In The Cold Light Of Day: Toronto (Part One)

Writing this just hours before Vancouver’s most important game of the season to date, I don’t know what to expect tomorrow.

Wednesday’s MLS match up between Vancouver Whitecaps and Toronto FC saw a brave move from Tommy Soehn, and one which I personally support.

To me, winning the Canadian Championship for the first time and making the CONCACAF Champions League is preferable to making the MLS playoffs this year.

Sure I’d like both, but if I can only have one then the Voyageurs Cup is what I want.

If we end up with neither, then it’s not acceptable in the slightest. That’s a story for another day though.

Wednesday’s game was horrific. So much so, I couldn’t bring myself to write about it before now!

Making eight changes was major BUT to do well in MLS you need to have strength in depth. What that game showed is that we simply don’t have it.

No player out there was making his MLS debut. This wasn’t like throwing some Residency guys into the mix.

We dominated possession 66% to 34% yet didn’t trouble the TFC goal. Disgraceful.

Starting Omar Salgado up front on his own was a poor decision. He’s 17 and looked out of his depth with no experience there to help him. Decisions like that can set back a kid and not develop him.

The substitutions were baffling. Russell Teibert and Shea Salinas were two of the few players that were doing anything out there. Taking them off, yet leaving Blake Wagner on for the full ninety was shocking.

Wagner is not MLS class. He needs to go. There were many occasions during the game where Greg Janicki was covering the left back slot with Wagner nowhere to be seen.

Janicki had a solid first half but gave away a needless penalty for the winning goal. Soolsma was going nowhere. It was clumsy, we were punished and we had no fight to get back into the game.

We need to bring in four players in the forthcoming transfer window. A defender, two midfielders and a striker ideally.

It may be hard to bring in some top names with where we currently sit in the table. No-one wants to come to a losing side, unless the money is right of course and that’s the kind of players we don’t want.

The playoffs seem to be a distant dream. Reachable mathematically (just six points away), but we need one hell of a second half of the season to overhaul eight teams.

Making the Champions League could be the carrot we need to attract new talent this season.

More added pressure tomorrow.

Failure is not an option. Failure will not be accepted.

For me, Toronto go into the Cup game now as slight favourites. All they need to do is to stop us scoring and they’re fine.

The players need to be so up for this and an early lead will give us the momentum to go on and win.

We were less than half an hour away from the silverware in May. We need to do that again. It’s going to be tense and nervy, but I think we can do it. It may take extra time and penalties, but I can live with that – not sure my heart can.

Toronto are a poor side. We should be better than them. They will be buoyed by Wendesday’s result. We need to show them it was a freak result.

Will the real Vancouver Whitecaps please stand up.