Nothing personal of course but I disagree with pretty much all of this post. Well except for your statement that Feltscher started off slow. Skjelvik is not as bad as the rest of our back 6 but big whoop - that is saying almost nothing. For MLS he is a pedestrian cb - not terrible but nowhere near good enough to justify his salary. He isn't particularly good in the air nor does he bring much physicality or "bite" to his position. His positioning sense ranges from solid to absolutely terrible when he is last man back. As the most experienced and almost $1m cb I would expect him to be a vocal leader, barking instructions or at least actively communicating with Steres and the rest of hist teammates. But if he does this I haven't seen (or heard) it. At the least he could show some competitive fire - you know, rallying the troops or getting mad when he or a teammate makes a mistake. All I've seen is some head hanging after we are scored upon. Overall I would say Skjelvik is a B or B- level cb making A or A+ cb money. And (to repeat my previous posts, ad nauseum) as far as our outside backs Rolf and Cole go - I just don't understand how people who say they are good defenders are evaluating them. Rolf is a very poor 1v1 defender - opponents routinely jet past him like he's a cone. Cole is better at staying goal-side but his lack of quickness forces him to lay off - opponents cross the ball on him repeatedly almost every game. Plus (my other oft-repeated pet peeve) Cole is the absolute worst about chasing the play (to the middle or upfield) and letting himself get pulled out of position. That leaves our defense completely unbalanced which leads to open spaces and 2 v 1's for opponents to exploit. And exploit them they have. And the only thing Kitchen has solidified in recent games is our opponents score line. And don't forget rock-foot Bingham. So your argument that our Keystone Kops defense sucks mostly due to the play of Steres and Ciani is just beyond me Skevin.
Yeah, I agree. Skjelvik isn't bad per se, but we needed another Van Damme (or Omar) and he ain't that. He ain't even a Chad Marshall. Ciani is closer to that than any other CB we have in his better moments. He can really command his area. Probably the most technical CB we have, but he's so slow he's a liability otherwise.
995067217984282625 is not a valid tweet id There were rumours about a Dallas interest in January, but Omar's salary was to big for FCD. If we don't want Gonzilla I hope whoever wants him will have to give up a lot to us to get him.
We should make a simple trade with FC Dallas to give up our first spot in the allocation order. They give us 600k in TAM money and in exchange we give them Gio, Ciani, Pedro and the first allocation spot. Done deal.
I wonder what the FO would do if we reacted like this... Hamburg fans are not taking their first-ever relegation from the Bundesliga well... 😳 pic.twitter.com/pbTzkGqefd— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) May 12, 2018
You know I've never been to keen on this idea here in America, but with the way jobs at all levels of the club seem to be safe and settled with complacency this would have to cure this problem. If we had a year like the last we would deserve to go down to USL and then I would love to see what all the FO and management executives at AEG would do? I don't condone the use of violence or vandalism anywhere but I honestly feel and suffer that frustration and impotence when the club you love seems more lost than a tourist in Compton or Watts.
Franklin is on $150k a year with Vancouver. He was available. That pisses me off. It’s a no brainer he’d have given us more productive minutes then most of our defenders at a fraction of the cost.
Free agents RB last winter : - Beitashour (275 k at LAFC) - Franklin (150 k at Vancouver) - AJ (200 k at Houston) NYCFC picked up Anton Tinnerholm, Swedish first division best defender last year, and they pay him 350 k per year. He's been very good for them. I understand we weren't interested in AJ (because of the ACL injury) and Franklin (who's on the downside of his career), but Beita has been underrated for his whole career and Tinnerholm was available. But we chosed Feltscher and his impressive resume (german 3rd tier and spanish 2nd division) for 250 k per year and Klimenta (who must be very bad to be behind Steres in the depth chart). And by signing Skjelvik we clearly looked in the wrong scandinavian league.
Seems odd that we weren't willing to commit to our core players who proved to be assests in mls (AJ, franklin, Juninho, etc) but we were willing to spend on a guy from Norway who's unproven in MLS. And how much did we pay Jones to ******** up the locker room? (I know tam makes this easier but still sucks)
It's worth noting that, even though we are tops in rosters spending (just below TFC) if you factor in acquisition costs (transfer fees) ATL and LAFC have spent waaay more than any MLS club. Interesting to see if that pays off for them -- they either have to win or sell those players to get some ROI.
Atlanta have set themselves up to re sell their players. Tata, was a great choice not becuase of his resume but what he was able to bring (epecially to a new club). He set a foundation, style, and he has a black book of talent the they have been able to bring in.
I hear you, but Junihno washed out at Xolos and couldn't hack it with a mediocre Chicago last year, AJ did his ACL and unfortunately will likely be half the player he was when he gets back, and Franklin is 33, was unwanted at DC, and hasn't seen time for a weak Whitecaps team. Not to single you out, but way too many of you are reliving the highs of 5 or more years ago and trying to get the band back together. (Let's also Memo Gonzalez and Mike Randolph back!) The league has passed all these players by. IMO we'd be just as weak as we are now even with the 3 you listed above. That's probably a good thing! The league is growing in skill. There's a reason Kelly Gray doesn't play anymore (other than being old now), and my eyeballs and sanity are thankful for that. We need to look outside the league to get better players and at the right positions. The problem is apparently we suck at doing that. I'm fine with Skjelvik - he's not been great but even peak Fabio Cannavaro would look bad with this cast. I don't know what the answer is. We looked ok with Rolf but even then the problems were pretty evident. There's no reason why our right back should be our most vital player for linking defense and attack. For playing a role that he really shouldn't have been playing, he actually did pretty well. Now that he's out, since Romney and Kitchen apparently can't attack or even show for the ball (I don't entirely blame them, they have their skillsets and they don't include going forward) we're always outnumbered when pushing the ball forward and it puts way too much pressure on our defense - Cole pushes up to give an option and his output has actually been good so far this year (3 assists already eclipses his output last year), and then Romney chugs along a few seconds later, but by the time he gets close to being in a helpful position we've lost the ball and are susceptible to being countered. It's a ********ing mess, but there's no doubt in my mind any of the 3 former G's listed above would not have helped with that if we were relying on them to be anything but depth. Maybe Juninho, if it was 4 or 5 years ago. Funny that you mention JJ, because I'd take him over Kitchen in a ********ing heartbeat. He'd be a bandaid, but at least can competently provide an outlet in transition.
Last news on potential new signings : TRAINING UPDATE: A player the Galaxy are thinking of looking at is Mario Rodriguez, a forward. He plays in Germany and is on loan from Dynamo Dresden. He’s originally from North Hollywood.They haven’t brought him in yet.*Information from Larry Morgan#LAGalaxy #MLS2cincy— Corner Of The Galaxy (@GalaxyPodcast) May 18, 2018 24 years old forward, former member of the Galaxy Academy who didn't pan out in german third tier. We don't need another forward and he's too old for Los Dos (but they could use him TBH). Odd rumor. EX #PhilaUnion #WhitecapsFC and #Dynamo #MLS defender Shannon Williams (28) is training with #LAGalaxy Sigi: "We are looking at him" @RobAbramowitz @GlennCrooks @thegoalkeeper @tkolker @arieljudas @JuanMapu— John E. Rojas (@jrojasa75) May 18, 2018 Another mediocre defender with MLS experience. Maybe we don't have enough money to sign a competent RB and a competent CB.
Rolf Feltscher is a mediocre Right Back. He ball watches too much and gets beats for pace too often; yet he is leaps and bounds better than anybody else we currently have on this roster. Now when you compare that with a 33 year old Sean Franklin, you might be able to make a legit argument that Rolf is currently better, or is at minimum, equal to Sean; and that he would deserve to start over him. That being said, Rolf is injured and I'd be willing to bet money that a 33 year old Sean Franklin would do better in the role of backup Right Back than anyone else we currently have on this roster at the moment. We sure as hell wouldn't be blaming losses on the Fullbacks if he or an AJ DeLaGarza type were still here. (And yes I say that considering AJ is 30 and would be coming off of an ACL injury.) I for one, and I don't think anyone else for that matter, is saying that LA should go bring either of these guys back if there are better options available. Especially if doing so was strictly in the name of getting the band back together. By all means, LA should go get the better player if getting said player is possible. However if either of those guys was available and there were no better options, it would be stupid to not go out and get them considering the current state of the team.
It annoys me because we spent all last ****ing season paper thin, if not absent at RB and they've done the same thing again. This is all just deeply frustrating. And we're entertaining another forward??? Technically, Zlatan's best position is also Kamara's best position and it might even be Gio's, but that guy is so inconsistent that it's hard to know what his natural position is. We also have Lletget and Alessandrini who are more wing-forwards than actual playmakers (though I prefer Lletget in midfield anyway). Our only actual sources of crosses are Ema, who I don't feel gets called out enough for blowing hot and cold, the injured Feltcher and the ancient Cole. Despite this, we are finding the net at the moment, so lets just ditch Feltcher, sign TWO moderately competent RBs and forget about forwards. Once we've sorted that out, lets take Ciani out to a field and have him talk about that farm we always dreamed of, where he would tend to the rabbits...
This above all is what disappoints me the most. I'm so disappointed in Sigi and Dom for this blatant error. It's dang near unforgivable. Bruce would have never done this. He would have brought other guys in and if they failed to produce he would have swapped them for more guys next year. In the meantime, he would have first tried midfielders/wingers as a fullback since they have to switch positions with the defense so often. He would have only tried Center Backs as fullbacks as a last resort and that would have only been after trying going with 3 CB backline instead. Sigh,...It's decisions like this that shows exactly why Arena had those 2 in his back pocket more often than not.
To Sigi's credit, he did get players at the needed positions. At right back, he got Felcher and Klimenta. It's not his fault Felcher got hurt but Klimenta not being good enough is on him, so a mixed bag. But again, it was during the winter window which limits what you can do. We needed a DM and he got Kitchen, who was American (and so doesn't need an international slot) and looked good in the preseason. We needed centerback support and he signed one and drafted one. I think it was a mistake to get rid of all the goalkeepers we had, but again, Sigi went a found probably the best available American goalkeeper. I think we really only missed one position and that was a left back for the future. I don't think the problem is not understanding what we need, but that we had to fill 4-5 starting positions in a rush, which means we had to spend more and take chances on players. Right now, those chances have mostly gone against us.
I think you are letting Sigi off the hook. Since Sigi is both coach and gm he deserves credit when he brings in great players and improves the team and that means he also has to take blame when he brings in players and they don't get the job done. And defensively this team isn't getting the job done. Between half and two thirds of our six player defensive core (goalkeeper, backline and defensive mid) this season has consisted of players handpicked by Sigi. And that defensive core is giving up 1.9g/gm and is one of the leakiest defenses in the league. A middling defense could be excused because of the problems Sigi inherited. But us having an awful defense - so far - is on Sigi. And if you look at the individual picks you can see why we are having problems: Feltscher - looks decent going forward but has been a very poor 1v1 defender. He's slow and non-agile, gets caught upfield on counterattacks and is exposed by quick wingers repeatedly. Kitchen - looked ok for a game or two but then his lack of athleticism started being exposed big time. He doesn't have the quickness or footspeed to stay with his mark, stop counters, pressure opponents in the midfield or win 50-50 balls. The fact that his decision making is poor doesn't help. Bingham - In 2017 he lost his starting job and rightly so - his 62% save percentage ranked 22nd out of the 25 goalkeepers who faced 60 shots or more. Clearly Sigi thought that he could do better than that and indeed his save rate is up to 67% so far this season so by that measure he's improved from really bad to low average. However - to my eye - he has been poor at controlling his box and has allowed several goals dues to poor positioning and slow reaction times. Skjelvik - The best of the defensive pickups. Decent man marker, decent speed. But he's physically soft and doesn't dominate the box like you would expect from the highest paid defender in MLS. Would make a good 2nd cb but not physically gifted enough to be the primary cb. For almost a million per year salary Sigi could have done much better. Player evaluation and acquisition is the biggest part of Sigi's job since he's in charge of building our roster. And his 2nd biggest job is coaching them up so that the whole is better than the sum of the parts. We are one-third through the season and so far Sigi has failed rather spectacularly at both.
What happened to that Cato guy we were trialing in pre season? Bring him in, He’s better then what he have healthy right now.
I’d settle for a mediocre mls defense right now. If we could reach that level we would win 3-2 instead of lose 4-3.