Apparently Lleget confirmed his nose is broken. Anyone know if you can play with a broken nose? Maybe with a face shield?
Yes. A week to work on the tissue inflammation and have a phantom of the opera face shield custom made and he is good to go. We need his rusty butt in there to at least work it off. Two key players hurt in the first game and now Lletget down with a busted face. We have the Loons up next but this is not your 2018 Loons and they just put a wallop on the Quacks 3 to 0 and last week the bested Whitecaps 3 to 2. The Loons have reinforcements and are not screwing around this year. I almost feel sorry for Guillermo, he has his work cutout for himself. Jeez
Not to write off Minessota, but it was the quakes and a very poor Vancouver side. There was a stretch at the end of the first half of the Dallas game where we had complete control. I think that's what our midfield is supposed to look like. I'm hoping we get to see more of that.
We really do need to get a striker to back up Ibra. I'd even take Rossi at the moment. Pontius is wasted there.
I would be more OK with Pontius as a spot starter at forard if we finished a few of our gilded chances in the game. Our early season form was apparent in our poor finishing. We had these 5 chances that should be a goal 60%+ of the time: Lletget (2), Pontius (1), Feltscher (1), Alvarez (1).
Oddly enough, the analysts at MLSsoccer.com seem less concerned about the start to the season for the LA Galaxy than we do.
Corona needs more time to gel, but even still, that's a very technical midfield but also pretty soft. It lacks a true hard man, IMO. Teams like LAFC and Columbus do well in the regular season playing an attractive, high-possession style with a finesse midfield (and right now, we're far from that) but then get taken out in the playoffs. AU has a finesse style, but also a dedicated d-mid -- the same one we once had on our team, matter of fact. Jona plays as the deepest of the mids, but he's really more like Busquets; receive the ball, turn out of trouble, make the possession-keeping pass. Well, even Busquests is screwed if Barca is managing 36% possession. Our true D-mids are injured, so I get it, but that midfield is best suited to keeping possession.
I assume you mean Jeff Larentowicz. AUFC is playing Jeff as one of their back 3. Eric Remedi is their Dmid. At 5' 6", he is hardly a physical destroyer. Outside of Perry Kitchen, I have no clue who you are referring to. Based upon Perry's play last year, I am not sure he is the Galaxy's best Dmid. I would rather see Carrasco start their then Kitchen. I think the Jona from the last 6 or so games last year is also better there than Kitchen.
Agree our midfield being more about finesse & possession and short on bite and I like the Busquets descriptor of JDS. But I’m also wondering - who are these hard man DM’s you speak of? Kitchen doesn’t even have nibble, much less bite. And his constant jogging translates into about 5 touches per 90 (1 of which will be a foul a yard outside the box in the final minutes). Carassco is better and has a little toughness but he struggles to keep up with the speed of play both physically and mentally. That’s why he’s a 30yo depth journeyman. We don’t have a good ball winner on the roster imo. JDS at least has a good work rate, stays goal side and doesn’t turn the ball over.
That's true, but up until middle of last season, Larentowicz was locking down the role until Remedi replaced him. It's less about physicality and more about specifically what role and duties they're carrying out for the team. Kitchen, Juninho and Carrasco are all defensive midfielders by trade. Kitchen may not be a very good one perhaps, but that's still his position and the position he was brought in to play. In those last few games from last season, we out-possessed every team we played. In a match we are not necessary likely to have the possession, such as when we are missing Zlatan and Romain away to FCD, I would start a dedicated D-mid, who would've had no other job but to camp in the space Acosta scored his shot from for instance.
I agree with that assessment all around. It's not that I think Jona's not good in that area, but his passing and ball conduction are too good to park him right in front of the CBs and you might want that for a particular match.