The Vancouver Whitecaps’ season lumbers along with a road game against LAFC. With large portions of the squad that has made Vancouver so successful absent this season still away at the Gold Cup it is shaping up to be another weird game.

LAFC are quite good and that fact combined with the home field tilt in MLS means that them winning this game is the most likely outcome, even before factoring in Vancouver’s absences. But there are some off-field factors that could potential play in Vancouver’s favour. These factors mainly revolve around LAFC’s recent participation in the Club World Cup. LAFC have racked up reasonably difficult fixture congestion in that time with 4 games in 16 days (though they will get a 5 day break coming into this one). LAFC did not win any games at the Club World Cup. Expectations were not necessarily that high going in but losses are still de-moralising, particularly the one against ES Tunis a team LAFC were largely expected to beat. LAFC players also partook in protests over the percentage of Club World Cup revenue that went to players. As we have already seen, discord over player pay can hinder team’s performance. When it comes to on-field play LAFC are still very much the team we have come to know. They give up very little defensively, produce an above average amount and that makes them pretty hard to get the better of. They are still very reliant on Denis Bouanga for offence, with nobody else who has played significant minutes coming even close to his 0.69 non-penalty xG+xA/90.

The Whitecaps are not getting any previously unavailable players back for this one so it’s just a matter of if they can re-shuffle their current pieces to get a different result than their last two losses. In my view, the key is going to be getting a little bit more ball progression in the middle. In previous matches Jesper Sørensen has opted to play Pedro Vite and J.C Ngando further forward, leaving Ralph Priso, Andres Cubas, and sometimes Jeevan Badwal in deeper midfield positions. But none of the latter three are particularly comfortable breaking lines and that has lead to some serious limitations. I do not blame Sørensen too much because with so many absences there are not a lot of good options. But based on the two most recent games I think it is better for the Whitecaps to field a less than ideal forward line and get Vite (or Ngando) deeper. Regardless of the line-up, I think the first goal will be very important in this game. Neither of these teams, on average, give up very many chances so if the Whitecaps fall behind it will be very hard to come back. As we have seen many times, you don’t want to be chasing against LAFC.

An LAFC win is the most likely outcome of this match. But the Whitecaps have delivered plenty of surprises so far this season so perhaps they can produce another.