Reserves Lose, Sinovic Out, Gibson Training with Sporting

It's not a great day news wise for Sporting KC today, with two bits of bad news coming out today.  First, Sporting KC's reserves, the Swope Park Rangers, took the field against the Colorado Rapids in reserve league play.  From the beginning, KC was the stronger side, controlling the game and attacking consistently, but were unable to grab the lead.  The best chances of the first half felt to Korede Aiyegbusi.  The first he forced a good save at the near post by Steward Ceus, the second he went just wide from outside the box.  The "highlight" of the half came just before the half when the benches emptied and we had a fight basically break out on the far sideline.  Kevin Ellis had gone in for a tackle and won the ball.  Then Eddie Ababio came in late with a two footed slide tackle into Ellis.  This brought both benches to their feet.  Jacob Peterson took exception to Ababio's challenge and got into with the Rapids defender.  From across the field, it appeared that Peterson threw a few punches.  Ababio got his marching orders, while Peterson got a yellow.

In the second half, KC continued to control the game, especially with the man advantage, but couldn't finish.  Teal Bunbury had the best of the chances.  The first coming from a long ball over the top.  The ball was headed on to Bunbury by Dom Dwyer, but Bunbury took one touch too many, and Hunter Freeman recovered very well to tackle the ball away from Bunbury.  Later in the half though, the Rapids struck on the counter.  Wells Thompson fed the ball to Andre Akpan, who easily held off Konrad Warzycha raced into the box and fired a shot past Jon Kempin at the near post.  Some poor defending and poor goalkeeping put KC behind.  KC though continued to push and should have equalized very late through Bunbury.  Shawn Singh played a ball towards Bunbury who headed it on to Dwyer.  The Englishman controlled off his chest and flicked the ball over the defender to Bunbury.  His first touch got Ceus to go off his feet, but instead of trying to slot the ball under Ceus, he chipped it over the Rapids goalkeeper and the ball hit the top of the bar.  Off a late corner, the ball fell to Paulo Nagamura who fired just wide of the goal.  In the end, KC fell 1-0 to drop to 1-2-1 on the reserve season.  Here are the highlights:


Sinovic Out

The bad news continued for KC today with the Tuesday release of the injury report.  Starting left back, Seth Sinovic appears on the latest report as out.  A broken hand has put the outside back on the injury list, an injury that he picked up in the loss against Portland.  When I got back from Portland on Sunday, I road to The Parking Spot on the same bus as Sinovic.  At the time, he had an ace wrap on his hand, but it didn't seem to be bothering him too much.  Hopefully it's only a minor break that allows him to continue to play but with a cast.  Maybe the time off this week will allow Sinovic to recover enough to play against Montreal. If he can't, than this is good news for Michael Harrington, who would be the lead candidate to replace Sinovic in the starting lineup.  Harrington though played well tonight and I'm not sure it'll be a big problem should Harrington have to start.

Gibson Back Training with KC

In some small good news today, Leo Gibson is back with Kansas City training again.  Gibson had trained with KC last year and had played in a few reserve games.  The Comets defender was also on the bench tonight, but did not get in for the Rangers in their 1-0 loss to Colorado.  I'd expect him to hang around for most of the season, at least as a body.