The Vancouver Whitecaps suddenly have a ton of roster flexibility. The way I see it they currently have three big needs.

A Striker:

Probably purely a backup for Brian White…unless…

W/FW:

This not quite a winger not quite a striker used to be the Whitecaps’ specialty. It felt like from 2012-2016 they would sign about six players every window who “could play anywhere across the front line.” But now they desperately need a 3rd forward player to play alongside White and Gauld. What’s Nicolas Mezquida up to these days?

Stuart Armstrong Replacement:

They tried the “just let Pedro Vite figure it out” strategy of ball progression and it didn’t work very well. So replacing Stuart Armstrong’s creativity through the middle is probably a necessity.

With an open DP slot, an open U-22 slot (or two but let’s not worry about that for now), four open senior roster slots (two international and two domestic), and quite a bit of cap space there are a lot of possible paths to filling these needs. So, rather than try and figure out which of their slots they will allocate to which need I am going to be a bit ambitious and try to cover all of the possibilities in each position. This article will focus on strikers.

Generating a list:

Unfortunately, I have lost access to Wyscout. But I do have access to Ben Griffis’ streamlit app which acts as a sort of ghetto Wyscout. You can search leagues and it will give you back a ranking of the top 5 players in each position based on how well they match certain roles. These rankings sometimes need to be viewed with a bit of a skeptical eye, because they are about fitting a style as much as being “good.” But this is the tool I have to work with so I’m going to going to trust that anybody worth knowing is going to pop somewhat on the “advanced forward‘ setting.

I then draw on the work of Axel Storbacka who used transfermarkt data to put the world’s leagues into tiers that look more or less right. I looked at the first four tiers of leagues, and the 5th for U-22 players. I did not consider anyone with a transfermarkt value over 4 million, who had moved in the last 6 months, or who was currently on loan. 

Ok, here comes a truly disgusting amount of strikers. 

Within this group, we essentially have three groups of players. Firstly, we have players who are eligible to be signed under the U-22 initiative. There aren’t very many of these. Strikers who have played enough minutes and been productive enough to be sure they have juice at a young age are extremely valuable so finding one who is within the reach of the Whitecaps is difficult. The second group are players who probably would not be DPs but are too old to be U-22s and as such would occupy a regular senior roster spot. I consider everyone with a transfermarkt value of over 3 million to be a probable DP based on the cost of acquiring them and their probable wage demands. For both of the senior options, I think you want someone who is providing a bit of a different dynamic than Brian White, whether that’s some dribbling, some pace, or something else. This is because if you are signing a senior player you probably want someone who can be put on the field with White and two pure goal poachers would be a little bit tricky to fit in tactically.

Now, for the most part, these players play in leagues I have no way of watching (though there are some exceptions, I have covered the Australians Goodwin and Jovanovic and the Japanese Suzuki and Yamada for Target Scouting in the past) so I’m going to be relying on data and clips. Obviously if I had the resources of a real scouting department I would go a lot deeper than this but the Third Sub doesn’t have those kind of resources.

Rather than break down every single one of these players I am going to pick one from each group and go into them a bit deeper. Remember, the point of sensible Whitecaps transfers is not necessarily to predict the literal player the team will sign, it’s to look at what sort of options are out there.

U22: Luka Jovanovic/Adelaide United/19

I figured I would start with a player I have watched quite a bit and can talk about in a bit more detail. Luka Jovanovic is a 19-year-old Australian striker who plays for Adelaide United in the A-League. If I were to compare him to a previous Whitecap it would probably be Freddy Montero. He’s a striker but he likes to drop deeper and link play and he has also had some success playing as a #10 behind a target man. I think that versatility would be a big asset because he could be a back-up for Brian White but you could also run a Gauld/White/Jovanovic front three if you wanted to. His numbers are absolutely cracked considering his age. He would probably need to be eased in but I think he could contribute a little bit in the short term and a lot in the long term, which is basically what you want from U-22s.

Nobody has made a good compilation of him so the only clip I can show you is him jumping on a terrible goalkeeping error.

Senior Roster Player: Victor Campuzano/Sporting Gijón/27

Victor Campuzano is a 27-year-old journeyman striker currently playing for Sporting Gijón in La Liga 2. He’s doing pretty well in a league that’s a similar level to MLS and he does a lot of dribbling as well as goal scoring so you could play him with Brian White if you wanted to. He’d probably be basically fine and would probably be a TAM player.

The only compilation of his is quite old but you get the idea.

DP: Ola Brynhildsen/Midtjylland/25

I feel like ever since the Ryan and Brian connection became a thing I’ve been dreaming of a fast dribbler to be the third head of the dragon. Ola Brynhildsen seems like a good candidate to be that guy. He’s under contract with Danish side Midtjylland but spent last season on loan with Molde in Norway. He put up big numbers, despite Molde coming in 5th. Since his return to Denmark, he has played about 50% of the available minutes and scored a couple of goals. But given that he’s 25 now, I think a selling-focused club like Midtjylland would be willing to part with him. He has played a plurality of his career as a centre-forward but has also played significant minutes on the wing so he brings a lot of flexibility.