Rapids Ride Home Dominance To Another Big Win

At this point we should just stop doubting Colorado at home.  23 regular season home matches without a loss at the Dick, and only 2 losses in the last 36 regular season home games.  LAFC and Seattle, the league's current best and CONCACAF's current best, came in here in a little over a week and walked out with a combined 0 points.  The Rapids find a way when they're on home soil.  Even if sometimes they get a little help from the refs.

Random Musings:

• Interesting lineup with Markanich starting.  I believe that was to allow Rosenberry to play center back to save his legs.  Its also somewhat indicative that Fraser doesn't rate Seb Anderson very highly.
• For a first start though, Markanich looked good.  He had a few rookie mistakes but had some good crosses and got into the attack often.
• Beitashour showed his wheels at times too.  He's getting more minutes than I expected this season and playing well.
• Captain Jack was back with his first start since injury.  We play much better with him than without.
• MAK's injury wasn't great.  Hopeful that its just a finger in the eye and he'll recover quickly.
• Lewis stepped in well for MAK, he got credit for the goal because he got a piece of the ball as it crossed the line, but in reality Rubio did the work and it really was an Own Goal.
• The Sounders fans are complaining that Rubio committed a foul to start the goal-scoring sequence.  IMO it was a good no-call, but even if it was a foul it wasn't the clear and obvious type foul that would negate a goal.
• Now the PK that went to a (very long) VAR replay was probably something that should have been called.  Based on the post-game answers to questions asked by the Sounders' pool reporter, ref Tim Ford decided there wasn't clear evidence that the foul took place in the box.  There was a lack of clear evidence just like there was a lack of clear evidence that SJ had handled the ball two weeks ago, aka its clearly in the box but there's just enough wiggle room to justify not overturning the call.  So we got our payback for that missed call in SJ, and a 0-1 loss and 1-0 win is 3 points while two 1-1 draws is only 2 points.
• In general I wasn't impressed with Ford.  His signals were unclear and what was and wasn't a foul varied throughout the game.
• A nice bit of time-wasting by Barrios late.  Ford was trying to hurry our subs off the field as much as possible and knowing Barrios was coming off tried to get him moving.  Barrios' number hadn't been put up on the board yet though, so he just feigned ignorance about being subbed and didn't move until his number went up.  Sadly that felt like his strongest contribution to the match.
• Shout out to Abubakar for tracking back and covering for Yarbrough when Will had to come out to close the angle on Morris and got chipped.
• Now we finally get a week off before hosting the MLS Cup 2010 reunion against Nashville Saturday night.  Then its 19 days off for the international break, something this team desperately needs.
• One benefit about the Sounders being in town is an increased amount of Huskies gear around the Dick.  Go Dawgs!

Man of the Match: William Yarbrough.  Only officially made a couple of saves but they were both huge, plus forced Morris into that weak chip that Lalas cleared.  And was great at time-wasting too.