Big win and against the Crew no less. The team played better in the 2nd half, but Gio and Jona still hold on to the ball way too long.
Good match. Turning point? Let's hope so. Tough away run coming, including a match versus our ungrateful children up the road. I'm curious where Romain fits into this 3-5-2 going forward. Will we continue to see him off the bench?
Hopefully this is trend that Galaxy can build on. The power was always there somewhere among all these players. Locked up. We still need help at CB but this is a good start,
If we had won against SJ/DC and lost against the Crew, as the records might have predicted, we would have picked up 6 points from 3 games and been relatively OK with that. Instead, we tie the games we should have won and won the tougher game and end up with 5 points from the 3 games. Still not the point total we should have gotten, but a reasonable haul. Plus, I think we are now on a five game unbeaten streak.
Well. That was nice. The question is— was it just an anomaly or a turning point with some key players back. I guess this 3-game road trip will tell us....
This is Zlatan's team now - ironic that he is not a DP. He absolutely owned the Crew defense. We could trade Gio and Jonathon tomorrow and not miss either one. Very fun game tonight to watch. Let's go get some more wins!
Optimists stop reading now. Ok you've been warned - if you proceed it's your own fault. <start rain-on-parade> I love the win - we really needed it. And I hope it is that magical turning point. But the realist (alternatively debbiedowner) in me thinks the score flattered us mightily. Now if we won 4-0 while out shooting them handily I would say this game did indeed indicate some kind of massive improvement on our part. But the fact is that even on our home turf we were out shot 20-14 overall and broke even on shots on goal at 5. And a lot of this differential is a reflection of how easily they ran through our midfield, especially in the first half. So I would be surprised if this is a "turned the corner" game. I think its more a function of a "things finally went our way" game. Again I hope I'm wrong about this. Btw I know many will say "oh well, their shots weren't good ones" but statistically a team's average shot differential is one of the best predictors of future performance even when shot quality is ignored. Obviously playing style affects this stat a bit but in general its a pretty good indicator. Surprisingly its a better predictor of future W/L record than even a team's current W/L record. I think there are a couple reasons for that. First shot differential is less sensitive to luck than most soccer metrics like, say, score (see Russia-Spain, Brazil-Belgium, ...). Second shot differential is a good proxy for midfield and defensive strength; to get a shot off you first have to advance the ball into the opponents final third and then find enough space to get the shot off. <end rain-on-parade>
This is a real issue. Our best formation right now is --------Kamara-----Zlatan------- ------------------AM----------------- ------X-----X---------X-----------X ----------X------X----------X------ To get four attackers on we have to shift Gio or Kamara wide and that undermines both of their games. And it would cost us a defender when even having the 7 in defense doesn't seem like enough. For me, some rotation of Kamara, Gio, Zlatan and Alessandrini in those three positions seems best. Given injuries and schedule, having four players for three positions is not unreasonable, although uncommon in MLS. Managing the egos is probably the biggest problem.
I thought Columbus looked good until our first goal. They really seem to know what they want to do when they have the ball while we look much more ponderous on the ball. They easily could of scored a few in the first half. Once we got the VAR decision in our favor we looked much better the rest of the match. I don’t know about turning point but there were some bright spots.
If Berhalter doesn't get hired for the Nats, I'd love to see him take over for Sigi next season. He implements a system that emphasizes possession and creating chances. He's done a great job with limited resources in Columbus. I'd love to see what he could do with the pull and resources of the Galaxy.