Coaching Rumors. Injury News, Oh And We Have A Game

The Rapids play in Dallas tomorrow, the rescheduled game from last Wednesday's rainout.  There's nothing on the line so we're mainly going to focus on the news this week.  We'll get back to the game later.

The big news, well more like pretty much confirmed rumor, is that Jack Wilshere is on the Rapids list of coaches they are considering.  Wilshere is a former Arsenal and England midfielder who retired after the 2021-22 season (he played for Danish side AGF that season) and was immediately hired as Arsenal's U-18 coach.  Last season he took the U-18s to the FA Youth Cup final.

Obviously I think we would hope that we could sign a coach with extensive first-team experience, either in MLS or an equivalent or better league.  Before Fraser we had a long list of coaches getting their initial shot at managing first-team club football.  The reality of the situation though is that we've fired our last three coaches with multiple years left on their contracts and given KSE's lack of investment we have to assume that we don't have a big number to dangle in front of a name coach to want to come into that situation.  Given that I don't mind us looking a bit "outside the box".  I'm not sure Wilshere is the right match for us, but at the same time in this situation I doubt any name we hire is going to feel like the right match.  At the very least hiring Wilshere would at least get some eyeballs on the team.

In other news Colorado announced today that Sam Nicholson underwent surgery on his ankle to relieve an ongoing problem he's had for most of the season.  Recovery time is 12-16 weeks so he would be back around the start of the 2024 season, which he's under contract for (and the team has an option on him for 2025).  This is obviously a "season-ending injury", for the 2 games of this season that are left.

Back to tomorrow's game, kickoff is at 6:30pm.  Dallas is hanging on to the last playoff spot in the West but with this game in hand they can clinch their spot in the postseason and move up to a position where they would avoid the play-in game.  Meanwhile as I mentioned the Rapids are guaranteed to finish last in the West and next-to-last overall in the league, the only thing to play for is two wins in our final two games would avoid our worst season ever.

Availability Report:

OUT: GK William Yarbrough (surgery), D Moise Bombito (Team Canada), D Alex Gersbach (surgery), D Aboubacar Keita (lower body injury), M Danny Leyva (U.S. Pan-American Games Team), M Max (removed from team activities), M Sam Nicholson (surgery), F Diego Rubio (Team Chile)

Well, we got Tavares back at least.  I expect, given the wide swath of our team that's unavailable, he'll get some playing time.

Prediction: 1-0 loss.  This was my prediction 10 days ago and the only thing that's happened is that we have even less players available.  I don't see any reason to change it.