I'm afraid those days of JJ being a top central mid are gone. His quickness is not there anymore, and he is not making a mental adjustment to the loss of athleticism. Hope I'm wrong.
Not too mad at this result. First priority has to be to not lose and not concede and we achieved that. We also created chances and limited our opponent for the most part. Nothing flashy, but it's baby steps at this point. I thought Zardes played well in this match and was one of our most effective attackers, next to Alessandrini and Pedro. I think most will agree Gyasi has to do much better on his shot that hit the side netting, which was one of the best chances of the match, but if he can build on performances like these, I think he will have a big impact for us this season. His finishing wasn't there, but I thought a lot of the other work he did up top was pretty good.
No. We can blame Klein and Vagenas for a lot of things, but thinking Zardes (who's paid 577 k per year! His salary itself is a problem of managment, I agree), a National team player, should be our starting forward, I was OK with this at the beginning of the season (and I'm not a Zardes fan). And I think every Galaxy supporter agreed with it. Gyasi having a bad season is Gyasi's fault (and the fault of the rest of the team too), but the choice of making him our starting forward after his solid 2016 season was right.
Blame all around, no argument. But at this point I'd rather have Zardes leading the line then any other option we currently have.
He was just as mad at the rest of us. Reading his body language on the missed shots...he's frustrated. I'm not sure if the pressure is a good thing right now. He just needs to bang a couple of goals in so the pressure erodes.
He started the game frustrated. He took a ton of shots in pregame warmups. Couldn't hit any of the crosses. Did better on the passes from a coach at the center of the box, but still missed more of those than he should. He's never done well in the lone man up top, target-style striker role, though. He's always been better running onto the ball while others like Keane or Donovan did the work to put the ball in the right place for him. If he's not playing wide, then I doubt he's going to find form the way they are playing him.
But wouldn't playing him wide mean that either Ema or Romain are on the bench? And they have been among the few bright spots in an otherwise dreary year.
You could have copy-pasted that from posts about Gordon 7-8 years ago. Which I assume means Gyasi is going to LAFC (and he’ll score against us), TFC (and score against us), San Jose (and score – a lot – against us) before returning to LA as a persona non grata before scoring many important goals for the Galaxy on the way to another MLS Cup.
I certainly did not agree with this at the beginning of the season and said so repeatedly.* First I didn't think people were appreciating how much offense we were losing from 2016. Despite getting mixed reviews and each playing less than 1500 minutes each Keane, Gerrard and Magee accounted for 19 goals and 17 assists. Second, based on Gio's long history it was extremely likely that Gio's offensive production in 2016 was an outlier and would regress to the mean. If so that was even more offense to replace. Third I didn't buy the wishful thinking that Zardes and/or McBean were suddenly going to become consistent goal scorers despite the lack of evidence for such a view. So it all didn't add up for me and a couple other posters, Lazy Assed Assassin being one I believe. Here is just one example of me going on about the need to sign an out-and-out proven striker in the preseason: https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/of...er-moves-thread.2036687/page-74#post-35138955 *Attempting persuasion through mind-dulling repetition is one of my favored tactics. For some reason it's ineffectiveness never deters me.
Yep, it's a problem. We started out with an unbalanced roster: NO depth on defense, NO quality defensive midfielder, NO quality forward but a BOATLOAD of midfielders. So then we add yet another "must-start" midfielder. So JDS+Gio+Alessandrini are locked in as starters. That leaves Jones, Boateng, Zardes, and Pedro all fighting for the other 3 non-defender starting positions. The good news is that finally we may end up with an MLS starter quality player coming off the bench. Personally I would stick with the Seattle lineup but replace Jones or Pedro with JDS. But I'm not completely sold on that - there might be some better ideas out there.
On Zardes, I pointed out on the same thread that he's only broke double figures once and that was alongside Keanovan. I also suggested that his 2015 season may have been closer to his actual level than 2016. His touch has always been erratic (he shows flashes of skill at times, but is just as likely to shin the ball into orbit while attempting a simple trap) and as we saw a couple of times in this game, he's a limited finisher. As for the game as a whole, I was actually very positive on it. Our defense looked competent and we created a number of chances. As the quality off the bench underscored, Sigi is working with limited pieces. As a first step though, this wasn't bad. As for JVD, I don't know where his head is sometimes.
Sigi only had 2 days to train with the team and based off his comments since he's taken over, he clearly prioritized stabilizing the defense and midfield. Now that he's got that in motion, my guess is he'll work on getting the team cohesive moving the ball forward. If our offense hasn't improved in the next few games, it'll be time to really worry.
I read that article and I wanted him to leave for Belgium immediately. Then I thought maybe his family could travel for a bit. Come see Los Angeles and visit Dad. Sure there's schooling and family to think of, but what the heck? Life's short how about an adventure for the family Van Damme?
Zardes didn't play poorly on Saturday. His finishing wasn't there, but otherwise I felt he had a good all around performance in the forward position, IMO, probably his best of the season. Not saying much, but he's been in very poor form this year for us as we all know. This weekend, Zardes lead both teams in both total shots and shots on target; previously he was barely even averaging a shot per game on target or otherwise (before this match, he had 12 shots in 12 starts!) If he's getting into positions to score consistently, he'll eventually put some away. Finishing hasn't really been a problem for our forwards, before this match they we rarely getting the ball in dangerous areas consistently at all. So for me, this is an improvement. Other kneejerks: Gio was pretty invisible, which has been a consistent problem under multiple coaches, now. I wonder if Sigi has a plan to fix this; I have some ideas. Joao Pedro, IMO had a very good match as well against a pretty strong midfield. 3 key passes 2 shots (1 on goal), 9 recoveries. It will be a shame to bench him for Jona. I also thought Jones had a good match as the CDM. One of my complaints about Alessandrini from early in this season is going to be more obvious later as the team becomes more cohesive, less individualistic and more good players come back. He's got to work harder to protect his RB AND combine with his teammates. His first move is to always run at 3 guys and get to the endline -- which he can usually do successfully -- but if we're going to be a good team, he's got to play with more dimensions. Why did we get so many yellow cards? I guess the guys were motivated. JVD, what're we gonna do with you, man? His propensity of getting suspended was one of the reasons he wasn't my MVP last year despite an otherwise outstanding season.
I agree about Zardes not being as bad as some have said, especially compared to his performances earlier in the season. He was very active throughout. I thought his technique (insert joke here) and decision making dipped in the 2nd half - looked like cumulative fatigue to me. I noticed that Seattle had a good game plan for Alessandrini - most of the time he attacked down the right wing they double or triple teamed him. It didn't help that he often had little support for combo play there (come on Gio - this should be your specialty). A couple of times he moved to the middle and seemed to be more dangerous - I was hoping he would make that adjustment more. Nevertheless he got some of our most dangerous crosses in. Seattle also did a good job on Boateng. Only once when the teams were getting spread out did he get any significant free space in front of him to attack.
Bruce was impressed enough with JJ to make him a WCQ starter 4 months ago. Sigi seemed impressed with Jones debut at #6. TT mentioned during the Revs broadcast that in conversations with Arena and others that JJ's future lies as a #6. If JJ agrees to play that slot, he could be a top 3 #6 in MLS. It is very clear that Pedro is not a capable #6. “I thought Jermaine Jones was really good tonight. I asked Jermaine to play a more defensive role, to sit and stay connected with the two central defenders and he was very disciplined, and he did that job. For our team that is where he helps us the most, and it allowed [João] Pedro to move a little bit,” Schmid said. “There were a couple of times where Jermaine could go. As their cohesion develops or as we continue to develop how I want us to play there will be more moments for him to get involved as well offensively but what I wanted from him today he did everything I asked of him, and I thought he gave a great effort. https://www.lagalaxy.com/post/2017/...jones-after-defensive-showing-against-seattle