The Vancouver Whitecaps Best Eighteen on January 12, 2012

Joe Cannon
Alain Rochat - Carlyle Mitchell - Jay DeMerit - Young-pyo Lee
Russell Teibert - John Thorrington - Gershon Koffie - Davide Chiumiento
Camilo Sanvezzo
Eric Hassli

What's this?

With all of the Vancouver Whitecaps roster moves early this off-season, I thought it might be useful to keep things in perspective. So, after every couple of major changes, I'll provide an update of what I view as Vancouver's best eighteen at this precise moment in time, counting only players either under contract to the Whitecaps organization or seemingly certain to become so.

The first installment was on December 1, 2011.

As many a fan has grumbled, the situation doesn't look that much better than it did at the beginning of December. The wingers looked unconvincing, the central midfield eyegougingly weak in front-line talent, and the goalkeepers inadequate: we now have a good starting goalkeeper (even if it's the same one from last year) but haven't really sorted the other two.

Heading into the draft, the Whitecaps still have more than one Andrew Wenger's worth of problems.

Notes:

1. Changes from last time: John Thorrington and Joe Cannon, both re-signed, return to the starting lineup and displace Philippe Davies and Brian Sylvestre. Those two are kicked to the bench.
2. Also appearing, albeit in a bench capacity, is Martin Bonjour; he knocks Michael Boxall out of the eighteen. That is only an educated guess.
3. Newly added but not appearing in the eighteen are midfielder Matt Watson and winger Lee Nguyen; I agonized over whether Watson or Davies would make the bench but in the end I took the youth of Big Phil. You could make an argument that Nguyen should be the bench winger in lieu of Michael Nanchoff, but I wouldn't. (The better argument would be for Atiba Harris, who I once again leave out because I don't think he's good.)