The soccer gods were not smiling on the Vancouver Whitecaps against the Houston Dynamo, as they tripled their opponent’s xG but still managed to lose 4-3. Let’s look at how the players performed in this highly improbable game.

Yohei Takaoka: 4.0

Any time you concede 4 goals from less than two xG, some questions are going to be asked of the goalkeeper. The post shot xG (xG which takes into account the placement of shots, as well as where they were taken from) on fbref does show that Houston produced some good finishing, but not 4 goals worth of finishing. Each of the goals against, taken individual is defensible, they were mostly either very well placed or deflected. But having all of them in one game is a bit hard to take. Sometimes you need a save.

Bjorn Utvik: 6.5

I thought he was mostly fine. Perhaps a little at fault on goals 1 and 4 but it’s not like either of those were grade A scoring chances. Utvik has played a ton of minutes lately and recently he’s looked a little leggy against speedy dribblers.

Ranko Veselinovic: 7.0

I thought Veselinovic was quite good. He scored a goal, which is nice, and made some key blocks on the defensive side of things.

Luis Martins: 4.0

I had a hard time remembering any significant actions of his. So I went and looked at the stats and he put up almost entirely 0’s on offence and defence.

Ali Ahmed: 6.5

I thought he did a decent job of progressing the ball. But Gauld’s injury once again put him in the more attacking spot where I feel he is less effective. Also unfortunate to have a less than effective clearance on the 4th goal against.

Andres Cubas: 7.0

Cubas did well in the first half and then performed reasonably well when forced into service as a centre-back.

Pedro Vite: 7.5

I liked Vite’s performance once again. Pushing the ball forwards and contributing to shots. He did get bypassed a little bit easily on goal #3 but, again, it’s not like that was some crazy high danger chance.

Sebastian Berhalter: 8.0

Berhalter once again was involved in a lot of shots. He put up a whopping 4 key passes and has one shot of his own. Defensively he led the team in tackles and I don’t recall him being exploited at all. He was, unfortunately, the closest to Brad Smith on his goal but I wouldn’t say it was his fault.

Ryan Raposo: 6.5

Raposo was unexpectedly thrust into the game after Ryan Gauld left with an injury. He was alright, his heavily deflected cross lead to a goal. He had a couple of shots but nothing super high danger. He was surprisingly active in terms of defensive counting stats.

Brian White: 6.0

White was a bit anonymous in this one. He had one high danger chance but wasn’t very involved after Gauld was withdrawn

Fafa Picault: 10

Has there ever been a better Whitecaps performance in a loosing cause? It’s hard to think of one. Picault was involved on all three goals, completed four dribbles and won 5 fouls (though sadly not a very particular 6th foul). An absolute menace from start to finish.