I always thought it was the Penedo debacle that kicked off this shyt storm but, that was actually preceded by the true culprit, me thinks; Gerrard. edit: Oh, and I couldn't get a good enough signal to watch on Saturday night so, as the apparent glutton for punishment that I am, I'm about to watch the replay. I must say though, that the atmosphere in Oakland before the Raider game, tailgating and the crowd during the game, far surpassed my hopes and I had a great time at a sporting event for the first time in a while.
On that shot, and every other shot, he leans to his left. Most of the time he falls down, too. He needs to keep upright and over the ball. This is basic stuff, though. Much like... wait for it... his first touch!... which is why, if we are talking about improving, we should've cut the chord already.
I know it’s a joke, but an example of the causation/causality fallacy. The Galaxy suck, because for 9 years a competent General Manager and Head Coach who knew how to operate in MLS and convince AEG to spend money was able to cover the fact the rest of the organization was borderline inept. Honestly put any one of us idiots as the GM or President during Bruce’s tenure in LA and would things have turned out markedly different? I’d wager not all that much. I’ve been a Klein proponent since his appointment and given him the benefit of the doubt longer than most, but it’s looking more & more that Klein is just Lalas 2.0. I’m generally in favor of Sigi taking over as coach, but it was such an easy/safe choice in the face of a desperate situation, literally anyone on this board would have made that choice or Bob Bradley. In fact I’ll say I think some people here might have made better decisions than Pete/Chris. Almost to a person we all declared Curt would fall somewhere between remarkably disappointing and utterly catastrophic; I don’t think many would have signed JdS; I don’t think a single one of us would have traded AJ. Anyway I digress.
I don't know that most people in the sport would have looked at Rogers injury, looked at AJ and decided that two bench players who nominally played in different positions, were a better solution as starting RBs.
I thought we had a "Is Gio a Bust?" thread his first season here? I wanted to bump it, but I can't find it.
In a million years I could never coach like Bruce but I think I would have done better on LA Galaxy personnel decisions. Things started falling apart when we released Penedo - Bruce didn't want to commit to another season with him but I thought he was a bargain and wouldn't be that easy to replace. Then Bruce brought in two terrible keepers in "Old Ricketts" (who cost us dearly in the playoffs) and Kennedy (who never did anything). The poor personnel decisions then just continued as we dismantled a good team of in-prime Latino-heritage-give-it-your-all-and-bleed-Galaxy players (Juninho, Sarvas, Omar, AJ) and replaced them with old overpriced Europeans. And Gio.
I wonder how many MLS skeptics from the Mexican/Mexican-American community turned up to see Gio and based purely on the Galaxy's recent optics, walked away feeling like their opinions were validated.
I love Juni and Sarvas but the players Bruce wanted to replace them -- de Jong and Kjlestan respectively -- would've been huge upgrades. Unfortunately we got Gio and Gerrard.
I don't think De Jong was an upgrade at all, much less a huge upgrade. While it's true that he was a better destroyer - that was pretty much his entire game. His passing game consisted mainly of simple passes to the nearest player or lumping it forward. But Juninho was more like a quarterback for us. He had great vision and anticipation; when he got the ball his first touch was usually one that would best relieve possession pressure for the team or a nice 1 or 2 touch pass that furthered our attack. He didn't suffer from the "just pass it back to where it came from" syndrome (something our team is really suffering from now). He mixed up short and long passes, down the middle and long accurate balls to the wings, he repeatedly switched fields rather than passing the ball back into the crowded part of the field it came from. Sure he wasn't perfect (very occasionally a bit lazy getting back) but he read and played the game in a way that made the whole team better. DJ did not do that. Also Bruce agreed to a built in escalation in DJ's contract that made little sense. IIRC we were already scraping together TAM/CAM/SPAM dollars to get through his first season and lured him by promising a big boost his second season that we couldn't afford under the salary cap w/o hurting the team. I think bringing him in was a bad move all around. Releasing Sarvas made a little more sense. He wanted a big raise and was getting expensive for his quality. But then he brought so much heart and energy to the team. Plus we ended up paying a lot more to other players who didn't bring half as much (energy or quality). And while Kjlestan would have been better than Sarvas iirc Bruce got outmaneuvered on that deal, so not really a testament for him. To be fair I may be mis-remembering that - there were two allocation players in a row that "we were going to get" and neither one worked out.
This. Especially the section on Juninho. When he was absent, we weren't the same team. We've not come close to replacing him.