Good Monday morning Caps fans, hope you all were still able to enjoy a rainy weekend and that the start of your workweek is sunny and warm.

It was not a sunny and warm day for the Caps on Saturday, who came up short for the first time this season, falling to Real Salt Lake 2-1 in a match that frustrated for many reasons.

The Caps were poor, no doubt about it. But I would argue they got dealt their first real dose of getting messed around by the replacement referees, when the official declined to go back and book Alexandros Katranis for a clear professional foul when he hacked down Ali Ahmed during a breakaway. That would have been Katranis’ second yellow and it would have meant a) the Caps would have been up a a man at the exact point when Ali Ahmed was carving up RSL and b) Katranis wouldn’t have been on the pitch to score his golazo winner. It was a pretty egregious error in my mind but, alas, so it goes.

A few things were going on for the Caps this match. For one, they sorely missed Andres Cubas, who was away on international duty with Paraguay. While Vancouver kept an excellent shape in the first half and denied RSL any real sight of goal, that quickly fell apart in the second half (credit to an excellent performance from an inverted Fidel Barajas, who helped changes things up to punish Vancouver). Saturday’s result shows why Cubas is Vancouver’s most important player.

Secondly, the attack just isn’t hitting. Brian White actually looks excellent as a quasi-winger, quasi-number 10 and he deserves credit for a great assist on Damir Kreilach’s goal (and Damir deserves credit for a cool finish). But this attack is generally just too slow to really do what it seems Vancouver is trying to do. The introduction of Ali Ahmed as a forward underscored this — Ahmed was absolutely carving up RSL. If Brian White were still on the pitch, rather than subbed off with a concerning possible concussion, you have to think this attack would function very differently.

I don’t mean any ill will towards Kreilach, who I think has a place on this roster and can be a useful piece. But his holdup play wasn’t great on Saturday and if he’s not doing that and isn’t able to play guys in, the two things he ostensibly is good at and in this roster to do, he is basically a passenger. White was routinely getting frustrated because he was getting into good spots and was unable to find any runners in support because they simply weren’t there. Part of this probably was a hesitation to commit too much early without Cubas but it really curbed what otherwise was a good performance from White in his new role.

Ahmed is showing he needs to start and you would hope the manager would respond to that. With Cubas and, likely, Sam Adekugbe back before too long, I think some of these other problems will take care of themselves. And, it is worth remembering that RSL has sort of had the Caps’ number recently. Maybe this is coping but I think ultimately this is a result that should be taken as a warning sign, particularly with a run of winnable matches forthcoming, but not anything to lose sleep about. Let’s hope we see some needed tweaks, however.

Shameless Self Promotion

This should be a busy week on the site but get things kicked off with our match recap and report card from Saturday.

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