VANCOUVER, B.C. – After the trials and tribulations of a year ago, it's been an offseason of stability thus far for the Vancouver Whitecaps.
With key players like Matias Laba and Mauro Rosales locked down to new contracts, the Whitecaps' only new addition so far has been Uruguayan striker Octavio Rivero as a young Designated Player.
But after several weeks of scouting trips, coach Carl Robinson is far from finished building his squad for the new season ahead and admits that he is still looking to add "a couple of players" before the opening weekend against Toronto FC on March 7.
"I'm always looking to add players," Robinson told reporters at the Whitecaps' first media presser of the new year. "Good players are important and how I juggle my roster will depend on whether I get another player. We haven't got that many roster spaces available, so it might be moving one or two pieces to bring one or two pieces in.
"I'm looking for 25 [more] goals from within the squad to get us up to the level I think we need to be competing with Seattle and LA and the top few places in the league."
Robinson is hoping that the addition of Rivero will contribute toward that desired goal tally, but was keen to stress that his new striker is just one part of what needs to be a better overall team effort in the scoring department.
Rivero adds to the substantial South American contingent in Vancouver and increasing those numbers further is still very much on Robinson's radar.
"There might be another trip that I go down there to, depending on what happens or what comes up," Robinson admitted. "But we know a lot of people down there and we're waiting for one or two things. Are there other players down there that we're looking at? 100 percent there is, yes. Will there be one or two more that come in from there? Yes, there certainly might be.
"A number of targets have been mentioned to us, which are still ongoing and we're looking at. We'll continue to do that and if anything changes at certain times, then obviously we'll be ready to go."
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Robinson has just returned to Vancouver following a trip back home to the United Kingdom over the festive period. The 'Caps coach spent Christmas in his native Wales but it wasn't all pleasure, with Robinson taking in a number of matches in England and Scotland. And he wasn't ruling out some new additions coming from that visit.
"There's one or two that are quite interesting," Robinson said. "There were two players we did look at that we were quite interested in, but that might have slowly died at the moment because they've managed to get back into their teams. So we'll still continuously look.
"It all depends on character as well. That's why I went back for three weeks. To watch them train and see what they're like and speak to managers there and see if they're good guys. And they certainly are. So if anything's going to happen it's probably going to be later in January on those guys."
Michael McColl covers the Vancouver Whitecaps for MLSsoccer.com.
