By Aaron Campbell, (@AaCamp81)
Whitecaps Beat Reporter
Top 2
Matias Laba
Another dominating performance by Laba. Was a pain in the side of all SanJose players in the first half. Time and time again he was winning challenges and making tackles to disrupt the Earthquake attack up the middle of the pitch. Is continuing his dominance this season as the best defensive midfielder in the MLS and opposing teams are starting to take notice. He also calmed Deybi Flores down a few times to make sure the young 18yr old Honduran wasn’t playing too far over his head. His partnership with Russell Teibert had excelled all season but with the way Carl Robinson is using squad rotation this season a player like Laba will have to be the constant on the pitch for this team. He will be the player that Robinson knows he can start game in and game out and not have to worry about his performance.
Kianz Froese
You know the team as a whole struggled when the next best player for me on the pitch was a substitute player that only played 10 minutes plus stoppage time. He came in off the bench and completely 75% of his passes on the SanJose side of the pitch. Was one of the only players that was able to create space well he had the ball and was able to make clear passes. It might be time for Froese to get a run in a USL game to get a full 90 minutes and to see what he can do at that level. Might be good for his confidence to play a full 90 then to get all these 10-15 minute runs for the first team
Bottom 2
Pa-Madou Kah
Another game and another unnecessary yellow card for Kah. You could tell he was tired from playing so many minutes in the past 7 days. With the injury to Deigo Rodriguez it was not the way Carl Robinson wanted to play Kah this week. Was lucky that Jordan Harvey was paying attention on the SanJose goal that was called back by the offside. Kah had no idea that a forward had gotten behind him and would of easily of been beat. Will need to pick up his quality of play if he wants to keep starting for this team.
Kekuta Manneh
Was Mr. Invisable for this game. Wasn’t able to use his speed other then in the middle of the pitch and wasn’t able to get a shot on goal. SanJose did a good job of making Manneh run into the log jam in the middle of the pitch and it gave Manneh no place to go. It will be a game to forget and will have to move on to the next game. With Mauro Rosales coming back and new signing Cristian Techear coming into the squad it should push Manneh even more in training if he wants to keep his starting spot on this squad.
