Rapids Struggle In Small Spaces

A rough night in New York on Saturday for the burgundy boys.  As I feared playing on the small Yankee Stadium pitch did not suit their game and the Pigeons made them pay.  It wasn't all bad as there was a nice run of play starting shortly before half and continuing for most of the second, but when it mattered the most NYCFC finished and Colorado didn't.  The final score of 3-1 was a accurate representation.

Random Thoughts:

• Saturday morning the Rapids announced signing Rapids 2 player and 1st round raft pick Mamadou Billo Diop to a first-team contract.  If you remember on draft week the league was approached by another team with a loophole in the rules to make Billo Diop draft-eligible despite already being signed to R2, which meant the Rapids had to draft their own player.  He got 8 minutes plus stoppage on Saturday
• The Rapids also called up De Coteau from R2.  The fact that we needed a same-day signing and a callup with only three players unavailable shows how thin this roster is
• A rough play from Holding led to the first goal.  In an attempt to play it out of the back he sent a pass up that was easily intercepted, putting the defense on its heels.  Holding tried to make up for it but he left Hansen stranded.  Credit to Nico for making the first save but there was nobody there to clear the rebound.  Wayne Fredrick was doing a lot of ball watching during this.
• The second goal was two bad individual plays.  Jackson Travis committed an unnecessary foul at the side of the box.  That would have been something we could deal with but on the ensuing free kick Manyoma broke from the wall just as it was taken and the ball went right through the space he vacated to beat Hansen near post.  Its not great for a keeper to get beat near post, but I understand Hansen thinking his wall would actually, you know, wall.
• It was looking pretty frim as we rolled into halftime but a nice setup from Navarro got Yapi free on goal and he finished far post for only a one goal deficit at the break.  While the Rapids had been looking better in the final 15 it was still against the run of play.
• The early part of the second half was strongly in the Rapids favor, but they couldn't do anything with their play.  In the 30 minutes after the break they only recorded 3 shots, none on net.
• The final goal was a break that Holding misread, giving ground and not changing off with Herrington to cover Magno making a run, leaving him with an uncontested shot at goal
• Can somebody put out a BOLO on Paxten Aaronson?  For the club record signing at more than twice the amount of the last record he has...2 assists and 1 goal in 10 starts.  And he's invisible for long stretches of matches.  I recognize he's making good runs and progressing the ball, at times, but we need more from somebody we're that heavily invested in.
• Fredrick got the start over Atencio and it wasn't good.  We're still struggling to find the third in the midfield with Ojediran and Paxten.
• Likewise its time to give Navarro a chance over Travis
• Post match Wells talked a lot about being in good places and making the wrong decisions, but combined with other quotes its starting to feel like he doesn't have a good read on this league yet, both the talent of his own squad as well as the ones he's playing.  Nothing to panic about yet but I think there's still some learning for him to do
• To end on a positive note, despite the scoreline this was a better performance than our trip to Seattle.  And both Seattle and NYCFC are likely to be top teams this year.  Our next two games on the road need to be large improvements given the opposition will be likely some of the worst teams this season (SKC and Toronto).

Man of the Match: Darren Yapi.  Yeah, going with the goal-scorer is the easy way out, but it was either him or Navarro (who had the only other shot on target in the match).  So the goal was a tiebreaker.