Chivas USA Coach Robin Fraser likes to stress things like attitude and resolve when he talks to his team. He might want to start mixing in a few words about scoring, too.
Two games into the Major League Soccer season, Chivas is not only winless but scoreless as well, its latest loss coming Saturday in a chilly and near-empty Home Depot Center, where the Vancouver Whitecaps rode defender Jay DeMerit's second-half goal to a 1-0 victory.
The win was the first ever on the road for Vancouver, which entered MLS last season, while for Chivas the shutout was the ninth in 16 matches dating to last July.
"This one can be summed up pretty quickly," Fraser said afterward. "We weren't aggressive enough to take advantage of some space that was provided to us. We weren't aggressive enough to make ourselves goal-dangerous."
Chivas was active, though. Despite missing three starters due to injury -- including striker Juan Pablo Angel, the team's top scoring threat -- Fraser's team had the ball for nearly two-thirds of the game and got off 11 shots, nearly twice what Vancouver managed.
In the first half alone, Chivas took seven shots and had four excellent scoring chances -- but failed to finish any of them. The first of those did prove costly to the Whitecaps, however, because keeper Joe Cannon appeared to tweak his left quadriceps when he collided with Chivas forward Ryan Smith in the eighth minute.
Cannon gamely tried to continue, even making a couple of nice saves. But soon after leaping to knock rookie Casey Townsend's soft shot over the crossbar with his left hand, Cannon limped off the field, giving way to Brad Knighton.
But Chivas couldn't solve him either. So when DeMerit scored on a diving header in the 68th minute, it proved to be all Vancouver would need.
The Whitecaps had been frustrated moments before, when a header by forward Eric Hassli was deflected over the net. But on the ensuing corner kick, Chivas midfielder Oswaldo Minda, who was marking DeMerit, slipped on the wet grass and the Whitecaps' captain made him pay, redirecting Camilo Sanvezzo's bending feed to the back of the net.
Fraser's team played with urgency after that, forcing Knighton to make a couple of scrambling saves -- including one on a Rauwshan McKenzie header in stoppage time that left the keeper writhing on the turf in pain. Chivas had one final corner kick, on the final play of the game, but when Vancouver cleanly cleared Laurent Courtois' try, referee Jair Marrufo's whistle blew.
"To score goals we need to realize that we have to want to score goals," said Fraser, who criticized his team for being too tentative near the Vancouver net. "To score goals it takes aggressive attack-minded moves. And we didn't have enough of those today."
The official crowd count, based on tickets distributed, was announced at 7,723. But with rain and temperatures hovering around 50 degrees, there appeared to be fewer than 2,500 in the stands.
kevin.baxter@latimes.com
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