The Vancouver Whitecaps are once again in action and are once again playing St. Louis City SC. This match has one fundamental dynamic: Is St. Louis’ depth so bad that it overrules the built in home field advantage in MLS?

According to the MLS availability report, St. Louis is missing 7 players for this match all of whom would normally be starters as far as I can tell. Here is the list:

• Rasmus Alm (knee)
• Kyle Hiebert (international duty)
• João Klauss (knee)
• Joakim Nilsson (hamstring)
• Tomáš Ostrák (ankle)
• Célio Pompeu (lower leg)
• Josh Yaro (head)

Notably not on that list are Tim Parker and Roman Bürki. Parker was not available when the Whitecaps last played against St. Louis, which forced them into a disastrous centre-back pairing of Jake Nerwinski and Anthony Markanich. In St. Louis’s last game they were able to field two actual centre-back with Parker partnering MLS Next Pro stalwart Michael Wentzel. Did it work? No!

St. Louis did also manage a win against the hapless San Jose Earthquakes, which was at home, but they are on pace to conceded 86 goals so everyone should be beating them. Roman Bürki, quite possibly the best keeper in MLS, did not play last time out against the Whitecaps and had to be withdrawn mid-week against Colorado. St. Louis will have a much better chance if he’s available. Saint Louis are going to, at the very least, have to field a centre-back who is either very inexperienced or who is not naturally a centre-back.

But that’s not to say they have nobody worth worrying about, even in their beleaguered state. Nökkvi Thorrison, the Icelandic striker looks like a real find. He only has one actual goal (against the Whitecaps) but he’s generated a ton of xG in limited minutes. John Klein III also looks like a decent box-crashing midfielder, plus he’s a III which is kind of cool. Midfielder Eduard Löewen and fullback Thomas Totland have also had strong seasons.

Vancouver, on the other hand, is coming off a Canadian Championship victory in which they played more or less a full strength team. I imagine we’ll see some rotation in the centre-back and wing-back positions. I would guess that Javain Brown and Ryan Raposo, the only regular squad players who didn’t appear against Pacific, will draw back in.  Technically Sam Adekugbe is likely to be available for this game but I doubt he would make any more than a cameo appearance. The front three basically can’t be rotated, though maybe we’ll see a start for Fafa Picault. Picault seems to be on the outs amid rumours he wants to be traded.

In conclusion, I dunno. The Whitecaps have a reasonable chance of getting something out of this game but it’s not a foregone conclusion. St. Louis are undermanned, and even when they are manned they aren’t that good. But this is MLS and road games (especially road games after a midweek game) are very hard to win.