Posted by

Jake Vendramin ,

June 30, 2013 Email

Jake Vendramin



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The Good

Clean sheet and grinding out a win



This 1-0 victory over DC United was the Whitecaps second clean sheet of the season. Coincidentally their last also came against an Eastern Conference side and was also another 1-0 victory as well, but that was over Toronto FC. Shutouts are always an added bonus but to be perfectly honest, they should not be a priority. Speaking for myself and probably every other Vancouver fan, the final result is far more important than how many goals the team concedes. As long as the Caps secure all three points, the supporters could not care less about how many goals were let in.



Despite that the Whitecaps played rather poorly compared to their standards of late, they still manage to grind out a victory. The squad’s performance definitely was not anything pretty or remotely appealing to the eye, but it still got them the three points they came for. This is a skill the Caps must hold on to because later in the season there will definitely be instances where they will need to grind out a win, even when they are performing poorly.



The Bad

Poor start



Once again Vancouver had another poor start to a match and it almost cost them the victory. Thanks to some great defending from Carlyle Mitchell and Johnny Leverón early on, the Caps managed to hold on until half time. On the attacking side of things, the top three consisting of Camilo, Kenny Miller and Russell Teibert were almost invisible for a lot of the first half, which is extremely uncommon. These slow starts will eventually come back to bite the Whitecaps later on down the road. If this weekend’s match were to have been against a top of the table team, the Caps would have walked away with zero points from this game.



The Ugly

Martin Rennie's starting lineup



The Whitecaps have struggled with unfortunate injuries all season long, but so far, Martin Rennie has done well to cope with all the absences for the most part. YP Lee and Andy O'Brien did not make the trip to DC this weekend, so Rennie was forced to move some players around. One good move he made was slotting Nigel Reo-Coker in at outside right back, but the midfield three was where he messed up royally. Starting Davidson was extremely ineffective as he brings no attacking threat to the table. It would have been a better idea to put Brad Rusin in that position instead, which says a lot. Even changing the formation to something more compatible with the types of players available would have been a better option.