In The Cold Light Of Day: Whitecaps Soundly Beaten

Well, that’s it all over bar the shouting. And if Saturday is anything to go by, there won’t be as much of that as there used to be for the last five games of the season.

Vancouver Whitecaps were outplayed, outsung and outclassed by Seattle Sounders on Saturday evening.

We said in Saturday’s blog that we couldn’t let the Empire era go out with a whimper instead of a bang. It seems no-one was listening.

Saturday was poor and one of the lowest points in a season of lows.

It’s easy to say that the only way is up. It’s not so easy to see how we’re going to get there without wholesale changes both on and off the pitch in the off season.

The players seemed up for the game in the first half and took the game to Seattle. The equalising penalty seemed to knock the stuffing out of them, and the fans, and then when the second goal went in the heads just went down.

Holding on to a lead has been one of our biggest problems this season and so it proved again.

It doesn’t seem to matter who is playing in the defence, we can’t defend when we need it most.

We could adopt the “just score one more than the opposition” approach, but when we’re relying on two players to score all the time then that is hard.

Camilo and Eric Hassli have 19 goals between them. Two thirds of our overall MLS total.

When one of them is off their game, like Hassli was on Saturday, we may as well just go home. There have been very few games this season where both our goalscoring stars have performed at their best at the same time.

Martin Rennie must be wondering what the exact scale of his task he is taking on is going to be.

Certainly working on playing tighter and how to make set pieces count have to be his top priorities.

If we ask where it’s all gone wrong, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly. We were mulling over this in preparation of our appearance on It’s Called Football this evening.

Is it the defensive woes or the attacking weakness? Well, Toronto have shipped six more goals than us, yet sit eight points ahead of us having scored just three goals more.

Is it our away form?

We have yet to record an away win, yet Houston only have one to their name and top the Eastern Conference.

Is it Tommy Soehn?

He’s been a disaster. It was the wrong appointment, but I’m starting to think it wouldn’t have mattered too much who took the team over this season.

There’s no easy answer, but the Caps need to find what they are and solve them for 2012.

I don’t want another season where I have to stand in my spot, watching one of our fiercest rivals lifting a trophy, whilst their loud and large group of fans (boosted by a noise generating roof) celebrate, as the Whitecaps let of fireworks for them.

Incredible.

Like so many things this season with the Caps and not in the good sense.

I don’t think there’s been a sadder sight this year at Empire than a group of Whitecaps players forced to troop around the stadium with a “thank you” banner when they clearly just wanted to get the fuck out of there – and who can blame them? – as their rivals jumped around with the Cascadia Cup.

Can it get any more embarrassing?

Oh yeah, we have the Timbers Army hordes coming up to open BC Place for us on Sunday. Great.