Good Friday morning Caps fans, hope you all are having a lovely week and that you are headed into the weekend with good vibes as March beckons.

It was a week of good news for the Caps, culminating in a 2-0 win for Vancouver to reverse their first leg defeat to Saprissa and advance in the CONCACAF Champions Cup. A second-half brace from Brian White did the job and while the Caps once again should have scored far, far more goals, their slim margin nearly bit them, with Saprissa twice hitting the post and Sebastian Berhalter dodging a possible penalty shout on the last play of the match.

The Whitecaps won’t care and it was a professional win, one that this squad last year may well not have been able to see out. I am pessimistic about what a matchup with Monterrey might bring but you enter these competitions for big matches like this and it will be a good test for a team that has shown real quality in each of its first three matches.

The cherry on top is the revelation that there could be some reinforcements arriving. Glass City is reporting the Caps are targeting attacking midfielder Dominick Fitz from Austria Wien and holding midfielder Lukasz Poreba from Hamburg.

There has been some pushback from more official sources on these deals but this could be a case of not putting the cart before the horse. Regardless, I’ll do a surface level take here and I’m sure we’ll have plenty of coverage on these signings if they do firm up later.

The signing of Fitz would be absolutely massive. He has been Austria Wien’s best player this year, with a team high nine assists while also being their joint-leading scorer. You never know how things translate over but he would seem to be almost an upgrade on Armstrong as a guy who could be a bona fide goal scoring threat who also can spray balls and provide a high-level alternative to Ryan Gauld.

I do think it is a bit curious that Wien would be moving on their best player when they’re three points off of first place at this stage in the season (with no way of replacing him) but maybe the money is too good to turn down or he wouldn’t join until later.

Poreba makes a bit more sense from this perspective, largely featuring sporadically off the bench for Hamburg. That seems bad! But the reviews from Hamburg fans online seem much more positive, indicating this is a player with good passing ability who is buried on the depth chart. In that case, the Caps could secure a cut rate deal. I;m not convinced this team needs another central midfielder but they never really did replace Alessandro Schop and if Ali Ahmed’s future reasonably is as a winger, then this makes sense.

These signings, assuming they a) happen and b) happen before April (which Axel Schuster has said is the plan) could completely change this team’s ceiling. The depth alone will help but Fitz is a player who can elevate this team and break into the starting XI almost immediately. Fingers crossed we get more positive developments on these.

And speaking of positive developments, the Caps locked down striker Brian White for another two years on a non-DP deal for a striker that has performed at DP levels. There were rumors that Real Salt Lake were inquiring about White and while there was never any real danger he’d leave, this makes things official. This remains possibly the Caps’ best inter-MLS trade ever and White continues to be worth his weight in gold, as his performance on Thursday showed.

Shameless Self Promotion

We recap Thursday’s CCC action from BC Place with a breakdown of where it went right (and nearly wrong) for the Caps.

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