Tag: Vancouver Whitecaps

Which player is essential to the Whitecaps?

So if you had to name the one player the Whitecaps won’t be able to do without during the playoffs who would it be?

Take your time.

Not that much time!

Whatever player you named I’m guessing that you gave both the right and the wrong answer.

“But how can that be?” you ask, while simultaneously wondering when the hell I will get to the point.

Well impatient reader it can be because there are multiple right answers or, more specifically, there’s only one right answer but with multiple right answers contained within it.

And of those multiple right answers one is divided in half and the other has a question mark hanging over it.

This is quite the mystery isn’t it!

But fear not because I feel this is the right time to reveal the answer to the riddle for the simple reason that I have now padded the opening of this piece enough to give the whole thing the illusion of substance.

So, to put it briefly, the Whitecaps don’t have one player who has to be play for them to be a success they have four and, in addition to that, they have half a player in the form of two and one other player who we can’t quite be sure of yet.

Was that brief? It felt brief when I started out but then seemed to take on a life of its own as I went on.

To the bullet points!

Fredy Montero has to play- When the only other options are Hurtado or Ibini/Shea playing out of position it’s clear the Colombian is integral to the team.

He’s the best goalscorer, the best at holding up play and the best at linking up play so without him they are nothing.

Yordy Reyna has to play- Without Reyna the Whitecaps lack any kind of creative spark, but with Reyna there’s always the chance of something happening.

There’s the whiff of Luis Suarez about the Peruvian given that he always seems to be involved in the game for good or for ill and he’s become the straw that stirs the Whitecaps attacking drink and his absence from the postseason would be the final one (straw).

Kendall Waston has to play- Waston has bounced back from a poor season in 2016 to become an essential component this.

Tim Parker has been showing signs of defensive anxiety lately so having the big Costa Rican alongside him is essential if the surprisingly porous Whitecaps defence wants to avoid the kind of first leg defeat that would make any second leg a heartbreaking formality.

Jake Nerwinski has to play- Who would have seen this one coming at the start of the year? It’s not that Nerwinski has been so stellar, it’s just that his counterpart Sheanon Williams has seen his form fall off a cliff.

The left back position has a couple of acceptable options in Harvey and de Jong but the right back role is down to one man or nothing.

One of Cristian Techera or Christian Bolaños has to play- This is the “half” an essential player we spoke of earlier (well I spoke of it, you probably just skipped straight to the bullet points).

I’m coming around to thinking that these two may be the best wide options from the start anyway but they are certainly the best set-piece takers in the team.

And given that set-pieces have so often been the life blood for Vancouver this year having somebody on the field who can be relied upon for good delivery is a must.

Aly Ghazal must play?- And now to the ? player.

We just haven’t seen enough of Ghazal to definitively say that he has to start but we have seen enough to know that he’s the only player who seems to enjoy playing in the purely defensive midfield role.

Jacobson, Teibert, Tchani and de Jong can all do it to some extent, but having Ghazal in front of the back four certainly feels like a reassuring necessity right now.

The good news with all this is that (injuries aside) all of the above probably will be starting come the first game of the post-season.

The bad news is that having half your team as essential starters really does make a coach worryingly at risk to the vagaries of the soccer gods.

Start praying to them now!

 

Whitecaps starved of chances in New York

What a strange season it has been for those of us who follow the Vancouver Whitecaps.

In almost every game it feels as though they are a team desperately battling through a tough relegation struggle, yet we know they sit atop the Western Conference.

They approach almost every contest as though they are a plucky group of underpaid scrubs being pitted against a Barcelona or PSG, yet we know they sit comfortably in the middle of the salary expenditure curve.

Whet we see is what we get and yet what we see doesn’t quite reflect reality.

And the 3-0 defeat to the New York Red Bulls on Saturday evening slotted very nicely into that familiar pattern.

The Whitecaps were terrible and completely outplayed but it kinda sorta didn’t really matter because they were playing an experimental 5-3-2/3-5-2 formation and were missing crucial players due to international call ups.

But it kinda sorta really did matter because in the last three games the Whitecaps have lost 3-0, won 1-0 in a game they should have lost 3-0 and lost 3-0 again.

Hardly stellar form as the playoffs approach.

Once he knew the post-season was assured Carl Robinson opined that he could now begin to establish his best starting eleven and it seems he’s achieving that in a Hunger Games style of eliminating the weakest by throwing them to the arena and watching them fail.

The Tribute this week was Alphonso Davies who had done nothing to earn a starting spot over the last few weeks but was given one anyway and promptly played just a little bit worse.

Maybe Robinson wants to play him to restore his confidence? It isn’t working.

Davies wasn’t the only one to underperform however.

Tony Tchani had one of his “bet you’ll never find me no matter how hard you look” games, Tim Parker once again looked worryingly prone to a mistake at any time and the pairing of Erik Hurtado and Fredy Montero achieved the difficult feat of creating a lone striker out of two players.

Only the introduction of Mezquida, Shea and Ibini injected any life into the Whitecaps attack but by then it was far too late to matter.

And maybe that hints at part of the problem too?

Because a good number of these players only really influence a game when they arrive from the bench.

Give them the start and they stutter and struggle, give them thirty minutes at the end and they thrill and they thrive.

The good news is that Reyna, Waston and Bolaños will be back for the final two games of the season, which should at least increase the defensive security and add a little more creativity.

The bad news is that the coach still hasn’t fully settled on his best starting eleven.

And, like everything else this season, that makes very little sense at all.

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted-5, Nerwinski-5, Harvey-5, Parker-5, de Jong-5.5, Maund-5, Davies-4.5, Ghazal-5, Tchani-5, Montero-5, Hurtado-5 (Mezquida-5.5, Ibini-5.5*, Shea-5.5)

 

Vancouver Whitecaps waiting for the end of the world

Well, maybe not the end of the world but definitely the end of the regular season because right now Carl Robinson and his players are caught in the limbo of knowing that they’ve already done enough to make the playoffs but still have three games to get through before all the post season hoopla begins in earnest.

It might even be to the coach’s advantage that he has a few players missing due to international duty for Saturday’s visit to the New York Red Bulls because he can at least keep things fresh by throwing in a few who are on the fringes of the first eleven before hopefully using the San Jose and Portland games to really hone his thoughts on who he starts from that point on.

And that’s important because although these playoffs may not be career defining for Robinson they could well define how he is ultimately regarded by Whitecaps fans once he leaves the organisation.

That’s because in his previous post season test he messed up royally.

He opted to go ultra defensive in the first leg when facing a Timbers team on minimal rest (Gershon Koffie at number ten!) and the resultant 0-0 in Portland was promptly undone as soon as the Timbers got a tie killing away goal in the return leg at BC Place.

And while it’s a truth universally acknowledged that nobody will relish facing Vancouver over two legs this time around they do still feel like a team who are more likely to lose a game by three or four goals than they are to win by that kind of margin.

So it will be interesting to see just how Robinson’s innate caution manifests itself.

He must know that an away goal in the first leg (this is assuming they do indeed get one of the top two spots in the West) would be huge for a team that is never happier than when waiting for the opposition to make a mistake.

But perhaps the biggest advantage he has over his options in 2015 is that this time around he’s in charge of a much deeper squad and while they may still be prey to the whims of form and injury the vast majority of those ready to go will have had the benefit of at least some rest during the slog of the regular season.

And speaking of analyzing the playing style of a particular coach (which we really weren’t but I’m too lazy to think of a cleverer segue) there seems to be another universally acknowledged truth that the coach only opts for the tactics he does because of the players he has.

That given his limited options he has no choice but to play low possession counterattacking football.

That argument is spurious of course because nobody really thinks that every coach in the world  would set up this group of players with two defensive midfielders and a lone striker.

The Whitecaps play the way they do because that’s how Carl Robinson wants them to play and that’s fine as long as the results keep coming, but let’s not pretend that the current squad is simply incapable of playing 4-3-3 or 4-1-3-2 for example.

A slightly more nuanced take on that argument is that the current system may not be the only way this team can play but it is certainly the best way for them to play and at least that argument has some merit given the current position in the standings.

But an advocate of the devil might say that the coach’s philosophy isn’t limited by the players he has but rather that a few of the players are limited by the coach they have.

The whole thing still doesn’t feel sustainable over a long period if we’re speaking in terms of seasons, but it definitely feels sustainable for the rest of this campaign and, right now, that’s all that really matters.

We can enjoy today for what it is and we don’t need to worry about tomorrow until tomorrow (or even the day after that).

Ain’t no doubt the Whitecaps are in the playoffs

The Vancouver Whitecaps played the first forty-five minutes of the game against Sporting Kansas City like a team who had been routinely scythed open in their last outing which, funnily enough, they had been.

Their was very little “counter” and almost no “attack” to their play.

It was simply a case of defending for their lives and hoping for the best which, funnily enough, is exactly what happened.

They survived a penalty kick after a moment of madness from Kendall Waston and numerous other forays into their box before the half time whistle finally blew leaving those of us watching wondering how much longer they could survive playing in a manner that treated the ball as some kind of invasive species that needed to be removed from their possession as quickly and as desperately as possible.

Fortunately we never found that out because the Whitecaps seemed to take sustenance from their good fortune and produced a far more cohesive performance in the second half.

They were still mostly defending of course, that’s the default setting for this team, but this time around there was at least some sense of danger when the ball went into the Kansas half.

So when Erik Hurtado flicked home a Jordan Harvey long ball with a trademark outside of the boot finish we could express surprise, but not astonishment, at what we had just seen.

And from that moment on Vancouver looked at least as likely to score as Kansas did and the introduction of Jordy Reyna gave them exactly the burst of pace they needed for the final thirty minutes.

In the end they didn’t need another goal and, despite a ludicrously harsh red card for Christian Bolaños, ended the game with a degree of comfort that seemed inconceivable during the first period.

What can we take from the game?

Well, we may have reached the point where trying to take anything remotely rational from any Whitecaps game is a forlorn dream but let’s at least try. You have to try!

Stefan Marinovic won’t be available for the trip to New York next week because of international duty but, given his impressive outing, David Ousted may now be one error away from losing his starting spot.

(Memo to self: stick something in here about a New Zealander thriving in the land of Oz).

That would be a huge decision for Carl Robinson to make, but it could well be season defining one way or another.

Jordan Harvey did enough to lock down the left back spot for now and Marcel de Jong did enough to suggest that he is a much better option as the stand in central midfielder than almost anybody else (particularly away from home).

Hurtado and Mezquida fully justified Robinson’s decision to give them the start, but whatever Shea and Davies offered defensively was nullified by their ineffectiveness going forward.

And no need to mention that Jake Nerwinski was once again solid (and yet I do mention it).

A top two finish now seems as good as wrapped up for the Whitecaps and their constant ability to defy both our expectations and their own limitations is a thing of wonder.

Just three more regular season games to go before we get to the point where bouncing back from a bad defeat is no longer an option.

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Marinovic-6.5*, Nerwisnki-6, Harvey-6, Waston-5.5, Parker-6, de Jong-6, Ghazal-6, Shea-5, Davies-5, Mezquida-6, Hurtado-6

 

 

 

 

Panic on the streets of Seattle

Maybe everybody involved with the Vancouver Whitecaps had started to believe their own publicity?

And maybe that’s understandable given their jump in the in the MLS power rankings and after listening to Wednesday’s pregame show on TSN in which the overall consensus from the pundits seemed to be that Carl Robinson had cleverly crafted the perfect footballing machine designed to function no matter which player started in which position.

Those of us who watch the team week in and week out know otherwise of course. We know that they’re a scrappy team who just got ten points out of the last twelve that could just as easily have been six or seven.

But that’s all water under the bridge now because any nascent delusions of grandeur will hopefully have been severely smashed by the 3-0 mauling handed out to the Whitecaps by the Seattle Sounders at Century Link Field.

Robinson once again rang the changes and this time around not a single one of them worked.

Sheanon Williams played like a man who never wanted to see a football again in his life and Christian Bolaños and Bernie Ibini offered nothing going forward from either of the flanks.

Russell Teibert arrived at every interception half a second too late and Tony Tchani seemed unaware that there was a competitive game going on around him.

Fredy Montero hit a good free kick I guess.

And after a manically entertaining first half in which both teams offered at least something the Whitecaps were completely outplayed (out coached?) in the second and the three goal margin was a fair reflection of the Sounders dominance.

The Whitecaps are still top of the Western Conference at least, but it’s not inconceivable that they will lose in Kansas and New York to suddenly find themselves in a battle for fourth place at best come season end.

No need to press the panic button yet (he said with his hand hovering desperately over the panic button) because the return of Ghazal should shore up a midfield that was woefully open in Seattle and none of the players can ever play that badly ever again.

Can they?

The most concerning thing is that the Whitecaps have effectively failed to turn up for the last three Cascadia derbies, putting in lack lustre performances in each.

And a side that can’t perform in the big games isn’t a side that will fare well in the playoffs and neither is it reassuring that the last two decent sides Vancouver have faced (Columbus and Seattle) both worked out ways to open them up through the centre of the park.

Right now Vancouver have just one way of playing and any post-season success could ultimately hinge on whether Carl Robinson has any kind of Plan B up his sleeve at all.

Don’t bet your house on that being the case (or on anything really, it would be madness to bet your house on anything!)

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted-5.5, Williams-4, Parker-5, Waston-5.5, Harvey-5, Teibert-5, Tchani-4.5, Bolaños-5, Ibini-5, Reyna-5.5*, Montero-5

 

 

 

 

Vancouver Whitecaps have just enough sting to shoot down the Rapids

Let’s get one thing straight.

The Vancouver Whitecaps were fairly terrible in the first half of their 2-1 win over the Colorado Rapids at BC Place on Saturday evening.

Taking a fourth minute lead against the worst road team in Major League Soccer should have been an invitation to build on that goal and then coast through the rest of the game and thus  save legs and minds for the Wednesday trip to Seattle.

Instead the Whitecaps decided the best option was to immediately concede possession and hang on for dear life in the hope that the visitors wouldn’t be able to breach their defence.

But they did.

And what should have been a comfortable game of football was transposed into an edgy encounter for those both on and off the pitch.

We all know that Carl Robinson likes to play the game in a certain kind of way but there are times when the fine line between tactical pragmatism and tactical pusillanimity become somewhat blurred.

And the first half of the game against Colorado was one of those times.

Thankfully Vancouver were a little better in the second half but still failed to increase their tally once Jordy Reyna had restored the lead in the fifty-fourth minute and we were subjected to watching Colorado lump high balls into the box for much of the rest of the time.

Yet for all the underwhelming nature of the victory the Whitecaps now sit four points clear at the top of the Western Conference and the much coveted home playoff game seems to be a more likely occurrence than not.

Watching this team one can’t help but be reminded of Mary Kay Ash’s famous quote about the humble bumble bee

“Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it so it goes on flying anyway.”

I mean, logically this team shouldn’t be able to win so many games, but they don’t seem to know that and so they go on winning them anyway.

Anything else we can take from the match?

Well, Fredy Montero and Jordy Reyna are clearly vital to any success since they provided the only attacking threats of any note with both goals set up by sublime assists.

Brek Shea is still yet to prove he is deserving of a regular first team place.

Nerwinski and de Jong both offered something going forward, although probably not as much as they either could or should have done given the opposition they were facing.

And just maybe Tim Parker isn’t captain material? He got the nod again given the absence of Kendall Waston but he was badly at fault for the Colorado goal and on a number of occasions took options that were atypical of the way he normally plays the game.

That might just be the result of not having the comfort of Waston alongside him, but it may also be that the burden of captaincy clouds his mind rather than clears it.

It’s now on to two tough games in Seattle and Kansas this week and they will go a long way to deciding which of the top four playoff spot the Whitecaps are really battling for.

But don’t bet against this team continuing to fly no matter what the science may tell you.

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted-6, Nerwinski-6, de Jong-6, Parker-5, Jacobson-6, Ghazal-6.5, Tchani-5.5, Techera, Shea-5.5, Reyna- 7*, Montero-6.5

 

 

We need to talk about Alphonso

But which Alphonso Davies do we need to talk about?

Because right now there are two; the sixteen year old phenom who is massively overachieving by being anywhere near an MLS squad and the MLS player whose form has dipped dramatically since a successful Gold Cup tournament

For those of us watching from the outside it’s fairly easy to blur the lines between the two. We know when Davies makes an appearance that he isn’t the finished article, but we also know that every time he steps on to the field he’s getting closer to that goal.

And, added to that, there’s the thrill of simply being there at the start of what will hopefully become a stellar career because, for all the hype around big name signings, there’s nothing quite like watching a player develop right from the get go.

But for Carl Robinson those two separate iterations of the same player present his biggest coaching dilemma right now.

It’s clear that Robinson is trying to develop Davies as a player by giving him minutes when he’s ready for them and resting him when he needs rest.

And it’s fair to say that at times those decisions have been made at the expense of the immediate needs of the team.

Giving Davies time on the field may not always have been the best tactical option but the coach has been savvy enough to know that immediate needs should sometimes be sacrificed for the longer term good.

After all, if on the field experience means an improved Alphonso Davies in 2018 then that’s worth far more than closing down the centre of the field by introducing a Jacobson or a Teibert.

But parameters change.

And the Whitecaps are now atop the Western Conference with an immediate home game with which to solidify their position before a tough run of four road games from five to end the season.

Suddenly the ratio of what’s gained and what’s lost by using Davies becomes a different equation and, while every game is of equal importance from an objective point of view, the finishing line concentrates all minds alike and suddenly that objective point of view begins to see points from a far more subjective angle.

None of this would matter if Davies was in good form of course but, unfortunately, he isn’t.

He was partly at fault for the second Real Salt Lake goal in the 3-2 win, anonymous in a starting role against Minnesota on Wednesday and ineffective as a substitute in the tie with Columbus.

The Whitecaps took seven points from those games but Robinson can’t have failed to notice how out of sorts the youngster was and while Davies will always put in a shift from a defensive point of view and will always have a burst of speed to unnerve a defender, it’s his inability to successfully link up with teammates that is the most pressing concern right now.

It’s hard to say why that is.

Maybe growing up so far ahead of your age cohort means a few too many mistakes can be glossed over by pure ability?

Maybe he isn’t getting enough minutes playing with the regular first teamers?

But what it really looks like is that Davies is trying too hard and thinking too much.

And that tends to manifest itself in what we’ve seen from him of late.

Attempting to beat that one extra opponent when a simple pass is the better option, wanting an extra touch in front of goal when a first time shot is the obvious call.

And, yes, all players go through such moments in their careers and the good ones all come through them.

Thankfully Davies is one of the good ones and will power through this rough patch but the question for Robinson is how much of chance he grants the youngster in the coming weeks.

The coach’s instinct is clearly to let the player play his way out of bad form (Davies’ recent appearances may even have been Robinson’s way of doing just that) but if his form doesn’t turn around in the next couple of games does the coach continue with that philosophy if it means points being dropped?

It’s a tough call.

But while every fibre of Robinson’s being may be screaming that he simply “let the kid play”, the wiser counsels of his nature may be softly whispering that he may never be this close to catching the lightning in a bottle of a good run to the post season ever again.

Only time will tell which internal advice he considers the most sage.

But, one way or another, the coach and the kid will learn a lot about each other in the next few weeks.

 

Whitecaps get their Manneh back

The problem with playing a system that actively allows the opposition to have more possession of the ball is that from time to time you are going to run into a team that actually know how to use that possession effectively.

And that’s what happened to the Vancouver Whitecaps in their 2-2 tie at BC Place with the Columbus Crew on Saturday afternoon.

By the end the Whitecaps were more than happy to come away with a point after seeing Kekuta Manneh return bearing gifts of an assist and a goal to cancel out Fredy Montero’s early strike.

What we saw from Manneh was exactly why he was both exciting and frustrating to watch in a Whitecaps uniform.

Two fantastic moments that turned the game and two moments (a wildly hit shot from twelve yards out in the first half and an errant pass that would have set a teammate free in the second) that probably mean he will never achieve the highest level.

Still, it was nice that he got a round of applause at the start and when being substituted but it was a tad too much for some Whitecaps fans to actually applaud his goal.

I mean, come on!

Overall Carl Robinson will perhaps feel that this game wasn’t so much a case of his system not working as it was a case of his players not playing the system correctly because Tchani and Aly Ghazal frequently left too much space open in the centre of the field and Fredy Montero and Jordy Reyna were often two isolated islands desperately hoping others would join them to form an attacking archipelago.

It wasn’t that Shea and Techera offered nothing going forward, it was just their inability to consistently support the front two created the disconnect we’ve seen so often in the past.

It was still pretty entertaining stuff though and Jordy Reyna was twice denied by the woodwork as he put in a particularly lively second half shift.

But if this game foreshadows the playoffs then there are areas for concern.

Columbus had clearly worked out that closing down the Whitecaps central defenders can disrupt the whole game and that playing between the lines of the midfield and the attack asks questions that Vancouver aren’t always able to answer.

No doubt more than a few MLS coaches will be taking notes on those particular points of interest.

On the positive side the Whitecaps once again demonstrated that almost no game is a lost cause and even though Robinson reverted to the tactical long shots of throwing Erik Hurtado up front and playing Alphonso Davies at left back they somehow managed to eke out the kind of point that could prove vital come season end.

Neither will it do them any harm to carry around the idea that finding a last minute goal is something they are always capable of achieving.

The Whitecaps remain top of the Western Conference and at the start of this run of home games most of us would have taken ten points from the four as a decent haul.

That can be achieved with a victory over the Colorado Rapids next Saturday but they are a team who will happily bunker down and let the Whitecaps come onto them and that’s a different challenge entirely.

Right now it’s all good but it’s still too early to say whether those few clouds on the horizon will dissipate to reveal the sun or begin to accumulate to bring rain.

Stay tuned for the traffic report.

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted-6, Nerwinski-6, Parker-5.5, Waston-6, Harvey-6, Ghazal-5.5, Tchani-5.5, Techera-5, Shea-6, Reyna-6.5, Montero-6.5* 

 

Vancouver Whitecaps: Top of the World Ma!

The Vancouver Whitecaps 3-0 win over Minnesota United at BC Place on Wednesday evening wasn’t the kind of game to convince any neutral about the magic of soccer.

A very poor road team that wasn’t really interested in attacking was comfortably beaten by a largely ‘B’ squad home team who weren’t that interested in attacking either but had easily enough quality on the break to cruise to victory.

But if it wasn’t a game for the uncommitted at least the committed will know that this is exactly the sort of contest a serious contender for any title needs to win.

And it was exactly the kind of game the Whitecaps have messed up time after time in recent memory.

Fortunately Carl Robinson learned from recent missteps in team selection and avoided the trap of sending out an unchanged eleven after a good win only to seem them fall flat on their faces in their much anticipated sequel.

This time there were abundant changes and although the bit part players played their role well enough it was a previous star, Jordy Reyna, who lit up the stage.

In the first half Reyna was the only Whitecap who looked capable of injecting either pace or imagination into the game and, after calmly finishing a Marcel de Jong through ball in the early minutes, he tormented Minnesota just enough to push more than a few of them to the brink of seeing red.

Elsewhere both Brek Shea and Alphonso Davies were poor in the wide positions (although Shea somewhat redeemed himself with an assist and a goal) and Erik Hurtado was Erik Hurtado, which was enough against the worst team to have played at BC Place this season.

Tchani and Teibert were workmanlike and uninspiring in the centre of midfield but both de Jong and Nerwinski offered something going forward without ever being troubled in their defensive duties.

All in all it was all a bit “meh”, but Vancouver have enough quality in depth now that “meh” is easily enough against an MLS team who seem to have based their expansion year on the theory that the league hasn’t progressed since 2014.

Six points from the first two home games of a four game stretch is perfect and if the Whitecaps can pick up at least four (maybe three would be enough?) from the remaining two then a top four spot at the end of the season seems a more than likely prospect.

For now though we should all just simply enjoy being top of the Western Conference.

Seriously, top of the Western Conference. Who would have thought it?

Time for the Soccer Shorts Player Ratings.Ousted-6, de Jong-6.5, Parker-6, Waston-6, Nerwinski-6.5, Teibert-6, Tchani-5.5, Reyna-7*, Shea-5.5, davies-5.5, Hurtado-5.5

 

 

Vancouver Whitecaps: (Insert catchy headline here!)

It’s not often a game in which neither team really look like scoring ends in a 3-2 result but that’s what happened at BC Place on Saturday evening.

Fortunately for the Vancouver Whitecaps the 3 goals were for them and the 2 were for Real Salt Lake and one of those “this would be a great game to win” games that has constantly tripped this team up over the past few seasons was in the bag.

With other results also going their way on Saturday the Whitecaps are now third in the Western Conference standings, still with games in hand.

There’s will no doubt be a few twists and turns along the way but, unless the team completely implode, it’s more of a case of where they finish in the top six than if they finish in the top six right now.

So what can we say about the slightly strange game against Real Salt Lake?

Well, we can string a few random observations together in the desperate hope they coalesce into a coherent whole (same as always then I guess).

Steady debut for Aly Ghazal- It was something of a surprise to see the Egyptian starting but he slotted into the Laba role fairly comfortably. He’s nowhere near as frenetic as Laba, but he broke up a few plays and exuded an overall air of calmness.

His distribution was pretty poor however and neither him nor Tony Tchani offered anything of note going forward so the “Why are we playing two defensive midfielders at home?’ debate hasn’t run out of steam just yet.

Is Fredy Montero underrated?- Even the people who rate Montero may be giving him a little less than his due.

Against Salt Lake he never once came close to even a sniff of a taste of goal but still led the line in the way that Carl Robinson likes; holding up the ball and gaining those extra few seconds to allow his teammates to either get forward to join him or to rearrange themselves defensively.

Given the depth in other positions Montero is the key player for this team right now.

Not even a debate at right back-  Has any player ever taken an opportunity as well as Jake Nerwinski?

Almost certainly they have, but the youngster has moved on from challenging for the role to completely owning it.

On Saturday he was defensively solid at the back and directly involved in two of the Whitecaps three goals going forward and in a team that mostly struggles to create chances having a  right back who is an offensive threat is a huge plus.

Reyna barely involved-But he did score the winning goal which, in the end, is kind of the important thing.

But it was indicative of how little opportunities Vancouver were creating that Reyna was dropping deeper and deeper to get the ball as the game progressed.

Of course, the deeper he drops the more isolated Montero becomes and the more isolated Montero becomes the fewer opportunities are created and so the more Reyna feels he has to drop deep to get the ball and so on and so on and so on forever and ever and ever.

The Peruvian needs to be running at defenders in the final third rather than picking up two yard passes from Kendall Waston near the centre circle.

Alphonso Davies has an uncanny ability- We all know this of course but, unfortunately, he currently has an uncanny ability to make exactly the wrong decision at the crucial moment going forward.

Shoot when he should pass, pass when he should shoot, blast it when he can place it, place it when power is required.

He probably just needs the ball to ricochet off a defender and go in to settle him down (and it probably doesn’t help his thinking process that the crowd get so amped whenever he gets the ball) but he’s currently more effective in road games where he has the luxury of more space and comfort of less pressure to produce every time he touches the ball.

Time for the Soccer Shorts player ratings.

Ousted-6, Nerwinski-7*, Waston-6., Parker-6, Harvey-6, Ghazal-5.5, Tchani-5.5, Techera-6, Reyna-5.5, Ibini-5.5, Montero-6.5 (Davies-5, Shea-5)