What's Wrong With the Rapids

disband the whole team and let's rebuild from the ground up let us get in the expansion draft

 

Actually the answer is simple, it's Bravo. Why would you want to play for a piece of shit like that after he gutted the coach and the team? As a player, can you imagine going from the top of the league to the bottom in such a short time?

 

This is not a video game David, I'm suggesting that if a person 'Bravo' rips apart everything you built... which by the way decreases your value as a player.. then it's human nature to want out. It's human nature to sit there and say, this son of a bitch has f'ed up my life, my profession.. how do I get out, what's my exit strategy? Do I piss the coach off enough in hopes of getting traded? Maybe if I don't give 100%.. maybe give 90% they will trade me before the team is so horrible that my perceived value is nothing?

These guys are professionals, yes they care about the fans, careers and their integrity.. but do you know what they care about more? Their family, putting food on the table. And there is a big difference between making a 150k a year for a winning team then being on the worst team in the league and having to go through contract negotiations.. seeing your salary go down to 70k. Think about it. Think about the Ginger, how everybody was talking about him being one of the best mid fielders in the league under Smith.. now, he looks as lost as everybody else.

 

Please. If OP has "lost the locker room" (or whatever you want to call it) either due to his actions or PB's then I don't want these players. If they're so thin-skinned that they can give up on a coach less than 20 games into his head coaching career and can't handle playing for anyone other than GS then they aren't professional enough to be playing this game. Some of these guys (Wynne, Mullan, etc,) were acquired by PB and they didn't seem to have a problem with him when they signed their new contracts, many of them getting raises when they did.

When you have a problem with your boss, are you allowed to slack off at work and place all the blame on the boss? I sure as hell am not.

I'm not by any means making PB and OP blameless in this situation, but saying the players get a pass becuse those two are so horrible in barely half a season is bullshit. They may not like them but they're getting paid to do a job that many of them are flat out not doing right now. They're responsible for that, not OP or PB.

 

1) Passivity: No one steps up, no one seems to be leading by word or by actions, no one holding people accountable (including Pareja - up until last night, at least to the press/public, he's always played the "there were a lot of positives" card instead of publicly demanding people step up). Everyone seems to just be sitting around waiting for other people to take the initiative, whether it be in getting a second goal, or in orchestrating the defense.
2) Tactics: too many people on the field at one time who treat defense as negotiable. Under Smith, we had 2 players (our forwards) on the pitch who were allowed to treat defense as optional. Under Pareja, we generally have 4, plus our wingers are pushed higher up the field and expected to do more attacking than defending.
3) The clusterfcuk of the backline: I'm not even sure Wynne and Moor know how to work with each other any longer. I'm not going to waste any more words here, because it's completely mystifying how we had a rock solid backline become this bad in the course of 18 months.
4) Tiki-taka: We take *maybe* one shot a game from further out than 25 yards. We possess and we possess, but everyone knows where the ball will ultimately end up (the wings), where it'll be crossed in to (the penalty spot), everyone knows who the targets are (Casey and Castrillon) and no one on this team takes chances that keep the opposition's defense honest. Too much focus on passing and possession (as if that makes us look pretty), not enough focus on the way that works for other, better teams that rely on possession (lulling to sleep and trying something unpredictable).
5) Karma. You don't fire an MLS Cup-winning coach a year later over infantile RFO power grabs/restructuring. Especially when that coach is not named "Steve Sampson" and when that coach leads you back to the playoffs and wins a game in them the next year in spite of the injury plague.

 

In regards to Ginger, under GS he was protected by having a second D-Mid onfield. So everyone thought he was this fantastic defender, now he is by himself and we see a guy that once play passes puts very little effort into tracking back to help not big on tight marking, etc.

I will be very surprised to see him in Rapids kit next year unless OP changes back to having 2 dedicated D-Mids. 4-2-3-1 maybe.

 

The first step is to admit there is a problem. I think the Rapids need to do that.

These don't seem like "learning curve" issues to me.

 

Again, this is not a video game. Let me put it to you this way, let's say you have a job flipping burgers (which you may do) and that's something that you do very, very well. You are the best burger flipper in the US and you get paid well for it. Then management says, flipping burgers sucks, we wont become the best restaurant in the world by flipping burgers.. instead, we are going to fry our burgers.

So you do exactly what they say to fry burgers but they come out tasting like crap, you try, you try, and you try some more but for whatever reason you suck at it. You are now expendable, your value to the company is much less than it was and you are no longer known as the best burger flipper in the US but rather a hamburger donkey who can't do his job.

It doesn't matter if you like management, dislike them, like the new system or not, the reality is you aren't very good at it and you have to start thinking about what you are going to do. Do you look for a new job? What's the exit strategy? Is there something you can do to impress another company in hopes they will come get you.. even if it's not best for the team? It's human nature, as I said these players need to put food on the table and as you know most their salary's aren't that large. They aren't stupid, they see the writing on the wall.

 

Exactly, under one system he seemed like a fantastic defender.. so much so he was invited to train with a EPL league team, national team etc. Under this system he looks like a lost donkey, how do you think that makes Ginger feel?

 

You're right, this isn't a video game. And like the rest of us these guys are paid to do a job, a job that not only are they (apparently) not good at right now, its a job that many of them appear to not even be trying to do any more. Look at Toronto's second goal last night. Wynne, our fasted defender and a center back, gets beat in the corner and then stops. Doesn't try to chase his man, doesn't try to get back in the play, doesn't try to get back to the center of the field in his normal position, just gives up. How many times have we commented this season about JL dragging his heels getting back on defense even when the defense is blown wide open and needs help? That's not bad tactics or a misunderstanding of the game, that's not caring about playing defense.

Again, OP and PB have their share of the blame for this, but if players are so thin-skinned that they aren't even willing to give the new direction a team a chance before giving up then they deserve a heap of blame as well. Like most of us who aren't the leadership at their employment you don't always get to have a say in the direction of your company, but while the company is paying you there's an expectation of at least getting the basic job done. Right now some players aren't even achieving that level.

And this isn't impressing any other team that they might want to go to either. Unlike many us they have a contract so thy don't have the feedom to go looking for another job. If they really wanted out they would be working their a$$es off to be attractive as a trade or transfer target. If you're a coach and you see Wynne giving up on a play like he did last night is that going to make you want him more or less?

I understand that if they're not happy they won't be at the top of their game, but some of these guys don't even know what the top of their game looks like anymore. If this were year 4 under Clavijo with the writing on the wall and knowing that one way or the other he's gone at the end of the season I could almost understand it, but they appear to not be even giving the system a chance to succeed before giving up.

 

So simple minded, sure, work your ass off and do great things on a terrible team.. that's going to get you traded in a heart beat! lol The reality is these players want out, they want away from this nightmare. They went from winning a MLS cup to being the laughing stock of the MLS. If I was another team and I saw Wynne I would ask.. what has changed, why is he playing like this? Oh, is it because the Rapids have a retard named Bravo that totally ********ed up the entire club.. yep, I think so. You put Wynne on another team and you will see him sprinting 700mph across the field like he did under Smith. Why would Wynne risk another hammy to this club after the club basically destroyed everything they had built?

You need to get with reality Jason, this team is terrible and it's Bravo's fault. He is bringing in trash players like Edu and sending off our hidden gems like Koruske (sp?). Bravo makes terrible decisions and at some point you need to stop defending him like he is a close cousin to you. He is the reason we are here, the sole reason. It's not OP's fault, OP has a system and he was hired by a complete ********ing idiot Bravo to bring a system to a team where it didn't fit. To be clear, I don't blame OP at all. The problem here is Bravo.

Bravo is terrible at picking players, he is terrible at picking coaches. We should not have switched to the Latin style of play while having a team full of English style players. Only Bravo is to blame and Bravo should be fired. Hopefully after the next 3 losses you will start to see that.

 

Hey, I don't think you have to search very hard to find places where I've said Bravo will live and die based on his decisions this off-season. I've never debated that. You have constantly assumed I've defended Bravo when I haven't. I have defended moves made by Bravo, sure, but if those moves fail then he holds responsibility. Bravo wanted a switch in the playing style. If he can't make it work through his coach and player choices, he holds the ultimate responsibility for that. At the same time I think everyone had to know a switch from an English-style to a Latin American-style was going to be rough. Even as a supporter of changing the coach when I saw how far the change was going to go I predicted we'd miss the playoffs because of the struggles. That doesn't mean I expected what we've seen for the last 4 games. Like I said in last night's game thread, we're not at firing levels yet, but we're standing right on the edge of that cliff where this season could plummet right past firing levels and even further down.

Also I have heard from multiple different sources that it was Bravo who brought in players like Wynne and Mullan. If he's so lousy at picking players then how did they work out? I think, like anything else, he has his hits (Mullan, Wynne, Pickens) and misses (Edu, Castrillon, Henao) and should be judged on his body of work not the best or the worst.

But the players have to perform as well and you're fooling yourself if you think they hold no responsibility for the results this season, especially in the last 4 games.

(And apparently Kosuke Kimura is such a hidden gem you never bothered to figure out how to spell his name in the 5+ years he was here.)

 

I don't know how to spell the names 90% of the players on this team, I'm not going to go look them up every time I want to write about them.

 

Do I mis-remember, were we undefeated our Cup year?

Sure sounds like from posts here.

 

I just did a quick search for "undefeated" in this thread and guess where I found it..... But you make a great point, in that cup year we were going on 3 game losing streaks all the time...... right?

 

What's sad to me, relly sad to me, is that this current squad/coach/plan has me wishing for the "glory" days of ~.500. 500, now that would be nice.

 

the only reason we won the cup is the team got hot at the right time and everything fell into place... if we hold on and beat rsl, we dont win the cup. it was a mediocre squad with mediocre results that went on a hot streak, its funny people forget that

 

.....and discount it also, using the very logical gymnastics to write it off as if the trophy case so so full before. Look, all I have ever wanted was to be competitive. 1 game over .500 IMO is not too much to ask. I am not angering the soccer gods with this small request. 1 game over .500 is enough to get in the playoffs and see if you can make a run.

 

Let's focus on the topic of the thread - What is wrong with the Rapids? Comparisons are a distraction from both sides.

I agree this is a transition year but it also very obvious that we aren't handling the transition very well. I don't know if anyone has "lost the locker room" but I think it is clear something isn't right. I also think it is probably obvious to many on the team that they may not be in the future plans. When that happens it is tough to play with the intensity and commitment needed to win.

It happens all the time. Just look at Chelsea last year. AVB came in wanted to rebuild and "fix" and aging team. Good players played horribly and the team was a mess.

I personally think rebuilding needs to happen to match the organizational shift in philosophy but I also think it needs to happen quickly. Play the players that will be part of the future. I don't care if we loose by 10. Prep for next year and the future. What we are watching currently is just awful.

 

...and the result was that AVB got fired. His replacement got hot at the right time and won the Champions League.

 

1 game over 500 aint competitive, that said this team always swoons early summer and makes a late charge out , im not saying it will happen but this team always looks like dog crap right before the all-star break