We are less than a week away from the start of the 2018 season and that means it's time to think about how we'll do. I'm thinking we're a wild card play off team. We won't win the wooden spoon, but we'll compete for that final playoff spot. I also predict we'll have to be active in the summer market-- some of our new players seem like they'll struggle. Ola will be our top scorer and perhaps MVP, but our surprise player will be Carrasco.
We're still too weak up top and in defense (though improved in both spots). There is literally zero hope beyond Kamara in the forwards group. The only way we'll be very successful is if the Dos Santos brothers surprise us. Not convinced that will happen. Otherwise we are super mediocre.
I'm thinking 4th place finish if we're lucky with injuries. Sigi and Dom are quality coaches, and our team has definitely upgraded, but it's hard to have any lofty expectations. I hope to enjoy Galaxy soccer again!
This was a fun read, the 2017 predictions... https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/predictions.2039169/#post-35172706
We are a very average team through the summer (just outside the playoffs). We sign Zlatan and a defender in the summer, squeak into playoffs and exit first round to a team that plays like a team. Gio sucks again, because he has sucked every year as a G. Oh, and Bingham is not the answer at GK, should have signed Ousted. Klein declares the year a success and gets another 5 year extension on his contract. Vagenas gets the corner office. Perry Kitchen and Kamara are the best players on the field.
We make it as the fifth seed, and becausd I’m an eternal optimist, I say we magically catch fire and win MLS Cup in extra time.
Would’ve been fun to do an end of the season recap. “Disappointing player: The Whole Team, Coaching staff, and Front office.”
Lletget coming back will help. Dos Santos bros, Joao disappoint again. Cole injured most of the year. Kamara is good. Alessandrini takes a step back. Defense is a little better but still the weak link. Fight for a playoff spot, barely make it, lose, quick exit.
Concur with most of this. Like last year though I’m going to say a respectable showing in USOC, because unlike Curt, Sigi isn’t dumb. He knows appearances in a cup final buy you time and winning them gets you to the next season.
In the style of last season: Finish: 4th Playoffs: 2nd round exit Golden Boot: Kamara Assist Leader: Alessandrini Surprise Player: Hilliard-Arce Disappointing Player: Feltscher Is Sigi still the coach at the end of the season?: Yes Is Sigi still the coach at the beginning of next?: Yes Kamara will do well (10+ goals) Gio will be the weakest link in an otherwise MLS contending front 6, but I think he'll do better than last season. Kitchen's going to be one of the most important pick-ups over the break. Someone unexpected is going to step up and be "the answer" on defense, helping things fall into place: look for Arellano, Romney, Hilliard-Arce or Klimenta to make a splash. Bingham will come into his own as he builds confidence, but will still be just average. With a full pre-season, Jona is able to put his stamp on midfield (admittedly, more wishful thinking than prediction
538 has LAG ranked 9th in MLS. A credit to the rebuilding job that Sigi has done. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/mls/ Now if the $5MM DP plays like one ...
I think my 2017 prediction was spot on. This year I'll go out on a limb and say we sneak into the playoffs, then who knows.... I do think we will field strong lineups and take the USOC seriously and at least make the Semi's....
Time for me to be a debbie downer. I just don't see this group as it's currently assembled doing much. Maybe still in the hunt for one of the final spots but we have a lot of players I just flat out don't like. Goalkeeper: We'll live or die by David Bingham. We have a lot invested in giving him the time he needs to see if he can get back into good form, but man has he looked shaky in pre-season. I can see his confidence shattered early due in large part to a bad defense around him and he fails to return to the form that had him on the fringes of the USMNT. Unfortunately for us, Slyvestre is as advertised: a 2nd division goalkeeper. He'll get a few starts in the Open Cup and we'll be knocked out by a lower division team thanks in large part to an error of his. Vom Steeg doesn't feature unless we get hit by the injury bug, and he'll spend most of his time with G2. Fullbacks: The starting spots are Cole's and Feltscher's to lose, which the latter will do slowly and painfully. Rolf's resume is just awful and at this point I haven't seen anything impressive from him in the pre-season. He'll end up getting most of the minutes at RB but we'll try out Klimenta and Cato who will both be unimpressive. Cole has another half decent year that people will call "solid" purely because he looks a lot better than the other defenders on the team. His age is already apparent and his offensive abilities will continue to be approaching nil but he'll still be a smart player on defense. If he stays injury free, he'll play most of the minutes on the left. Romney and Arellano won't see much time on the left in MLS play unless Cole goes down. If he does, Romney will fill in and be mediocre. Anyone who thinks Skjelvik can fill in on the left should note that while he was a left back up until two seasons ago, he was switched to center-back precisely because he wasn't playing well as a fullback. We won't use Skjelvik here any more than we did Van Damme. Centerbacks: It appears that Skjelvik and Ciani are the starting pair. As much as I'm concerned who we pair with Skjelvik, I'm equally concerned that Skjelvik himself going to be good enough to consider our #1 centerback. He's got the pace to cover for his mistakes but I've not been happy with the pre-season he's had. Even if he's good, he'll need time to settle in and form a partnership and I don't think that happens quickly due to lack of good centerback options next to him. I think he has a rough start to the season but we press on with him and he eventually finds his feet to have a okay back half of the season. If Ciani isn't bought out pre-season, he'll get some start, lose us some games and quickly be benched. Steres, Romney and Hilliard-Arce get shots to be the #2 centerback and ultimately Steres wins it. Romney plays very sparingly (as does Arellano) and Hilliard-Arce looks rough in his minutes early on and given that we'll be battling for our playoff lives, we don't risk letting him develop and use Steres instead. Defensive Mid: Kitchen is a terrier. He works hard and fouls a lot and endears himself to the fans. He'll also miss some games to red cards and yellow accumulations. I personally probably won't like his recklessness but he keeps the #6 on lock-down the entire season. Carrasco will see some minutes in the dog days but won't be a major factor. He'll be adequate in his time and that's about it. Center Mid: Jona is here and plays well. Nothing really to say there except he probably doesn't play to his salary but is still the most important central piece in midfield. Pedro doesn't improve from last year and continues to be the embodiment of mediocre. Baggio will want a piece of that action, though, and will see plenty of time filling in during call-ups and injuries and playing just fine but not really doing much. I'd be surprised to see Lletget centrally much this season. Wing: Alessandrini has a worse year than last year despite having Kamara to cross to. He'll still put up a good g/a tally (18+) but he's not going to reach last year's numbers. Lletget recovers well from his injury and wrestles the starting spot away from Boateng. Lletget's play earns him his way back into the USMNT fold and has a solid year production wise, with 15ish g/a. Boateng continues to frustrate me and never develops the final ball. People will still love him because he passes the eye test and works hard but he has another bad year (and yes, last year was bad for him). He's Bryan Jordan with a better touch. Pontius will play on the wing a bit but will be mostly played up top due to our lack of options. BJIV, if healthy, might see some play on the right, as will Cato (if signed, which seems likely). Neither play will be great down the wing though. Attacking Midfielder: Basically it's just Gio here, who will have a season somewhere between his 2016 and 2017 seasons. He won't get close to the MLS Best XI this season and we finally cut the cord on his experiment in the off-season. I don't like Alessandrini centrally and while Lletget could play here, I don't think it's his best spot as I'm not sure he has the abilities to play a #10. Attacking wide player or striker is where I think he'll be best utilized. Striker: Well, we have Ola Kamara. That's good on the surface but he'll not replicate his goal tally for Columbus this year. We don't have a team that's designed to get him the ball in the way he was successful in Columbus and I think a large part of his and Kei Kamara's success is due to the way Berhalter designs the team. If Zardes has double digit goal production this season (which I don't necessarily think he will) then we can safely say that it's Berhalter's system that can turn these guys into high goalscorers in this league. That being said, Ola is still a huge piece that was missing from last year and I'm happy to have him on the team. He still is a double digit goalscorer for us. Our depth here though is iffy at best and unless we pickup another player we'll not have any other striker score more than 6 goals. BJIV struggles with concussions and even if he doesn't retire he just won't ever become the player his potential appears to be. Lassiter doesn't step up and scores at most 4 goals. I think we'll see lots of Pontius up top, which I'm not hugely excited about but at least he's full of experience which is nice. He'll end up with around 7 g/a. If Kamara goes down, we have no shot at making the playoffs. Our Season: We start off slow and never really pick up a hot streak. By summer, we're within spitting distance of a playoff spot and make some mid-season changes (potentially even moving Gio) and end up in a low playoff spot as the season nears it's end. We fall back out of that playoff spot by the end of the season, however. Changes are made in the front office again. Maybe not Sigi but missing the playoffs means someone gets fired. Gio and Jona leave the club. Finish: 7th in the West Playoffs: None Golden Boot: Kamara Assist Leader: Alessandrini Surprise Player: None, but I hope it's Hilliard-Arce Disappointing Player: Skjelvik (we'll have many worse players but he'll be disappointing relative to expectations) Is Sigi still the coach at the end of the season?: Yes Is Sigi still the coach at the beginning of next?: Yes
It's not clear to me if the 538 rankings account for off-season team personnel turnover. I read the methodology pages and didn't see any mention of it. Some rating systems use individual player ratings and so naturally account for players coming in and leaving, others are just based on past club results. It seems 538 ratings are the latter sort. But I'm not sure about that.
I've come to the realization lately, the I've been away from LA for so long that often times it's hard to get excited and into the team (see my spotty record of posting here the past couple of years as an example), but for some reason this off season has got me back into it. I'm sure I'll end up disappointed in the end, but I'm going to hold onto my elevated excitement level as long as I can. I recently moved from Dallas to Colorado, so will make my way down to Denver to see the G's this year in person as I did for the previous 11 years as a season ticket holder for FC Dallas. No season tickets for the Rapids though i'm not committed enough to make the 60+ mile drive (i lived *very* close to Toyota Stadium so it was easy), but plan on taking advantage of MLS Live (or ESPN+ or whatever it's called these days) to watch most as many of the games as I can.
I'm going out on a limb and saying that we'll finish somewhere in the top 20. It's a bold statement, but I'm willing to stand by it. In honor of the upcoming season, I also want to do my part to help improve communication, comprehension and reasoned discourse on internet discussion boards. Far too often, it's tough to know what the proper response is in a given discussion when one feels that the other poster has not fully grasped the complexity of one's argument, or whose response is simply inadequate for the demands of reasoned discourse. To this end I have created a meme of sorts, that while some may argue is obtuse, or too subtle to get one's point across, I believe that upon inspection and reflection, it will ultimately serve it's purpose in improving communication, comprehension and reasoned discourse on internet discussion boards. For the next 10 years it may be used free of charge. After 10 years I may restrict it's use via a paid subscription model, but I haven't decided that as of yet. Anyway here it is. Hopefully, it will be of some use and I will have done my small part.
Going to be optimistic as well. We make the playoffs, but I don't see us going far within it. Compared to last year, that's optimism.
That's about where I am too. Hoping that going to the games will be more fun this year. The bar is pretty low.
Took this from GalaxyKoa since I mostly agree I still think Sigi did an amazing job in the off-season, but fixing an entire team in one winter window is too much to ask. If 50% of the players work out, that's probably pretty good odds, but it's not enough for us.