moving with the cross on this one, thus the blurriness.  But the white smudge on the right side is an unmarked Meram crashing the box leading to the goal.  As you can see, again, there are 5 Rapids in the box and 3 (including Chang offscreen left) FSL attackers, yet none of the attackers have any pressure on them.

Four goals.  On all four of them the Rapids had at least a two man advantage.  Yet on none of them were the eventual scorer under any real pressure to make a tough shot.  FSL rammed it down our throats the whole second half and the midfield wasn't even a speed bump.  Abubakar in particular had a bad night of ball watching but everyone on the team was guilty of it on at least one goal.  Inexcusable defense, especially from a team led by a notable defender like Fraser.  He's only had one shutout in his 11 games in charge and its hard to see that changing soon.