Greener Pastures Blog: Games 4–7

A positive look at the Vancouver Whitecaps’ 2019 Season

Great news, friends and family: I’ve found a name for my blog. Oh and the Whitecaps won for the first time this season, which is cool too I guess. But in case you forgot, this is my semi-monthly-but-sometimes-monthly blog about the Whitecaps Football Club where I write about the team whilst wearing rose coloured glasses (Before we move forward, I must disclose that Rose Coloured Passes was my second choice, but I thought that might have been a stretch). Today’s blog will be a ramble about a much more positive stretch of games (1W-2D-1L) where we saw drama, controversy, victory AND defeat. What more do you need? Don’t answer that. Without further adieu, here are a few things that stood out to me in games 4–7.

Maxime Crépeau is good at stopping the ball from going into the net.

I went over some pretty advanced stats and found that not getting scored on is good (per www.whoscored.com). He’s made some spectacular saves, he’s been scored on a few times, but it’s his positional soundness that has allowed him to save seemingly every save-able shot that has come his way. Let’s focus on him in this sequence:

Ali Adnan, bless his heart, got turned inside-out on this one. Crépeau turns his head, stays on his toes and doesn’t react until the ball leaves Katai’s foot. He’s got great reflexes, along with good body positioning. Notice how he saves the ball with his left hand — a testament to where his body was in relation to the goal.

Here’s another example of patience paying off:

As the ball is crossed, he shuffles quickly and adjusts himself to the new angle. This meant that there wasn’t an obvious place for Vassel to head the ball. Crépeau then just has to react to the ball coming off his head, and he does that perfectly. With two clean sheets over this last stretch, it looks like the ship has been righted defensively. Lots of credit can go to Crépeau, who has been solid for us so far. You’re probably thinking to yourself “big whoop. All keepers do that”. And to that, I respond the only way I know how - with a GIF. This one is from the year 2018:

That’s uh, not how you do it.

The Whitecaps Got Ratio’ed

In 2008, the Whitecaps failed to protect the women on their U20 team. They then, along with Coastal FC then failed to break the cycle. There’s a lot of negative to this situation (if you somehow haven’t heard about it, I hope the rock you’re living under comes at an affordable rate) but an unequivocal positive is the stat line on this tweet:

Following the theme of advanced stats: that is a very not good ratio. Two things we can take away from this:

There is overwhelming from support from fans, casual observers etc. Bobby Lenarduzzi has 52 twitter accounts

I’m hopeful that the support can be sustained, and that this won’t go away until we get more accountability from our Front Office.

Save the Midfield, Save the World (Season)

I get the idea of having Hwang out in that hybrid wing position: he does a great job and gives our offense another dimension. Chicago was our worst performance out of this last stretch. We couldn’t build play, and eventually scored off of a gaffe (Thankful for Maxime at a time like this). What we missed in that game, we more than made up for on Wednesday night. There were times when I was absolutely GIDDY in the first half. We were breaking out of our zone with little curled lob passes, dinking the ball back and forth, until a lane opened up for a long ball to be played — a lane that wouldn’t be open if not for the little passes that occurred beforehand. Hwang, Erice and Teibert seemed to have the perfect balance of defensive effort and offensive creativity.

I’m but a humble man — I don’t have access to any highlights that aren’t on Youtube, so you’re going to have to trust me on this one. Here’s the only GIF I could scrounge up:

My guy Jon Erice splits two players, while Teibert turns quickly, forcing his two defenders to pay attention to him. Adnan then combines his unique combination of strength, size and skill to do the rest, but those two passes didn’t exist in Robboball. Instead of looking immediately for Adnan’s run, we’re starting to build pay until that run opens up. Here’s a live look at me when the Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club string some nice passes together:

Random Notes:

Is Yordy Reyna our best striker in a 4–3–3 formation? He even had a few nice flicks with his head to keep play going

Against LAFC, we lost our composure when Erice came off. Love that guy!

Our defense is looking great! Great game against Seattle, a few slip-ups against the Galaxy, and pretty tight against Chicago and LAFC

PC works HARD for the money. He works hard for it, honey. I like what he brings to the team when he plays on the wing — even though he might be our least skilled winger available. He’s the best at tracking back, and has a pretty decent shot. Coming into the season I was not sold, but here we are!

Doneil Henry is a great quote, and you should read his reaction in the AFTN post-game report

It’s nice to see Teibert playing and doing well

Nerwinski looks like he’s settling in a bit — maybe competition is what it’ll take!

I don’t think I could be more excited about a new DP this summer

Will we be able to keep Adnan?? Is there anything we can do to help keep him???

I sit by the away supporters section and love when they start the game off really loud. By the 60th minute you can hear feint clapping, and they’re basically whispering at minute 70. Very cute.

Yordy Reyna is much more effective centrally. Whether it’s as a number 10, or a number 9, he just seems to thrive when he can make diagonal runs with or without the ball in either direction. Either that or her hates playing on the wing and has been pouting. Who knows!

My friend John thinks that we might see a two striker lineup against Orlando. He brought up a great question: when was the last time we started two strikers? I did about 10 seconds of research and found this article from 2012. Though it appears to be 3 strikers rather than two, I’ll leave you with this cursed image:

Until next time, folks!