Hello!

Over the years, I’ve often found myself spinning up new content ideas (be it blogs, podcasts, or this very newsletter) and extremely underestimating the time it takes to do things right.

And while one might think I’d learn the tough lesson eventually - that I only have so much time - apparently these past few weeks were not it.

So after losing track of time, and then heading out on a much-needed vacation around Coastal BC, I quite literally forgot to whip a few posts together and keep y’all abreast on all the Whitecaps FC vibes these past few weeks.

Thankfully, the newsletter has some of the best readers out there and regular contributor Jordan Minamimaye agreed to step up to ensure this issue got done.

And I should also note that he’s very much an embracer-of-the-vibes, explaining me to me that sometimes “ball no go in” after the past few editions left me wondering why league-leading xG didn’t work out as often I like.

It takes a smart person to break things down in simple enough fashion for me to understand. And sometimes after “ball no go in,” it just takes a match for us to learn that sometimes “ball DO go in.”

Magic.

Now take it away Jordan.

The View

It's been so long since the last issue of From 231, I had to look up when we last published to get a frame of reference for all of the games we needed to cover! So, with that in hand, I've made the executive decision to pretend that the three matches played in Leagues Cup were a shared hallucination experienced by all Whitecaps fans, including all of the intense frustration at the team being so Guardiola-coded in possession but then still find ways to get blown out in transition.

I quite literally spent most of this morning reading The Guardian's first-matchday coverage of the Premier League talking about this very trend (most match winners on MD1 in the 26-27 season this past weekend were the lower-possession team) but sample size of one in the post-Pep era of the most visible football league on the planet doesn't tell us much. Quite frankly, I find it refreshing when my team holds 70% of the ball, and generates double-digit shots from poor areas and only gets one on target (more on this later.)

The first real match the Whitecaps have played since August 1st involved a trip to Seattle, home of the tail-spinning Sounders, in free-fall for some reason (injuries and a lackadaisical front office that doesn't seem interested in roster upgrades), with the 'Caps having a chance to lock up the Cascadia Cup due to insane scheduling (the Caps played their home/away against Portland in the first six weeks, then Portland's home/away with Seattle happened in the first two weeks of the post-World Cup schedule, and then Vancouver's home/away with Seattle is spread across the last half of the season, but after both of the Seattle/Portland matches).

The Caps spent the first half looking roughly like they had spent the past two weeks having a shared hallucination with their fans as they got back to grips with playing an MLS opponent (though, in true derby fashion, there was a cynical challenge that led to poor Jeevan Badwal suffering a concussion, that personally, I think should've been reviewed for red, but that's just me.) This forced the Whitecaps into subbing on Rayan Elloumi to replace him, and shift around the front line (playing without Brian White, who suffered a minor leg injury during the shared hallucinatory period for the 'Caps which would leave him out until the FC Dallas match a week later.)

Most 'Caps fans would be excused for thinking this is a prelude to something like a 0-0 draw, which is genuinely what I felt like we were on for - until Seattle's back line decided to forget how to defend, and gifted Rayan Elloumi space to receive a forward pass from Emmanuel Sabbi which he actually took a decent first touch and shot on goal for his first in MLS. Collective sigh of relief, because the number of chances that he's squandered of late has been highly frustrating (personally, I find that his heatmap as a centre forward is far too channel-centric in our system - if you watch his off-ball movement, he often finds himself "chasing" the ball when it's out wide, when he needs to be more central to be the cut-back or cross target for the attack from the wingers, which is how Brian White scores). Seattle's defense would also come in handy gifting us an insanely rare play by intentionally back-passing to the keeper, who picks the ball up, and granted us an indirect free-kick inside the 18-yard box. Some brilliant improvisation between the four-man set piece team of Oliver Larraz, Ryan Gauld, Emmanuel Sabbi and Thomas Müller gave plenty of misdirection to the Seattle wall, and Larraz laid off to Müller to ping one in off the far post and wrap the game up 2-0.

Nine-time Cascadia Cup champions has a nice ring to it coming off a get-right game against the club's rivals.

So, you'll have to forgive me for being somewhat scathing of the team for somehow finding a way to lose top spot in the West to a somehow successful Houston Dynamo team who decided (like many teams before them) that the best way to beat us is to pack 10 behind the ball, and somehow capitalize on a single mistake to win 1-0. Except it wasn't even a mistake, really. We got the defensive line back and stopped what should have been a somewhat scary breakout chance for Houston, only for a half-clearance to fall to the boot of one of their wingbacks and he hits a 0.01 xG, never-gonna-hit-it-again-in-a-hundred-tries golazo into the top corner. THEN they parked 11 behind the ball for the rest of the game and we never found a way to get a shot on target of the 17 we attempted all game. Oh, and VAR decided that calling back a goal for a foul 20 touches earlier in the play that would have equalized for us was the correct call. I'm a big fan of VAR, except when it's decidedly used to re-referee parts of the game that far back. Statute of limitations on overturning a goal being as far back as the change of possession is a little much. Anyway Jesper ripped the team in the post-game for this one due to the profligate shooting, and all of our focus turned towards Saturday's game against Houston's Texas rivals, FC Dallas.

Also, news broke in the Thursday-Friday cycle that maybe there was a deal in place for the Caps to run BC Place. This was then refuted by the club, and made a couple local beat reporters look mildly silly (though they claim that their statements were taken without full context, which, of course they were, it's Vancouver sports media), but anyway the #SaveTheCaps movement had a bit of whiplash going into Saturday's game. It's also important to note that for the Wednesday midweek against Houston, reported attendance was over 20,000 (though in-stadium, there were HUGE gaps in seating especially in the upper sections of the end where this newsletter normally gets published from) and Saturday's was reportedly over 23,000 (though, not quite full as there's a few visible empty seats here and there) marking something like 20+ MLS games where the Caps have reported over 20,000 in attendance. Nothing says Vancouver sports like supporting a winning team, so hopefully the team is done with these middling performances, right?

Well, Brian White was back from injury for the FCD match, and that seemed to say a lot, as the Whitecaps would start for the first time in club history, both of their high-profile Designated Players as Ryan Gauld and Thomas Müller would start with Emmanuel Sabbi and Brian White completing the front four. This game would get out of hand very quickly, as Sabbi would open the scoring 15 minutes in off of a corner kick that fell kindly to him, then his low shot wove through a forest of Dallas defenders to nestle into the far post, and the floodgates opened from there. Edier Ocampo was found with a long through ball that he deftly chested around his marker (who was left sprawled on the turf by the turn), which he then cut across to a trailing Brian White for a tap-in to make it 2-0. Few minutes after that, another corner found Brian White off of an Oliver Larraz knock-on diving header, which Mr. White hit on the half-volley into the upper 90 of the near post. And just to complete the first-half rout, Andres Cubas found a drifting Edier Ocampo back-post where he hit a hilariously slow looping header over the FCD keeper and under the bar to make it 4-0 after 45'. Second-half substitute (and resident newsletter favourite) Bruno Caicedo would find a fifth after coming on midway through the half, and this one would end 5-0, after another 17 shot attempts with 9 on target this time. The xG gods decided it was finally time to balance the scales a bit, and the Caps got a good win against a decent team (though heavily rotated ahead of their Leagues Cup quarterfinal this week, and their 8th consecutive road match).

So, what have we learned? Rayan Elloumi can score sometimes (he'd have two if his equalizer against Houston wasn't called back), if all three of our top players play together, we seem kind of nuts, and if teams want to try and play football against us, we look like world-beaters, but if they subscribe to the Diego Simeone Atletico Madrid playbook newsletter, they'll probably win 1-0 against us and get somewhat over-deserved plaudits.

Looking ahead to this weekend (finally, a week off, but then another 5 games in 14 days) we get Wooden Spoon candidates Sporting Kansas City next, who looked really poor in the first half against Atlanta United this past weekend, but got let back into the game by their opponents over the second half and really could've drawn that one. If we play like we did against Dallas? Should be another 3 points bagged. Especially since SKC seem to have a coach who wants to play football.

If I were a smart man, I would’ve reached out to all y’all in advance to ask if anyone had suggestions on where I might catch the Whitecaps FC play a little footy while in Victoria - apparently asking such a question to the hotel front desk is equivalent to asking them to explain the Quadratic Formula.

Yet with the result against Houston as it was, maybe they did me a favour?