The rebuild in the midfield currently is going absolutely swimmingly for the Colorado Rapids. The signing of Columbian Jamie Castrillon is through as planned, and the Rapids have added three new strong attackers to their ranks after picking up Tony Cascio and Kohei Yamada in the MLS Superdraft and Supplemental draft. After losing Danny Earls and Miguel Comminges by not picking up their options they bolstered the defense with Hunter Freeman, but there's still some needs in the back. The one position besides goalkeeper that the Rapids would seem to be fine at is striker.

As of right now the Rapids are quite deep in striker depth, with five of them boasting the ability to start for the club on at least a somewhat regular basis. (Conor Casey, Omar Cummings, Andre Akpan, Caleb Folan, Macoumba Kandji.) Quincy Amarikwa is the odd man out of that, but even he's good for a goal every year or two and isn't a completely terrible guy to have as a really deep player off the bench. If there's a position that the Rapids are set at, it's striker. Even so, new regimes tend to introduce new philosophies and new players. Oscar Pareja was quite used to playing a 4-5-1 formation at FC Dallas so I've still a sneaking suspicion that we're going to see some of that in Colorado this season. (That 4-5-1 was of the 4-2-3-1 variety, offhand.)

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It's official, after a couple weeks of anticipation the Colorado Rapids announced on twitter that they have made good on their negotiations and signed midfielder Jamie Castrillon to the squad. The Columbian midfielder had flown into Colorado recently in order to continue negotiations that were originally stalled by the MLS drafts. He is a fairly decorated Columbian international who will immediately add attacking flair to the Rapids midfield and might be the largest profile signing the club has seen in a long time.

This is the third midfielder addition to the squad this offseason after selecting Tony Cascio and Kohei Yamada in the MLS SuperDraft and Supplemental Draft. All three are good offense based players, which should add a lot of strength to a midfield that had plenty of defensive mettle under Gary Smith but not much else. Castrillon is also the first pure attacking central midfielder on the club in a very long time. (No, Mehdi Ballouchy doesn't count.)

Welcome to the club, Jamie. Here's to a long and illustrious career in the burgundy and blue!

It's been floating around the rumor mills for a good while now - we over here first talked about it ten days ago - but it looks like it's been finally confirmed that former Colorado Rapids gaffer Gary Smith will be the new manager for English side Stevenage FC.

After a moderate amount of success in MLS including two playoff appearances and an unlikely run to the MLS Cup final, Smith's resume was impressive enough to get him some looks in his native homeland. Stevenage were promoted from League Two up to League One in England this season, and are putting together a decent campaign for another promotion this season.

Personally, I had fun talking with so many Stevenage fans over the last week and a half discussing the ins and outs of our former manager before the official word came out. Here's one more hearty good luck to Smith out at The Boro!

Gary Smith played an incredibly rigid 4-5-1 formation for the start of his Colorado Rapids career, before eventually shifting to a still rigid 4-4-2 late in 2010 because of a need for extra offense in the defense-minded team. Both of the formations were dedicated mostly to holding the ball as much as possible, staying in their shape and focusing on incredibly short and frequent passes throughout the midfield and defense before finally putting a ball through to one of the strikers for the majority of their shots and goals.

With the new regime in place, it's likely that we're going to see a system far more focused on offense all around the pitch, not just a defensive team with decent fullbacks and two good strikers. That means that it's pretty unlikely that we'll see anything rigid out of the team formation-wise in 2012. Here's three formations that I think we might see in 2012, which one do you want the Rapids to try out?

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The Colorado Rapids have had a whirlwind of positive activity in the past couple of weeks, including a very strong draft that got them Tony Cascio and Kohei Yamada along with a signing of Hunter Freeman and of course a new head coach signing.

Lost a bit in all the whirlwind was the possible signing of Columbian international midfielder Jamie Castrillon. Castrillon's possible signing was announced back on January 10th but with the draft soon after the idea seemed to get shelved in our minds, but it looks like the Rapids remained hard at work. Jamie reportedly flew into DIA yesterday and met with head coach Oscar Pareja, a big move that seems to indicate that a signing will be in the very near future.

With three new midfield signings if Castrillon goes through - all of which are oriented toward offense - this offseason, it looks like the new offense oriented strategy that was predicted when Pareja got into the manager's position is indeed going to come to fruition as soon as next season.

This offseason, the Burgundy Wave staff will give short reviews on the play of all Colorado Rapids players who received a decent amount of time on the pitch during the season along with a season grade. Starting with Goalkeepers and then moving up the field as necessary from defenders to forwards, today we'll feature Tyrone Marshall.

Name: Tyrone Marshall
Number: 34
Appearances: 27 (24)
Stats: Over 2100 minutes played, 1 Assist

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In perhaps a sign of what's to come, the Colorado Rapids picked up a chunk of allocation money - as per usual, the figure is undisclosed - from the Vancouver Whitecaps in exchange for Colorado's 2nd round draft pick in 2014 and an International roster spot for the next three years.

With plenty of open International roster spots currently with Miguel Comminges and Danny Earls now off the team - along with Caleb Folan possibly getting residency soon - the Rapids were certainly able to give up. The Rapids now only have six such slots available on the team, which are currently being filled by Folan, Jamie Smith and Josh Janniere. Japanese international Kohei Yamada is expected to take the fourth one assuming he'll make the final roster.

Oscar Pareja worked hard in Dallas to get an American youth system in place with some South American flair. It looks like the same system is going to come to Colorado given time, and now they've got a chunk of money to help with it.