This will be a hard one but so important. The difference between winning and going into a 2 week period between matches having held serve at home verses losing and stewing on it for two weeks before facing a tough Portland team at home at the end of the month is huge. Hopefully the injury report is kind to us this week.
We are not your father's Loons...this we know after two matches. How MUCH...still to be determined. The FO actually made some decent acquisitions this offseason.
The way Alessandrini grabbed his hammy I would have been very surprised if he was back at practice. It takes a while for it to heal, then more time to build up strength to reduce risk of re-injury. And after the rehab he will likely still need a week or so of participation in trainings to get his touch and conditioning back. Zlatan still being out though is bad news I didn't really expect.
Didnt' Lletget have to wear one of those face masks before? Why am I remembering that? Word is Zlatan might've been playing through injury in the first match. No DPs, no problem!
My guess is Lleget won't be in practice until the end of the week. I have no clue how much time is needed for his broken nose to heal enough for him to start playing again. I'm guessing he's wearing a face mask for awhile, they probably just want to make sure his nose was set back into place before clearing him to train. Was that elbow to his face retroactively punished? I believe GBS said Romain will miss 2 games, so I don't think he'll be around for this one. No clue about Zlatan. He may not be training as a precaution and might be evaluated at the end of the week.
Excited for another game, but this doesn't look good. Another game with Pontius wasted up top it seems. Can't imagine things will work out for us.
Also just noticed Minnesota really haven't played anyone really "difficult". Their impressive start might just be good luck with scheduling. San Jose was terrible and looks terrible again. Vancouver's team really isn't inspiring. Not saying Minnesota secretly suck, but I think they are beatable.
Our defense will probably need to get a shutout for us to win the game. We are down Kamara, Zlatan and Alessandrini who together produced 47 goals + 23 assists and were responsible for us having MLS's 3rd best offense last season. That's a lot of offense to lose. Pontius was coming in on top of that last year, now he's being asked to replace it.
Looks like they may be thinking of flipping Pontius and Antuna up top. I suppose that would give us some speed instead of holdup play at the point of attack. GBS says he’s hopeful Zlatan and Romain can return to training next week. Both are out Saturday. @LAGalaxy has been experimenting with Atuna as a middle striker this week— Kevin Baxter 🇺🇦🏳️🌈 (@kbaxter11) March 14, 2019
Maybe just batten down the hatches and pull out the ol' 5-5-0 formation..... -----------------------Antuna ----Boateng--------Lletget------Corona ------------------------JDS Skjelkdl---------------------------------Feltscher --------Romney--Polenta--Steres ---------------------Bingham
I like it! And not just for batten down the hatches reasons. This would get our best players on the field and get Skjiukd and Feltscher further away from our goal, letting them focus more on advancing the ball. When we did this with Cole toward the end of last season it helped our defense and helped him be more effective going forward.
Sad that I agree that the best way to make our defense better is to get Skdkldfk and Feltscher further away from our goal....
It will be interesting to see how Guillermo handles this situation given the few options he has. Parking the bus or basically fielding the same team and going for the points. On the field i am holding out for a hero. Let's see if the new guys are worth anything at all or if, as I suspect, we got a bunch of square pegs for our round holes. The implications of which I don't even want think about right now as GBS and deKlose did the picking. Yeah, I know it's early but the signs are there.
This is true. MN is opening the new stadium and teams that get new stadiums almost always have great seasons the year they open. I can't wait to sit in it when LA comes to town
Antuna at forward? Well, not as bad as Gyasi at RB I guess. Antuna getting stripped in the box is technically better than on the wing, I think. I like parking the bus. And, Pontius has scored from coming out wide. This is gonna be a weird one.