On the positive side, Cole will be back so Romney can move back to the right. San Jose has been pretty bad and leaking more goals than the Galaxy, so I am hoping for another victory.
Hope we try out a 433 with Lleget Jona and Kitchen in the midfield. That should help us control the game and with Gio hurt and Zlatan suspended to let's everyone else play in their best positions. I'd also like to see Alvarez brought up and out on the bench. Reward him for his last 2 games with Los Dos, and give him an opportunity to come off the bench.
I don't know about the back four*, but that is exactly the front 6 I would start. *I have no idea which combination of 4 defenders from our roster might actually, you know, be good at defense.....
JDS has been one of the harder working players on our team. Gio and Jonathan share last names but not work ethic.
Sadly, not the last two games.... (He may be playing hurt because he doesn't want to miss the World Cup, but his effort and impact on the game has been pretty terrible these last 2 matches, IMHO).
You know typically players want to prove themselves in a world cup year. We somehow got a couple of players that want to do absolutely nothing till the world cup passes. It pisses me off that they are not fully committed to this club. Look I get the world cup is a once in a life time opportunity for most players, and it is a massive deal, but you still are employed by us, and we deserve better.
I seem to remember that we were ticked off at Donovan before the last world cup for taking it a bit easy. He was also coming back from injury. Hopefully Jona will come back more focused. I don't have any expectations of Gio at this point, but he's still a decent player and maybe has something left. Gio may not go to the world cup, and if not, and if he's healthy, he might have something to prove like Landon did.
I thought he had a high work rate against Montreal. At least in the first half. I got a bit sleepy (watching on DVR late at night) especially during the 2nd half so maybe my perception is a bit off. But below is his action map from Opta - looks pretty active and effective to me (he and Lletget had the most successful touches on the team). I would like to see more forward passing though:
I will admit I was watching him more closely in the second half when we really needed him to step up since we were playing a man down and he seemed invisible to me....
I knew the score before I watched the game. I'm always surprised how much more forgiving I am when I'm not worried about the outcome.
Well we won't have to worry for the next 3 games about how to fit zLAtan and oLA on the field together. No Z for this Friday's game and then no O for the next two. And then we get a couple weeks off during WC action to figure things about. I just hope we can find a serviceable defense for the next 3 games...
I bet Gio and Jona will be trying really hard this match, if they play. The Mexican team is flying into LAX on Thursday, and this is an opportunity to show off that they should be playing on the WC team before the match against Wales (who arrived today).
I genuinely hope you are right. But it would not surprise me, if he doesn't get to go to WC, that he would go into a sulk.
Would not surprise me either. And then, how would we tell? He hardly plays, and when he does, he's invisible most of the time.