Sooner than yesterday would be nice.
A quick look at the Whitecaps goalscoring charts tells a damning story. Pedro Morales is out in front with 8 now after his penalty against the Quakes. Most of them have been spot kicks but his 86 shots dwarves the rest. Darren Mattocks has 6 goals, Erik Hurtado 4 (all from that one burst before the World Cup), Kekuta Manneh has 3 (all early doors) and Omar Salgado can hardly get minutes on the pitch never mind goals.
The fact that Kenny Miller is the Whitecaps’ fourth leading scorer and he left after the May 3rd win against San Jose says it all.
"I think they are [good enough]," goalkeeper David Ousted told reporters. "They're young guys and they still have a lot to learn, like the rest of us. I do think that they have the quality to score and we believe in them. It's up to us as a team to back them up and keep producing chances for them. I believe we'll get those goals."
There is no getting away from the young factor. Hurtado is 23-years-old, Salgado just turned 21 yesterday and Manneh is 19. Even the injured Caleb Clarke is only 21. Darren Mattocks is an old man by comparison at 24. That may explain his wayward shooting, his eyesight is going.
However, if we take another quick look, this time at the MLS goalscoring charts, you see that blaming their lack of ability to finish on their youth is utter nonsense.
If you look at the top five goalscorers in MLS right now you’ll find Dom Dwyer (24 years old and 18 goals), Gyasi Zardes (23-years-old and 15 goals) and Erick Torres (23-years-old and 14 goals). All of them have more individual goals than the Whitecaps striking quartet combined.
Despite their woeful time and wasteful moments, Carl Robinson still has faith in his strikers, at least publically. Let’s be honest though, he doesn’t have any choice or any alternative but to back them. There is no-one else right now and just four days left to change that scenario before the roster freeze.
"They've shown that they are, in bursts," Robinson said at training this week when asked if they were MLS quality and up for the job. "On a consistent basis? That's the big question with any player within this league, especially young players, so that's the challenge we're having. They're trying their hardest at the moment bit things aren't going."
The questions keep coming though and they will continue to keep coming as the season progresses and the goals don’t come. It was the first question asked again last night after the win over San Jose.
"My young boys are very, very good", Robinson responded at his postgame presser. "I’ve got a hundred percent faith in them, as I say to you every week. We won the game today, whether they scored or not. It’s not about any individual. What pleased me the most was a team performance today."
That was a great part of the San Jose win. For the first time in a long time, the Caps played like a cohesive unit, and Sebastian Fernandez worked hard and put in one hell of a shift up front. Without scoring, obviously.
But as Andy O’Brien said a few weeks ago, if scorers don’t score then they will end up getting replaced. It is the nature of the business. That in itself must play in the minds of all of these young strikers at the Caps right now. That’s why they sometimes try too hard, look for the shot when the pass was the better option. Do they feel the pressure? Do they read the clamour of people looking for trades and new additions?
"I don't look at that at all," Erik Hurtado told AFTN. "That's negative thinking, negative talk. I don't like having that in my life and I know that the team doesn't like having that in the locker room.
"We've just got to be positive. People can say what they want to say. Bring in new strikers, bring in new players, but at the end of the day, our job is to create chances and to try and score, and whether people are saying it or people aren't saying it, we know that's our job. It's not added pressure when people start talking because we're soccer players, we've been playing it our whole lives, and we know what our job requires."
Like the job of a baker, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.