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TSN Soccer Analyst

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The Vancouver Whitecaps recorded their third consecutive MLS victory on Saturday, defeating the Portland Timbers 2-1 in front of a sold-out crowd at BC Place in Vancouver.

It wasn’t their best performance of the season by any means, but here are five things that stood out for me from the Whitecaps:

1. David Ousted should be in the running for MLS Player of the Month. 

The statistics don’t tell the complete story of how David Ousted has started the season for the Whitecaps. He has conceded four goals in four games, but three of those came in the opening day loss at home to Toronto. Despite that defeat, Ousted has been in outstanding form.

With the score locked at 0-0 last weekend in Orlando, Ousted came up big in the dying minutes to deny Cyle Larin on a breakaway. That set the Whitecaps up for Octavio Rivero’s stoppage-time winner. This week, Ousted bailed out his team not once, not twice, but three times. 

The first save came from a long-range effort from Portland’s George Fochive in the first half, where Ousted got down to his right at full stretch to tip the ball around the post. The second save came after Darlington Nagbe – the best player on the pitch on Saturday – unleashed a powerful strike from just outside the area in the second half. The third save came at a crucial stage of the game; Portland had just equalized in the second half and was pressing for the winner. The ball fell to Portland’s goalscorer, Fanendo Adi, alone in front of goal. Ousted raced off his line, stayed big until the last second, and managed to deflect Adi’s goal-bound effort away from danger. 

The big Dane is getting it done for Vancouver right now, and his performances deserve to be recognized. 

2. Kendall Waston is a beast. 

Up until Ousted’s second-half heroics, I had Kendall Waston tagged for the Man of the Match award; he was fantastic. The big Costa Rican won everything in the air, broke up countless Portland attacks, and kept things simple with his distribution. 

I like that head coach Carl Robinson frees Waston up when the Whitecaps are defending set pieces from wide areas. This strategy allows Waston to take up a position where he can simply go and attack the ball. It is a smart tactic because Waston can cover so much of the dangerous space in the near post and central areas of the goal – from which most headed goals are scored. It allows the Whitecaps – who aren’t the tallest team in the league, by any stretch – to compete with teams who are bigger and stronger in the air. 

Waston and Pa-Modou Kah had their hands full dealing with Adi, Maxi Urruti and the impressive Nagbe over the 90 minutes, and were certainly made to earn their wages on Saturday. But their play, combined with that of Ousted behind them, give Whitecaps fans reason to believe that Vancouver won’t be pushed around when the going gets tough this season. 

3. Robert Earnshaw scores goals. It is that simple. 

Last week, I tweeted that Robert Earnshaw would be a “good option off the bench” for the Whitecaps.

On Saturday, Earnshaw proved me right. He wasn’t even on the pitch for five minutes, yet Earnshaw scored the goal that stole all three points for Vancouver. 

Would either Darren Mattocks or Erik Hurtado – two of the Whitecaps attacking options off the bench in the first three games of the season – have shown the same composure when put in alone on goal? History suggests not. And that is why signing Earnshaw was a clever move by the Whitecaps. 

4. What to do with Pedro Morales?

Carl Robinson has a conundrum with Pedro Morales, his Chilean skipper. When Morales doesn’t perform up to his own high standard, does Robinson replace him with some fresh legs off the bench, or does he structure his team to compensate for Morales’ weaknesses and hope that his skipper can pull off a single moment of brilliance, as he has done in the past two games? 

It is no secret that Morales is much more effective when he has the ball at his feet, rather than when he is required to win it back. Defending is simply not one of his strengths. But this poses a problem for Robinson, because there will be games this season – like on Saturday – where the Whitecaps do not dominate possession of the ball and the opponent dictates the tempo of the game. 

When this happens, the temptation is to replace Morales with a more combative midfielder. Doing so would very likely deprive the Whitecaps of creativity going forward, but it would make them more resolute in midfield, and by extension, less likely to concede goals. Imagine if Deybi Flores (more on him in a minute) came into midfield in place of Morales, rather than in exchange for Koffie. It would make the Whitecaps stronger in the middle of the park, but would simultaneously rob them of Morales’ moments of individual brilliance. 

It speaks to Robinson’s desire to play attacking football – to go for the win rather than to settle for just a point – that he has so far resisted the urge to replace his skipper when he is having an off day. 

5. Deybi Flores made quite an impression in his Whitecaps debut.

Just 18-years old, it would be understandable for Deybi Flores to be a little overwhelmed at making his debut for the Whitecaps in front of a sold out BC Place, let alone in a game where the momentum had swung firmly in favour of the visitors. 

Yet Flores showed maturity beyond his years when he picked up the ball for the first time after coming into the game in the 72nd minute for Gershon Koffie. Flores burst forward with a turn of speed with the ball at his feet before laying the ball off to Erik Hurtado on the right. It was the sort of run that we used to see from Koffie, and the new kid in town will be putting pressure on the likes of Koffie and Russell Teibert for a place alongside Matias Laba in midfield if he continues to show such poise and purpose. 

It was Flores who played the ball into Pedro Morales to set up the Earnshaw goal, and the young Honduran looked more than comfortable in the Whitecaps lineup. It certainly won’t be the last you see of Flores in Robinson’s team, for sure. 

Up next for the Whitecaps is the L.A. Galaxy, who visit BC Place on Saturday, April 4, live on TSN1 and TSN5 at 10pm ET/7pm PT.