2011 was an absolute crapping of the bed against the best teams in the league. Up until the Rapids late season game against
at home where they won 1-0, they had exactly zero points against top four clubs (Seattle, Salt Lake, LA and Dallas). By the end of the season, they only had earned four out of 24 possible points thanks to a tie against Salt Lake in their last match.Part of it was due to the injury bug at the start of the season, but there was some flat out incompetent managing and terrible play by the team in that stretch. You can't blame bad luck for everything, after all.
The Rapids will face the teams that consisted of the top four last year a lot more times this season thanks to the new conference based scheduling system, so they're going to need to snag a lot more than four points from the group if they want to put themselves in the top four themselves. The playoffs will be a loftier goal than usual.
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Matt Pollard 