Good Monday morning Caps fans, hope you all are well rested and getting your work week off to a lovely start.
Vancouver chose chaos in their last match before the Leagues Cup break and there was no doubt their 4-3 loss to Houston was an entertaining one for the neutral.
For Caps fans, however, it was an infuriating result, one where the Caps were the better side but were done in by some combination of lackluster defending, some really bad luck and some horrid officiating.
Oh, and the fact that Ryan Gauld exited in the first half with a knee injury. Hopefully this was just a precautionary move given that Gauld has been run into the ground but it will give fans heart palpitations and cratered any expectations I had for this one given that he went off with a 1-0 deficit, which quickly grew to 2-0.
The fact that the Caps stormed back to take a 3-2 lead is a testament to an excellent half hour of soccer and some sizzling form from Fafa Picault, who was involved in every goal and put his former team to the sword. At a time when the Caps needed another attacking option to emerge, Picault answered the call.
He also was hauled down by Franco Escobar in the box and seemingly won the Caps a penalty. But the referee, despite being instructed to give it a look by VAR, was unmoved. This is the second time this season where Fafa was denied seemingly a clear penalty but the real problem for Vancouver was the several minute video review process, which basically iced them and killed their momentum. It isn’t an accident that Brad Smith went down the other end and scored a belter to tie the match up.
This underscores my belief that you need two changes to the VAR process. Set a time limit to either overturn an on-field decision or let it ride but don’t totally kill the flow of the game. Also, the VAR decision needs to be the final one — no sending referees to the monitor. That would both speed things up and result in fairer decisions.
Some awfully loose defending helped Houston in this one but I mostly don’t think you can fault the performance. The Caps were the better side, without their best player, when the team is mostly out of gas — long term, that bodes well. Not being able to kill off a game, however, will continue to be a problem (and a concerning one at that) as the Caps try and reach that next rung on the ladder.
All-in-all, this was probably karmic payback for the win over Minnesota a couple of weeks ago, where the shoe was seemingly on the other foot. But given that Houston is in good form and a real rival for the top four, this was one that will drive me bonkers.
Shameless Self Promotion
More on an absolutely wild one at BC Place in our post match recap.
Best of the Rest
More on Fafa Picault’s scorching hot form — and why he wishes Vancouver would up its Caribbean food game.
The transfer saga involving Alphonso Davies looks set to drag on further.
Canada opened their U-20 men’s championship with a draw against Honduras.
The weekend in Canadian Premier League action did little to clear the logjam in the league table.
The better side was not the ‘Caps, that’s a biased narrative. Statistically the match was quite even except for possession, shots on target, and goals scored. Houston was superior in all three of those metrics.
Better side won the match, once again the ‘Caps side at home played a decent overall 45 minutes and was outplayed for another overall 45 minutes.
go check the xG stats lol, it was 3.8 to 1.4 in favour of the caps
Do you understand what xG is and what it can mean ? All it means in this instance is that the ‘Caps created better quality chances (while having fewer of them). It does not mean the ‘Caps were necessarily the better side over 98 minutes. And the ‘Caps were not.
A couple of penalties in a match is an xG of 1.6, xG can be very misleading if you let it be.
xG is one indicator, one of the few the ‘Caps were on top of and fairly scored three goals from three expected. Houston had the measure of them otherwise and ultimately their quality bore four goals from far better quality finishing.
Vanni’s obsession to play zonal defence without any needed variation punishes us again- he should have instructed both raposo and adegukbe to hang back more on the outside defence when we were ahead 3-2- Houston made dangerous thrusts to the outside where there wasnt any Cap player in close proximity… and it cost us the game
simply put- VANNI’S STUBBORN REFUSAL TO ALTER THE GAME TACTICS OF ZONAL MARKING FOR THE LAST 20 MINUTES AND LWB AND RWB POSITIONAL PLAY – i dont blame raposo or adegukbe who continued to go on the attack and then have to rush back belatedly to help on defence
ITS COACHING 101- alter the tactics as necessary – DONT BE DOGMATIC
In-match tactical adjustments also fall, though to a lesser extent, on the players recognising what’s occurring around them. Particularly more experienced players. I don’t necessarily expect Raposo to pick up on what’s occurring, but Laborda behind him, Adekgube on the left when he came on, Cubas is another that certainly need to also be organising and adjusting during play.
Yes, overall instructions and adjustments do need to come from the coaching staff. But players also bear some responsibility for not being aware or reactive to literally the play their involved in.