Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler Counting friendlies he has 6! (Hat trick in Memphis)
Looking at the player of the year awards is depressing. I mean, the winners all had poor seasons. Really, I expect more out of each of them next year. And most, if not all, would not start with the better MLS teams. Aye yi yi.
I think Price was decent. Too many yellow cards and suspensions, and a few reds, and not great on defense, but this is the Rapids...
When I think of Price, I think of a journeyman. Solid, but isn’t going to score even an occasional goal. More goon than skilled. To think he’s the MVP says it all.
As for the defensive MVP, it seems like there shouldn't have been one this season. I suppose you could say the same on the attacking end. I suppose the only player for me deserved any kind of award for performance on the pitch was Castillo.
Jack Price won the "Fan Favorite"?? No way. Where did these votes come from? Granted, it's hard to pick a favorite. It's unbelievable how many times the defensive player of the year lost his marker.
For the entire season, I agree that Castillo was the best player we had. For the second half alone, I'd go with Acosta. Jason asks a good question. I'm not familiar enough with the MLS market to have a great answer. I've seen $1M and $3M figures bandied about. It's hard to even spend $1M on a 32-year-old wingback/right back that isn't great defensively, even if he does create chances with his exciting and effective runs with the ball.
I had assumed his loan with option to buy had some sort of value attached to it. I will say this...Boli’s salary is 900k plus whatever it cost to get him. I would rather use some GAM to buy down Castillo’s transfer and pay him $300k a year for 2 more years than have Boli. Truth is I have zero belief we will do anything good this offseason. What we will get is that the summer transfer window not the winter one is our turning point. Yeah right.
It does, but rumors are that Monterrey are demanding more. Number floating around is $3 million for a transfer fee, then we'd have to pay him his salary on top of that.
Anybody going to the game tomorrow? Season ticket holder here and I haven’t been in a while-seriously on the fence about whether or not I want to go and waste my Sunday watching our team get slaughtered. My just pack it in until 2019
Time to get this miserable wretch of a season over with, so we can move on to the next miserable wretch of a season.
If you knew nothing else about the Rapids season, this fact, that a CB was our leading scorer, would tell you all you needed to know.
Sad to see that our leading scorer was a CB....all I can do is chuckle about that stat. Also interesting to note that we had the fewest goals out of any team in the league this year with 37. Next closest was Orlando City at 43 goals this year. Simple math puts that at 1.088 goals per game, which we have to be honest, is slightly better than the .91 goals per game. HOWEVER, last season we allowed 1.5 goals per game. This season we allowed 1.85 goals per game. So we scored slightly more goals (yay!), but we allowed more goals (boo!).San Jose, Minnesota, Vancouver, LA Galaxy, Orlando, and Toronto all allowed more goals than us this year, so we got that going for us as well. (Hey, I'm just trying to look at the positives in this dumpster fire, what else do we have to build on anymore???) More Stats I find interesting: 2017 we had .97 points per game. 2018 we had .91 points per game. Not a huge difference, and given that we had new coaching staff, tight wallet owners, and 13 new players at the start of the season (43% of the roster), I wasn't terribly surprised we didn't look very good, and slid backwards a little from last year. It's only to be expected that new systems, and new players slide back a little from the year prior, especially when you're trying to make a team-wide cultural transition into a new style of play and team. Whether the new players/coach/style is any good is a completely different question lol....we had some bright spots here and there, and have some good talent left on the field. But we certainly didn't pass the "eye test" for most of this year. Gonna be most interesting how this post and preseason goes for the Rapids. At this point, my expectations are for the Rapids to again score .91 points per game. That way if we suck again next year, I'm not terribly surprised
Also, in regards to the trade of Acosta and Badji (especially since we just played Dallas, its fresh on all of our minds with that leading goal scorer stat), its interesting to see how that trade worked out: Badji (born 1992) had 10 appearances (9 starts) for Dallas after the trade. Scored 2 goals, and had one assist (interesting that his lone assist came against the Rapids). He put in 11 shots, with 4 on goal. Acosta (born 1995) had 12 appearances (12 starts) for the Rapids after the trade. He logged 2 goals, and had 3 assists. He had 21 shots, with 5 being on goal. Kellyn also started 3 games for the USMNT with 1 goal and 1 assist. So for stats, I'd say we got the better end of the deal. Younger player, had more impact on the team. As for the "eye test"? Kellyn looked about as consistent as Badji had been. Really good at times. Really not at others See my above post for what I'm thinking next year looks like. Here's hoping that next year we don't suck as badly and they exceed my expectations as a team lol