Good Monday morning Caps fans, hope you all had a lovely weekend. The weather was gorgeous and it is finally starting to feel like spring has sprung.

Unfortunately, the good vibes off the pitch were not matched on it on Saturday night, with the Caps dropping their fourth and final match of the homestead to the LA Galaxy 3-1.

This is a difficult match to recap and I suspect there will be a lot of negativity surrounding it from the fans and probably some measure of “well, see, they didn’t play anyone good yet” from the pundits.

This might be a hot take but I really don’t think the Caps played that poorly and I thought Vanni Sartini’s gameplan was a good one. Yeah, I get the knee-jerk reaction to having a mind numbingly low percentage of possession at home but there is a book on the Galaxy for a reason — they have trouble against low blocks and have enough defensive issues to leave the opposition chances on the counter or off set pieces.

Sure enough, things played out exactly like Vanni would have drawn it up. And if Brian White finishes one of his three, pretty darn good chances in the first half or early second half, we’re probably talking about a much different match. Instead, the Galaxy finally punished a half moment where the Caps opened things up and forced them to open things up even further, to their ultimate demise.

The expected goals, however, were nearly dead even and you don’t want to slate White too much (he’s bailed the Caps out too often), this was one where finishing the chances creates proved decisive. This isn’t to take away anything from the Galaxy — they were good value for the win and while they look a bit one-dimensional, that one dimension is very, very good.

The Caps certainly have some defensive issues to sort out and a lack of pace on the backline was exposed in this one. But virtually every team in the league would struggle to defend Joseph Paintsil in space — this is not one that should prompt too much existential crisis.

Caleb summed it up best in his post match recap (which you all should read): this reinforces that the Caps are good, very good even, but are not elite. There are ways to rectify this and I will be very curious to see what the summer transfer window looks like and what type of attacking reinforcements are brought in, either using the open senior DP spot or the two open U-22 spots that would come with only using two DP positions. This gives Axel Schuster a lot of options to polish this roster and I wouldn’t be opposed to bringing in a pacier centerback to try and provide options in a CB room that is much more physically dominant.

You never like to drop points, particularly points that seemed there for the taking, against good teams. But this was probably a good reality check for all of us — the team included — ahead of a tougher run of matches. Onwards and upwards.

Shameless Self Promotion

Caleb wraps up Saturday’s disappointment well — and outlines in the post match recap where the Caps should be headed from here.

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