Colorado Rapids vs. Toronto FC - Three Keys to the Game

Finally, a home match! And finally, a home match featuring something closely resembling our top choice first team! Toronto is never an easy draw but right now they're in a particularly brutal stretch of games and are playing for most likely the only cup they'll see this year against Vancouver on Wednesday, with the Rapids match sandwiched right in between the two legs.

Here's three keys to the Rapids winning this one and getting a vital 3 home points. Today's is kind of a short one as I wrote it while in a bit of a rush, but the keys are laid out regardless!

Toronto's Starting XI - This is going to have a huge effect on the game, no doubt. According to Waking The Red in our post yesterday, Aron Winter isn't exactly the type of coach to put in a second team as it were, no matter what the situation. However with Toronto rearing to win their third straight Canadian Cup and most likely only trophy of the season, it's very likely that there will be a few first teamers missing from the Toronto line-up and that will certainly be to Colorado's benefit. There's guys like de Guzman who are suspended anyway, which helps the Rapids even more. Even if both teams were at full strength, Colorado is clearly the better side in just about every area.

Goals, Goals, Goals - In the first three matches of the year, Colorado scored a whopping eight goals, and won all of their games as such. Since then they've struggled to put the ball into the net, only scoring two goals in one game, unsurprisingly the only game they've won since the start of the season. To win games it's pretty obvious that goals and not defense are the thing that Colorado runs on, so scoring two or more is going to be very important for Colorado, striker injury bug or not.

Stop the Bloody Injuries - I think this one speaks for itself. I think the DC United match was the first all season since the Chivas USA game that there wasn't somebody taken out to be discovered as injured for way too long a time. Stay healthy you bastards, we don't have enough depth to keep this point streak going if people keep getting injured!!