Good Monday morning Caps fans and hope your fall is off to a good start — we got fall weather here, finally, so Mother Nature finally got the memo.

A rotated Whitecaps team were unable to muster much to cool off the hottest attack in MLS on Saturday, getting picked apart in a 4-2 loss to the LA Galaxy that leaves them in a slightly precarious spot in the Western Conference standings.

Vanni Sartini wanted to rotate ahead of the Voyageurs Cup final on Wednesday (we’ll get to that in a second). That meant 45 minutes of Ryan Gauld, a makeshift midfield and Mathias Laborda at wingback.

The Caps actually bunkered OK in the first half and showed some glimpses of danger one Gauld came on in the second. But once they opened up at all, they were put to the sword. The expected goals in this were actually quite similar, meaning the match came down to the Galaxy’s superior quality on the ball.

The Galaxy are the best team in the west and they have made Dignity Health Sports Park a fortress. This was always going to be a tough match and you can see why Vanni wanted to rotate — even a full strength side might not have made it out with a result.

Personally, I am willing to make the sacrifice if it means increasing the chances of lifting a trophy. You play this sport to win things, no matter how many teams are in the competition, and Wednesday is enormously significant for that reason.

But there are certainly people out there who would rather they give it their all in league play, roll the dice in the cup and let the chips fall where they may. I get it — a result against the Galaxy (again, far from guaranteed) would have gone a long way in giving them a decent seed in the west and, possibly, home field advantage in round one.

This is probably the strongest team on paper of the MLS era and if you aren’t going to go all in on winning MLS Cup, why bother? I don’t agree with that sentiment but I can see why people think that.

There is good news — the Caps will have four straight home league matches before Decision Day, when they travel to Salt Lake City. Those matches are all against playoff teams but there is a real opportunity here to grab some points as the season winds down.

I would’ve loved to see a full strength version of this team take on the Galaxy. But they aren’t there yet — Brian White and Stuart Armstrong aren’t fully match fit yet and Ali Ahmed and Andres Cubas are hurt. When everyone is fit, Vanni has the enviable job of fitting them all into one lineup. When that happens, I think this is a team that can do damage in whatever competition they’re in. Saturday night showed they aren’t that version of themselves yet — but there is still plenty of time to get there.

Shameless Self Promotion

We run down the struggles from Saturday night in our post match coverage.

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