Happy Monday Caps fans, hope you all had a good weekend and the start of your work week isn’t too painful. If you’re reading this, it must not be all that bad.

It was a productive final match before the Leagues Cup break for the Caps, though it was a tale of two halves in their 4-2 win over LA Galaxy.

Everything seemed on cruise control after three first half goals and a dismissal for Chris Mavinga for a second bookable offence. But killing off games remains a problem for Vancouver, and the Galaxy took advantage of the departures of Pedro Vite and Andres Cubas from the match to do more with their possession and pull back two goals.

On one hand, conceding two goals in a relatively short amount of time to a 10-man side is borderline unacceptable. On the other hand, one of the Galaxy’s goals was a great individual strike from Gaston Brugman and the other was probably LA’s best chance of the night, albeit one that Yohei Takaoka probably could have done better on.

The Caps, meanwhile, did keep creating and had a couple chances that they should have put away to go up 4-0 and really put the match out of reach. They also were denied a penalty after Kelvin Leerdam handled the ball on the line to deny them a fourth goal early in the second half.

The expected goals pretty clearly reflects all this and should probably assuage whatever concerns there might be. Not great to once again see the team struggle once they reach a winning position but there were lots of positives (Ryan Gauld is in scintillating form, Ali Ahmed looked good in his return, Raposo had a strong match) and getting three points sees them rise in the table with a game in hand on most of their rivals.

Now, we head into Leagues Cup and, thus, into uncharted territory. The question for the Caps, like all MLS teams, will be how seriously they should take the competition and whether players should be risked when there are lots of important regular season games yet to be played.

I’m generally pretty ambivalent about the new competition and while I’ll certainly be tuning in to check it out, I have no real problem if Vanni Sartini has a fair amount of rotation and decides to focus his attention on assuring the Caps can get across the line and into the playoffs with a string of important road matches to come soon.

That being said, a chance at a trophy is a chance at a trophy, so if there are folks out there more invested in seeing Ryan Gauld, Andres Cubas, et al. get trotted out there to try and put a run together, I can understand that sentiment. The group includes a quality Leon side — but one the Caps will get to face at home — and the same LA Galaxy team they just battered 4-2. There certainly is a chance to advance out of that group and see what happens from there, if Sartini wants to take it.

But ultimately, I’m not sure how much cache a Leagues Cup would really bring. Yeah, it would be cool to win the first one but the CCL berth is largely lost on Vancouver (we have one already) and I’m not sure any fan will really be bragging about a run to the quarterfinals or semifinals. It might be a nice dry run for what will hopefully be a fruitful playoffs but, if offered the choice, I’d much rather the Caps’ knockout form peak when we’re actually in the playoffs.

Shameless Self Promotion

More on why the Leagues Cup break is coming at the perfect time for the Caps. And our report card grades from Saturday night ain’t bad.

Best of the Rest

Another defeat for the Whitecaps 2 side, who fell to Portland on Saturday 1-0 at BC Place

A late winner lifted Mexico to claim the Gold Cup, defeating a strong Panama side 1-0

Messi was officially unveiled on Sunday, confirming a new set of questions for Inter Miami, the league and its TV partners

Should MLS be threatened by the growth of the Saudi Arabian league?