Weekend Roundup 10/4-10/5

Yeah, I know I missed next week. I promise that I won't miss another Weekend Roundup as long as I'm being paid to do this. ;)

Colorado Rapids - My game review is here. With the loss the Rapids fall into a tie with Dallas for 4rd in the West, the last playoff spot. Based on the head-to-head results with Dallas the Rapids would be the final playoff team. They can finish at best 2nd, and they are 5 points out of that spot. The Rapids are tied with Houston for the 5th best offense and they have the 11th best defense.

Queen of the South - QoS was riding high coming into this match at home facing one of the top teams in the division. It was a real test of how good Queens really is this year and the team responded better than anyone expected. After 12 minutes the Doonhamers had a 2 goal lead, and went into the break up 3-1. In the second half QoS just poured on the gas and were up 4-1 when Livingston was reduced to 10 men. After that the Dumfries gang didn't let up and finished with an astounding 6-1 win. With the result Queen of the South has risen to the top of the table after the first trip (of four) through the league. They are tied with Livingston but claim the top spot on goal differential.

Blackburn Rovers - The Rovers hosted every one's favorite team to hate, Manchester United. In one of the wetter days I've seen Blackburn couldn't stand up to the Red Devils. ManU got another one of those "lucky" non-calls on the first goal, as Brown was clearly impeded in making a save by Vidic, but there was no foul called. The second ManU goal was a class strike by Wayne Rooney, probably a goal of the week nominee. Not much you can do when great players make great plays. With the loss Blackburn falls back to 10th in the table, 7 points behind Chelsea and Liverpool sitting on top.

CD Tenerife - CDT continued their good run of form at home, remaining undefeated in the Estadio Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez. Even going down a man they were able to play defense and preserve their 3-1 lead. The win put Tenerife in the promotion zone after 6 games, 2 points off the lead.

Kildare County FC - Unfortunately its more of the same for County as they dropped another game at home. Kidare found themselves down 2 after only 21 minutes and things really never improved from there. They pulled one back in the 79th minute but it was too little too late as they lost to the team above them in the table. With the loss the Thoroughbreds are 3 points adrift at the bottom of the table with 6 games to play.

Rapids Burp(o) up all over the Dick

Image Credit: Mike Murphy, ASN

Yuck. The worst combination of poor Rapids play and poor officiating that I can remember. Just a disaster of a game on all fronts. Instead of a blow-by-blow review of that junk, I'll just hit the highlights.

Houston Goal #1: Journeyman keeper Preston Burpo apparently thought he was playing for yet another MLS team and played a perfect pass to Dynamo Brian Ching, who took the assist gladly for a 1-0 lead inside 2 minutes.

Rapids Goal: One significant improvement under Smith has been the Rapids on corner kicks. In this case Cookie's kick bounced around in the box and fell to Casey who finished it for his 4th goal in 2 games.

Houston Goal #2: Gibbs committed a needless foul right outside the box. On the ensuing free kick Brian Ching (Brian Ching!!!) was left unmarked and Burpo came out to get the ball and didn't get there. Ching made an easy goal hard, heading it off the crossbar and the rebound bounced off of him a second time before entering the goal.

Houston Goal #3: A defensive breakdown allowed Brian Ching to play a ball back to Ricard Clark, who fired it low from outside the area and beat Burpo near post.

Casey's yellow cards: The first was legit, the second was weak at best. Both were for going up for headers and leading with the elbows, but on the second Robinson came flying into Casey's elbow on a ball he had no shot of getting. There should have been no call, much less no foul, but since elbows are a focus of the USSF this year everything close is going to go against the elbower.

Penalty Kicks: The Houston one was weak, but a PK. The Dynamo player embellished to get the call but there was contact that affected his ability to get to the ball. Burpo did a great job making the save, about the only solid thing he did all night. The Rapids PK was a clear handball, but I have no idea how Cooke completely missed on it.

Keys to the Game review:

• Houston likes to play through balls to get Ching back behind the defense. How quick is Burpo in coming off his line to stop those type of opportunities?
  Nope, not really. Of course by the time it became an issue the Rapids were already down 3-1 and Houston had stopped attacking.
• Maybe its just me, but I'd almost like to see a couple of Pablo, LaBrocca, and Clark pick up a yellow. They're all sitting one yellow from suspension, and out of the 3 games after this one the easiest is probably next week in LA. I'd hate to see them all gone for the Chivas or FSL game.
  What I did not want to see was Casey picking up 2 cards. Now we're looking at an LA game with neither Casey (suspension) or Cummings (Nats) so its probably good the other three didn't get yellows this week.
• Casey and Cummings teamed up very well last week, the best partnership of the season. Can they continue to feed off of each other?.
  No connection at all. Cummings regressed from his high last week..
• Can Gibbs bounce back from a poor showing last week?
  Well he didn't make the disastrous backpass he did last week, but he didn't play particularly well either.
• [benstein]Gomez? Anyone, anyone?[/benstein]
  Nope (More below).
  

Critical Matchup: Casey and Cummings vs. Houston's d-line
- One pinball style goal and one PK very very late is all the Houston defense really allowed us.

Fact of the Match: The last time the Rapids have given up 7 goals in back-to-back competitive matches was Sept. 18th and 25th, 2004. 6 goals to New England and 1 to Kansas City.

Random Observations:

Burpo will start next week because Bouna will be playing for Senegal, but there's no excuse for Bouna not getting the start for the final two games. Burpo is awful.

Christian Gomez is done as a Rapid. If this isn't the game to use him is, there is no game to use him in.

The officiating was haphazard, at best, all night. A crunching tackle would go uncalled, but the whiff of a touch would draw a whistle. Eddie Robinson was about to get beat by Omar and fell down to play the ball with his arm. Happened right in front of Class VI, no call.

Down 3-1 Cooke played the same kind of backpass that Gibbs played last week. Apparently Burpo was expecting it this time and managed to prevent a goal, barely. Then Cooke whiffed on the PK.

First sub down 3-1 and a man in the second half is Ihemelu for Petke. Really? That's the best you could do Smith?

The team is going to have to figure out what went wrong quickly, because they can't afford any more losses.

Man of the Match: Colin Clark - The only player out there not to do something completely stupid at some point.

Rapids Hoping to Crush Houston

The Rapids host the Dynamo in their next-to-last home game of the season tomorrow night at the Dick. Kickoff is at 7pm, tailgating starts at 5.


Here's the injury report:

OUT: GK Justin Hughes (R shoulder); DOUBTFUL: FW Tom McManus (L knee)

DISCIPLINE: Suspended after 1 more yellow card - Pablo Mastroeni, Colin Clark, Nick LaBrocca

My lineup prediction:

Burpo
Kimura - Gibbs - Petke - Harvey
Cooke - Pablo - Ballouchy - Clark
Casey - Cummings

Smith has been pretty consistent about his lineups and its been working, so I see no reason to expect saignificant changes. The Denver Post mentions that Cooke will return to the starting lineup in place of LaBrocca, so I'm guessing Ballouchy gets rewarded for his play last week with a start at attacking mid. I'd still prefer to see Bouna Time! over Burpo though. ;)

Critical Matchup: Casey and Cummings vs. Houston's d-line

Houston has one of the better goalkeepers and stronger defenses in the league. They are second in goals against. While the Rapids have been showing some offensive firepower lately this will be a real test for the forwards.

Keys To Look For:

• Houston likes to play through balls to get Ching back behind the defense. How quick is Burpo in coming off his line to stop those type of opportunities?



• Maybe its just me, but I'd almost like to see a couple of Pablo, LaBrocca, and Clark pick up a yellow. They're all sitting one yellow from suspension, and out of the 3 games after this one the easiest is probably next week in LA. I'd hate to see them all gone for the Chivas or FSL game.



• Casey and Cummings teamed up very well last week, the best partnership of the season. Can they continue to feed off of each other?.



• Can Gibbs bounce back from a poor showing last week?



• [benstein]Gomez? Anyone, anyone?[/benstein]

Prediction: 1-1 draw. Between Ching and DeRo I think Houston has one goal in them, and their defense is good enough to keep us from racking up goals. This one feels like a solid draw.

Why Kildare County?

Another, and for now the last, in my occasional series of posts about why I follow the teams I do. I've done previous posts about the Colorado Rapids, Queen of the South, Blackburn Rovers, Ebbsfleet United, and CD Tenerife. This time around we'll look at Kildare County FC of the Irish First Division.

So a random team from the second-tier of Irish football located in south-central Ireland is probably an odd choice for an American living in Denver. In this case though its the closest thing I have to rooting for a "local" European team.

My family tree, through the Maxwell name, stretches back from Seattle (where I was born) to the Dakotas, Midwestern Canada, and finally back to Port Laoise, Ireland. My great, great, great, great grandfather, Col. John Maxwell, was born there to Dr. John and Penelope Maxwell in 1775 or 1776. He joined the British Marines and served in the Caribbean before emigrating to Canada after leaving the service. Our genealogy research on the Maxwell line stops with Dr. John Maxwell.

Once I determined where in Europe I came from I naturally started looking for the closest professional football team and I found Kildare County. Station Road is about 45 kilometers from Port Laoise and is the closest club in either the Irish Premier or First Divisions. Thus they became another one of the teams I follow.

Honestly in my list of teams they are the squad I'm least passionate about. That's mainly because the Irish First Division is barely a full-time league and the coverage reflects that. That makes it hard to really get excited about the team. I'm still rooting for them to avoid relegation, not only because I root for them to do well, but also because if they drop down into the lower levels of Irish football following them from here will be pretty much impossible.

Rapids 2009

The credit for this topic goes to Dan, who suggested I take a look at what kind of salary room the Rapids are likely to have next year

While not dismissing our playoff chances I wanted to take a look at the rapids salary situation next year. Colorado looks like it will have some real room to play with, given the likelihood of players leaving or being moved. This all has to be taken with a caveat though, namely the coaching situation. What Gary Smith is doing now may not be what he, or another coach, wants to do in the long-term. Right now Smith is the leading candidate for the job though, so let's assume he's going to continue using the team as he's currently using them.

Minutes under Smith in the 6 games since he was officially named interim coach:



As you can see, a pretty established starting 11 has appeared:
Burpo
Kimura - Petke - Gibbs - Harvey
Pablo
Cooke - LaBrocca - Clark
Casey - Cummings

McManus and Ballouchy have been the super subs off the bench, while Erpen and DiRaimondo have gotten some limited playing time as subs. Everyone else on the list has either gotten limited playing time, or had run outs as starters and lost their starting places.

That gives us a pretty good core of players to start analyzing our salary cap for 2009, If we use the 2008 Salary Cap info we can figure out how much is likely to free up. Herculez Gomez is still on that list, but Cory Gibbs is not. Odds are Gibbs is making more than Herculez, but we'll call it a wash for now.

Here's a list of the unused "first-teamers" and their salaries:
Burciaga Jose D $ 80,000.00
Coundoul Bouna GK $ 33,000.00
Erpen Facundo D $ 125,000.00
Gomez Christian M $ 385,000.00
Ihemelu Ugo D $ 60,500.00
Peterson Jacob F $ 75,000.00

That's a bit over $750,000 in first-team salary that we aren't using. I expect Burciaga, Erpen, Peterson, and maybe Ihemelu will be exposed in the expansion draft and then cut or traded. I could see keeping Ihemelu and/or Peterson for depth, but they'll really have to work to earn their spot under the new coach. Bouna Time! is out of contract I think, and unless Smith is really :riding the hot hand" in Burpo it seems like he's going to look elsewhere for keeping. We may trade his rights to another MLS team or he may go to another league. Christian Gomez is the big question mark. Smith isn't using him, at times subbing in Ballouchy or Dalby into the central midfield instead of Gomez. To me that says that Gomez isn't in his plans. However we just signed him to a new contract that's going to make him hard to trade. We probably will either keep him and not use him, or trade him and eat part of his salary.

Who else might we see gone next year?

Pablo is out of contract and has repeatedly talked about going to Europe. Rumors are that he already has offers from Spain but he's holding out for a team in Serie A. One way or another, there's a good chance he's gone.

Mastroeni Pablo M-D $ 300,000.00

Most players who come to MLS get 2 year contracts with option years held by the team/league. If that was the case with Conor Casey, his guaranteed contract is up this year. I expect the Rapids will keep him, but try to re-sign him at a lower rate instead of picking up the option. As good as his play has been the last couple of games, he has yet to produce like a 200K forward.

Casey Conor F $ 190,008.00

Everyone else is pretty much either established themselves as a regular player, or is making under 50K. We'll see some churn in the reserves and fringe first-teamers, but nothing to really free up salary cap. That leaves us with a best/worst case scenario

Worst Case - We keep Gomez, we keep Casey at current salary, and we can't find a taker for Burciaga

600K freed up

Best Case - We trade Gomez and only have to eat about 100K of salary, we sign Casey for 140K, and the extra odds and ends are all traded or cut

Little over 1 million freed up

So we're looking at somewhere between 25% and 40% of the current cap number being freed up for use next year. Not only that, but the only regular starter we have to replace with that money would be Pablo. That gives us a good deal of room to look for improvements instead of filling holes.