Two Game Skid no Reason for Rapids to Panic….Yet

By Brian Jennings

With their hopes of a Western Conference title taking a dent the last few weeks after their first 2-game losing streak of the season, perspective is needed says Forward Kevin Doyle. “Our attitude now is just to reset,” as Colorado looks to climb back into second place and put pressure on Dallas at the top of the table once again. 

“Our goal now is to be in the playoffs, keep that unbeaten at home, and when you think like that you get excited about that and ready for a good game on Saturday,” Doyle told the Voice of C38 this week.  

“Forget the last few results.  A win changes everything quickly.  Our attitude is to keep our focus and keep that unbeaten home record as well.  I’ve never gone anywhere unbeaten at home all season.  It’s a very unusual thing and that’s something for us to focus on as well.”

Kevin admits that the team was disappointed after the last two losses on their 3-game road trip, but in a season which saw the Rapids start out on a superb run there is still much to feel good about regardless of Saturday’s result. “You’re down after losses, massively, no matter how experienced you are.  It’s not nice.”

“No matter what happens you still feel just as (crap) when you wake up in the morning,” Doyle says bluntly.  “It’s probably harder now because we’re so used to having a great season and doing well and not getting beat.  When you do get beat it hurts more which is a good thing.  Expectation is totally different now but that’s what we want.”

The fact that maybe those expectations have fallen a bit only fuels Doyle and his teammates to show their quality and hopefully lead to a playoff run.  “Playoffs were the aim at the start of the season.  Some people thought it wasn’t expected, wrote us off at the start of the season, so brilliant.  So far we’ve proved people wrong. That’s basically the fact-when you break it down. We’ve gone really well except for a blip the last week or two.  Let’s not make it three,” he says with a laugh.

Part of the issues for Colorado the last couple of weeks has been a struggle to score goals, compounded by some uncharacteristic lapses allowing goals by a normally stingy defense.  Doyle admits the Rapids need to get better at putting shots away as they can’t continue to put pressure on their own defenders to keep clean sheets. “We’ve been really good at keeping them out at the other end and nicking one or two at the end.  All of a sudden we concede a few and we need to score more than one or two. It’s the forever conversation in football to get that full balance.” 

“It’s a very fine line,” the Irish striker details.  “Certain games call for certain players in certain situations.  We’ve been very successful in our ‘defend from the front’ philosophy, very tight-knit unit, and that’s gotten us where we are.  We can’t say forget that, we want to score those goals and be brilliant in the playoffs.”

“As a striker, I’d like to be just hanging around up front, saving my energy when we have the ball, and just scoring goals.  But, that isn’t the team we’re set up to be and we all realize that.  As selfish as we’d like to be, but we all realize the best results we’ve gotten is when we all are on the same page, all working our nuts off, and making life difficult for other teams.”

Getting back to that defend-all-over-the-pitch, taking care of the ball, and getting multiple players in forward positions will be paramount for the Rapids if they are to secure a high seed in the playoffs.   “We’re in a great position to make the playoffs and we’d have taken this all day long at the start of the season,” admits Doyle, and truth be told, fans probably would admit the same. 

 

Which is why Doyle, who has been in promotion battles, international Cup games, and everything in-between isn’t panicking and neither are his teammates and coaches.  “Everyone is actually quite up, but once you sit back, and Pablo (Mastroeni) spoke to us Tuesday in the dressing room about that-where we’ve come from the start of the season and where we are now, teams are showing us more respect and making it more difficult".

As far as the weekend match at Dallas, Colorado can reverse the recent run of results by taking points off the Western Conference leaders and still have 2 games in-hand to take advantage of at home.