Cole Bassett has a new home (official announcement to come but its all confirmed unofficially) Hij moet wel nog veel leren... 😅 https://t.co/uFGog020RC pic.twitter.com/tA036xNqFK— Fortuna Sittard (@FortunaSittard) August 12, 2022
This was a great summary and deserved more than a "like". I'd forgotten Kamara's 14 goals in 2019. "Then you have to go deep" lol, to 2010; that is what I was expecting. A good trip through Rapids history, this. Thank you!
Stop me if any of this sounds familiar: https://lastwordonsports.com/soccer/2022/08/12/colorado-rapids-playoff-mentality/"
I'm told PRO, having soft pedaled it for a few weeks to get officials primed to the paradigm shift, has instructed for these new guidelines to be used beginning with this match week. https://t.co/fndSh4lYs9— MLS Referee Stats (@MLSRefStats) August 13, 2022
Anytime I’ve had a good feeling going into a game this season we lost in dramatic fashion; so tonight I’m trying to tell myself to think like Han Solo….
Disappointing tie but they are a better Tran than the ones we’ve beaten recently and we stay in the playoffs spot hunt.
There goes that man, climbing the all-time leaderboard 😤@DiegoRubio_ is now tied with @19Hendy19 for fifth-most goals in team history!#Rapids96 pic.twitter.com/RROnIu1j1I— Colorado Rapids (@ColoradoRapids) August 15, 2022
I was confused for minute about how we could get 4 points, then I saw we are playing tonight, Wednesday; against the Whitecaps. Away.
Thinking out loud, if you have a squad that needs reinforcements and you're trying to make a playoff push, free agents are still a thing. https://www.transfermarkt.com/statistik/vertragslosespieler There are some players on that list that would undoubtedly be useful. Naturally I wouldn't expect the Rapids to even consider, let alone actually pursue, any free agents...even with the benefit of no transfer fees to pay. Even if you completely threw away the season like they did months ago, it still wouldn't hurt to entertain the idea of looking at options for next year. Of course that'd require planning beyond "We're totally for realsies going to sign players this winter. No really, *THIS* time its gonna be different. We pinkie swear promise."
Oh, you mean like NYCFC signing Pellegrini off waivers, or NE Revs signing Nacho Gil (Carlos Gil's brother), etc., etc.
Crazy, I know. But it would require Padraig to do his job instead of what ever the hell he's been doing this year.
With tonight's result we would need to play the last 8 at 1.5 PPG to get to the average number of points for the 7th placed team in the 34 game era and realistically more like 2.0 PPG to make the playoffs this year. That's with 5 road games and 3 home games. With this team, the chances of that happening is about nil. So, play the kids the rest of the way. Give Vallecilla, Markanich, Max, Priso, and Yapi a ton of minutes. See what we have and if there's real potential there or not. We're looking at 2023 now, 2022 is done.
Smith has to go. You simply can't botch two consecutive windows like he has. That kind of job performance would be grounds for dismissal at any other MLS club. And because he's proven so poor at meaningful signings, it will literally take him years (yes, plural) to undo the damage he's caused in less than 12 months. It's basically a full rebuild at this point, and I'd rather have that task in the hands of someone that can actually get deals done.
I don’t think any GM can fix the Kroenke problem. You could be the best, smartest, and most influential GM in the world - but if you don’t have an ownership group willing to spend any sort of money you won’t be able to get to any sort of sustainable success. Using MLS guys as an example, say you put Gareth Lagerway (Seattle Sounders GM) with Kroenke, and even he couldn’t do much to sustain this team with the way the league is going. Not to mention we also have a dearth of players who are not playing as well as they could be - or even played last year too. Now I’m not giving Smith an out here either, because based on all the trades, etc, we should be having GAM and TAM coming out the wazoo right now. But alas, we’re supposed to be the little club that could - and this year we’re the little club that can’t. How can we have such a pitiful, pitiful couple of windows compared to any other club. How. Unfortunately the kids have already decent looks at the lineup due to the roster build / injuries. Although, I don’t know why Priso is seemingly destined to be riding the bench. Kids clearly got something to give the club and will just waste away on that bench. Also, I still can’t believe Toure hurt himself so bad trying to prove himself. I feel bad for the kid because he really was poised to start breaking out - and instead he quite literally ran himself into the ground.
I doubt anyone could have done better with the current ownership situation. We are in a much better place than before he got here. Would have liked to see more, but injuries have thrown the plan up in the air. A knee jerk reaction might have saddled us with horrible contracts on future years. Would have liked to see more this past window, but not to the point if firing him.
One other letdown this year? 1561211590199877633 is not a valid tweet id More than likely our game against San Jose (who just beat LAFC) will be the last Rapids game called by the combo Fleming and Balboa - as our final home game of the season is against Dallas and will be on UniMas. It’s a shame we’re riding out the season like this, and even moreso that Fleming and Balboa will more than likely be a combo no more after this season.
You could hear it in the broadcast last night, he's gutted. So am I. Probably my favorite Rapid due to his consistent high quality.
Well, they'll still call the road games, so their final game will be the season finale in Austin. He and I have exchanged some emails over the years and he's always been professional and authentic. I've stopped by the pregame broadcast on the concourse each game since they started doing it on the 4th of July. Last night Richard invited me into the fenced off area to get a closer look at what they were doing, which was greatly appreciated and not at all necessary. He'll be a big loss if we can't figure out a role for him.
Kroenke isn't an excuse for Padraig's performance over the past 12 months, and it's laughable to suggest it is. We had a good team last year, and all it needed was some tweaking to make it into a great team that would have been a force in the West for multiple years. We had a young core. We had something sustainable. We had something that we could've kept running even under a Kroenke budget as long as it was managed responsibly. What happened instead was our roster was strip-mined to the ground and no serious replacements were brought in. What Padraig has done this year would be equivalent to Joe Sakic blowing up the Avs roster after the 2020/2021 season. That would mean no Stanley Cup and about a decade of work flushed down the toilet. Sakic works for Kroenke too, but he was able to make it work because he's actually good at his job. Padraig has completely destroyed this team, and in the process he's done things he's often scoffed at his predecessors for doing; empty promises, bad deals, and long-term bum contracts. We're back to square one and he's not going to fix it because he's simply too incompetent to fix it. You could triple his budget and nothing would change because the fact of the matter is he'd still make the exact same mistakes. Padraig has to go, or at the very bare minimum have his player acquisition responsibilities given to someone else that isn't utterly terrible at it. Sure, your rebuttable to that would be to ask "But who built the good team last year in the first place?" I would argue that because of the way this year has gone, I think its fair to question how much of that was actually Padraig's skill and ability, and how much of that was a combination of dumb luck and being fortunate enough to have several really good academy products at the time.
I don't pin my thoughts on last season, although that is a example of good. I say he had a budget. In that budget he has had to make some hard choices. Several of the main people were injured in the budget he had to meet ("no Price, no points" comes to mind). He did not have the budget to bring in bad contract players without potentially killing future years. So, I am not calling for his head right now. One could argue that he could have done more with the money we may have received from the various trades. That is why I am not saying he is doing an amazing job. Just saying he is much better than we have had in the past and I want to see what he does next.