The Good, The Average and The Bad: Whitecaps Are Guardians Of The Galaxy

Dominant, commanding, assured, composed. Pick your superlative or add your own. The Whitecaps 2-0 win over LA Galaxy at BC Place on Saturday night was perhaps as strong a start to finish performance that we’ve seen from the ‘Caps in MLS action.

Kekuta Manneh and Octavio Rivero’s goals will garner the headlines, but there were a number of key individual and team performances. The most exciting thing is also perhaps that the team still aren’t up to full speed.

Aaron gives us his regular look at “The Good, The Average and The Bad” to come out of the game.

THE GOOD

Laba and Teibert’s domination of pitch

If you where only listening to the game on the radio you wouldn’t even have known Robbie Keane was playing. He was invisible all game long. Other than a few touches far away from the goal, he wasn’t a factor at all this game.

Teibert was in his pocket all game long. Didn’t give him any breathing room at all. If the ball was heading to Keane, Teibert made sure he was on him and making just enough contact to not get a foul but enough for Keane to be frustrated. At one point Keane went to the ref and started whining about the contact that he was facing all match.

With all the effort Teibert was putting in stopping Keane it gave Laba the chance to clean up everything else through the middle of the pitch. He was his world class self being tough on tackles and breaking up passes all game.

These two together are forming a great partnership and moving forward, they will only get better with the more minutes they are to play as a dynamic duo.

THE AVERAGE

Quality Finishing

Another game where the Whitecaps could have easily had double the amount of goals they actually got. If they were firing on all cylinders the game could easily have been three or four-nothing.

Even with the four game winning streak, this team can still get better. They have weak spots, need a winger and need more from their right-back.

With the arrival of Cristian Techera this week, this only means more speed, pace and firepower for this exciting to watch Whitecaps team.

At the current pace this team is on pace for 48 goals this season. That is way below the 55-60 that Carl Robinson has stated he expects out of his side this year.

THE BAD

Steven Beitashour’s a step too slow

Game after game we see Beitashour getting caught out of position way too often. He is either too far up the pitch and getting beat over the top, or too far in the middle of the pitch and getting bested too easily down the wing.

For a player of his salary, and in MLS that matters, he needs to be better. He has struggled a bit ever since he returned from the World Cup playing for Iran.

With such a dominant performance by the whole team it was easy to notice some off the hiccups that Beitashour had during the game.