SEATTLE -- After the Vancouver Whitecaps were made to look decidedly average by a rampant Seattle Sounders in a 3-0 defeat on Wednesday night, coach Carl Robinson will be looking at how his team responds from a first loss in eight matches.
The loss pulled Seattle to within a point of Vancouver at the top of the Western Conference standings. The Portland Timbers and Sporting Kansas City are also there one point in back of Robinson's men. Vancouver continue their travels Saturday to Kansas City, who are the league's last team without a loss at home this season.
"You can't win every game," philosophised Robinson. "We've lost an unbeaten run, now we have to start a new run. It's about how you bounce back... We need to be better in certain areas."
Vancouver's recent run of form has seen them climb to the top of the standings, but without turning in what many see as commanding performances. It would be easy to read too much into Wednesday's heavy loss in Seattle, but Robinson says no one should be writing his side off just yet.
"It's one game," Robinson said. "When you lose a game of football you're always open for criticism. We're top of the table with four games to go. Not many people would have said that would have happened, but it is happening.
"[The players] deserve a lot of credit, but we have to keep fighting, we have to keep grinding, we need to keep working hard and doing the details. When you play top teams, good teams, the details are the most important thing."
It certainly wasn't the return to Seattle that Vancouver striker Fredy Montero was hoping for. Although disappointed with the overall team performance, the Colombian feels the 'Caps playoff fate lies clearly in their own hands and performances.
"We're confident," Montero said after the match. "We know that the rest of the games that we have are going to be difficult, but we're going to look for our playoff spot. The next game in Kansas, we have to get some points.
"Right now, it depends on us. The way that we see it is that we need to get the result that we want to. We need three points to hold the spot in the playoffs."
That's the mindset Robinson wants his team to have for these final four matches, and he's happy for everyone else speculate whether his team deserve to be there.
"We just focus on ourselves," Robinson said. "Everybody else does the talking and we just focus on what we can do, and all we've got to do is prepare for a tough game in KC on Saturday. Then we'll deal with the next game and then we'll deal with the next game.
"Everyone else will make brilliant predictions and assumptions and things like that. We won't even get involved in that. We'll just focus on ourselves and try and get as many points as we can and see where that takes us."
