Off To The Lou

The Rapids start a busy Independence Day weekend with a trip across the Plains to St. Louis for their first look at the newest expansion city (we, of course, saw the team here in Colorado earlier this season).  Colorado is playing for 2024 (we hope not 2025) while St. Louis is sitting on top of the Western Conference (again, in their inaugural year).  Kickoff by the Arch is at 6:30pm tomorrow.  Centennial 38 has a road trip of their own for this one, with the official watch party up at the Grand Z Casino in Central City.

Availability Report:

OUT: D Moise Bombito (Team Canada), D Alex Gersbach (lower body injury), M Bryan Acosta (Team Honduras), M Max (unavailable)

QUESTIONABLE: M Jonathan Lewis (lower body injury), M Ralph Priso (lower body injury), F Diego Rubio (upper body injury)

Maybe once this season we'll get through a game week without an injury in training, but apparently its not this week as Lewis and Gersbach both popped up on the injury report.  Priso is new as well, but we saw him leave at halftime of the Galaxy game with a knock so that's not a surprise.  Rubio is still only Questionable so I'm guessing we'll see him on the bench, if we're lucky.

There's really only 3-4 questions here.  Who starts next to Cabral, who takes Priso's spot, who plays left back, and goalkeeper.  The first 3 seem fairly obvious given the availability report (though left back could also be Nicholson).  I put Ilic at goalkeeper because his loan is up on Wednesday and I figure they'll take one more look at him before that.  Seems like it would be more likely on the road tomorrow that at home on the 4th.

Prediction: 2-0 loss.  St. Louis has the second best offense in the league, having scored 37 goals to our 14.  Their defense is only slightly better than ours, but against our offense that won't matter much.