Saturday night at Children’s Mercy Park, the Vancouver Whitecaps will take on Sporting Kansas City, as Jesper Sørensen’s side will play their third match in the last eight days, despite the Vancouver roster continuing to shrink in size.

While the possibility of Tristan Blackmon returning this season was confirmed following his injury on Tuesday night, and that is very good news, in the short term, the Vancouver defensive unit is incredibly thin. It will be a real challenge post roster-freeze for Sørensen and his staff to find a successful solution. Even more responsibility will have to be placed on both Belal Halbouni and Mathias Laborda, as they are the only clear options at centreback right now.

That is only going to be highlighted this weekend in Kansas. While almost everything has gone wrong for Sporting this year, they do have one undeniable strength, and that’s Dejan Joveljić at striker. The Serbian has 17 goals and 2 assists in just over 2400 minutes, which is massively impressive given how poor this SKC team has been around him. Certainly, Halbouni, Laborda & Co. are going to have their hands full containing him.

These two teams played each other at BC Place back on July 26th, with the Whitecaps winning by a score of 3-0. It was one way traffic in that match, with SKC failing to register a meaningful shot on target prior to the 69th minute, when they were already down 2-0.

Tactically, two things stood out to me from the first fixture. First, Vancouver abused the matchup between Jayden Nelson and Andrew Brody. The SKC fullback could not handle Nelson’s pace, and it left a lot of options open for the Canadian winger, as he was instrumental in setting up the two Vancouver goals in the first half. The second thing I noted was how isolated Joveljić looked, even when Sporting was in possession. Without a real wide threat, it was very difficult for Joveljić to create any space for himself, and it led to the striker having just two touches in the opposition box. If you’re Jesper Sørensen, I’m sure these are two advantages you are looking to recreate this weekend on the road.

Since Sporting’s loss in Vancouver, things have not gone much better. They followed up the loss in Vancouver with another three straight, and although they edged Colorado Rapids 4-2 at the end of August, they’ve lost two consecutive matches by a score of 2-1 since then, to Real Salt Lake and Austin FC. In total, Sporting has collected one win and just four points from their last nine matches.

Flipping things back to Vancouver, while both Brian White and Ryan Gauld were involved in training this week, I would not expect either of them to feature this weekend. Joedrick Pupe was also putting in work this week, so I think he’ll be the first defender to make a return to match action, although perhaps not until next weekend or thereafter.

Vancouver has enjoyed the luxury of their last two matches being pretty noncompetitive, which has given them the chance to manage fitness (Blackmon’s injury notwithstanding). Andres Cubas, Ralph Priso, and Mathias Laborda should all be quite fresh after coming off the bench midweek, and I wonder if either Kenji Cabrera or Rayan Elloumi has done enough to earn a start, as Daniel Rios’ performances have been pretty mixed. Thomas Müller did not feature midweek, and now has been ruled out this weekend with an adductor issue. The club says his absence is precautionary.

Overall, road matches are never easy, and Vancouver’s centrebacks will have their hands full with Joveljić. However, there is a massive gulf in terms of both form and quality between these two sides. Given this, Vancouver should walk into Children’s Mercy Park with the confidence that if they execute, they will walk away with all three points.