P/I/P Game 9: L.A. Galaxy vs Chicago, SATURDAY 5/6/17, 7:30pm PT

We can only hope that it is still rust from the long layoff. We need his energy on the field since other than Boateng there isn't much. But that first touch issue arises again, and again, and again.

 

So if we can't count on Jelle in central defense and our right back (whoever it is) continues to be at fault in 90% of goals against, why not try Jelle at leftback (natural position) and Ashley Cole at right back (I feel he's played there at times) ? Might fix the outside back problem. Of course that depends on Steres and Romeny in the middle but worth at try?

 

I have this feeling that Zardes is most effective when he's the third most dangerous player on the pitch, sort of like early LA era Magee. When we had Keane & Donovan it opened up tons of space for that third attacking player. Magee learned a lot from Keane and developed in to an effective primary attacking threat, but Zardes’s game is so different I’m not sure how much is transferrable.

I think the same is true of dos Santos though maybe he's best as the second most dangerous.

 

Why are we looking at a point against a mid-table Eastern Conference team viewed at home as some sort of turning point/success?

Curt is framing this like “The Miracle on Ice” when in reality it’s a poor performance and a poor result. It only looks positive in comparison to the first half and season in general. And it had nothing to do with his coaching.

I'll gladly eat crow if this game does turn out to be the catalyst for a revival, but in context trying to make this anything other than lipstick on a pig is misguided.

 

Lots of mixed emotions for LA fans after yesterday's match. Glad I attended in person as it ended up being one of the more fun matches to attend live. More on that later, but the Van Damme sub deserves its own post IMO:

LARS had already been chanting "Fire Onalfo" when Chicago were up 2-0. They switched to chanting "W-T-F" (not the letters) when Van Damme went off. There was collective bafflement about it in my area, even though Van Damme was technically at fault on both goals. This was clearly a huge moment of the match, though, as it was Onalfo basically dropping the hammer on one his biggest personalities AND the team captain. We wondered if Curt would have the stones to do this, but frankly I think he chose the wrong time and the wrong player to make an example of, especially since it's clear he won't curtail Jones.

(Edit: Didn't think I had to explain this but...JVD was one of our best players last year. I got hassled for saying Gio was 2016 MVP over Van Damme. He lead a poll on which defenders MLS players feared most and was an MLS All-Star. Now he's not good enough to start for the LA Galaxy? We can quibble about whether he should be captain, I guess, but no way he should get pulled like that, IMO.)

Let's be clear about what happened here: Curt Onalfo used a first-half sub to effectively dismiss his team captain during a home match and passed the armband to Jermaine Jones. If there is a power struggle b/w Jones and Van Damme for leadership of the team as implied by Kevin Baxter and anyone with eyes that has watched Galaxy matches, Curt has clearly decided to throw his support behind the Jones campaign. Curt has moved Boateng to the bench, Gyasi to wing and Gio to whatever to accommodate Jones, so giving him the captain's armband was basically the only thing left (Did I mention, btw, that Jermaine Jones got a raise to come play for the 5-time MLS champs LA Galaxy? Yeah.)


Jones going down moments later is a happy accident for Onalfo: the team's performance after Jones' removal and the resulting outcome actually emphasize the terribleness of Onalfo's decision-making, but not as much as a blow-out loss with Jones still on the field and Van Damme watching smiling from the bench would have. He can evade the responsibility for that decision in the press (or even spin it to make it seemed like the Van Damme removal "worked"), but he won't in the locker room.

 

Great post but I'd put more blame on both goals against to Dialo before van damn. Burned by Accomb, lead to pk. Caught way upfield chasing a hopeless long ball switch which lead to Chicago marauding down his abandoned spot and lead to goal. At least that's how it appeared from my seat. Perhaps JVD could have cleaned it up but dialo was awful in first 20 mins.

 

Gyasi I think has developed into a more dangerous Target Winger / second striker. In the pecking order our best true 9 is McIrney now (better than McBean at least)

 

Kevin Baxter also said that he thought JVD was struggling with the armband. That he's put more pressure on himself this year (than last year) and he's taking the losses really personally. Baxter goes on to imply that it could perhaps be because he's now the captain of the 5 time MLS Cup champions and feels there's a certain level of expectations each year for the team to be in Cup contention. If JVD feels that way, he's is not wrong obviously, but Baxter believes this pressure is causing JVD to try and play hero ball. Trying to will the team to victory.

Perhaps it's a mental thing or perhaps it's the lack of talent around him, but we're not getting the same JVD as we did last season.

 

I wouldn't blame JVD for second goal, either. Gio had dropped centrally deep into the middle. So, Gyasi moved centrally up top. Diallo filled in behind on right. That left all the huge space between Diallo and Steres. Again, the issues are positioning, shape, and coaching.

On the PK, I thought Jelle got ball. But, I haven't seen the replay.

 

Diallo showed poor judgement trying to win a hopeless switch from the other side of the field. He sprinted 15-20 yards towards the attacking end for a ball easily one by Chicago and won in a way that sent them off to the races in the area Diallo abandoned. Amateur hour stuff. Especially, as you noted, his midfield cover (Zardes) was playing center forward at the time.

 

It's crazy blaming Van Damme for our defensive woes. VD has had to do a lot of emergency defending and has saved our ass so many times already this season. He is not the problem.

We are giving up goals because a) our right side is getting cut through like butter and b) other than Boateng our midfielders are flat out ignoring their defensive duties.

Right side problems - Alessandrini plays little to no defense and he is backed up by a succession of inexperienced right backs who get beaten repeatedly. Most of the good chances and goals we've conceded start with us allowing an opposing attacker to get behind our right back. As soon as that happens chaos ensue and we have to go into emergency defending mode.

Defensive mid problems - When we don't have possession our mids need to either track back with their marks and/or proactively fill in the space in front of our back line. In particular our dm's need to clog the vulnerable 10 yards or so of space right in front of our cb's. Instead they are lazily trailing the play or ball watching. The resulting gap right in front of our back line is heaven for opposing playmakers and late attacking runners.

The pk goal was a prime example of all of these problems. At the beginning of the play Accam has the ball at his feet with Diallo in front of him. Meanwhile Steres has dropped too far off Nikolic, allowing him to be an unmarked playmaker. Accam does a simple give-n-go with Nikolic and Diallo is too inexperienced to read the play so Accam and ball are instantly behind him. Diallo recovers and catches Accam only to be faked out again. Accam is now on the end line with the ball at his feet. Emergency defending commences - Steres runs over to help but goes to ground prematurely. Meanwhile Nicolic is standing wide open and unmarked in the box as Husidic slowly trails the play and ball watches. (Pedro has ball watched the whole play). Diallo passes the ball to the unmarked Nicolic who makes a move with the ball in front of the vulnerable goal. VD goes for a slide tackle but misses and gives up a pk.

Van Damme definitely made a mistake. But he isn't the reason our right side is getting run over game after game, nor is he the reason our defensive midfielders are ignoring their duties to help out.

 

We weren't caught out on the pk goal. All of our back four were in place and goal-side when Accam starts the play with ball at his feet. Diallo getting beaten twice, Steres not initially marking Nikolic and then missing his tackle on Accam, Husidic lazily ball watching right behind Nikolic and then Van Damme's missed tackle cost us that goal.

Onalfo has no clue.

 

I agree that only the most unforgiving of interpretations would fault JVD for the goals. It was the only conclusion we could come up for why he was subbed, but even that would be terrible justification IMO.

I think those things're probably all likely / true. But it was Onalfo's choice to make JVD the captain and to start him in this match, therefore it only reflects poorly on him that he has to pull his team captain before halftime and give the armband to someone else. So I fault Onalfo for handling his captain poorly, in this instance, even if he thought he was playing/leading poorly.

The fact that Onalfo also totally got it wrong vis a vis which player was actually causing the tactical imbalance in our team causing us to leak goals and generally play terribly infinitely compounds the awfulness of the decision. Given how the players played after Jones went out, I wonder if they agree with Onalfo's rather bold treatment of JVD.

 

Yep. He creates crisis through bad decisions and then usually screws up the crisis response exacerbating the crisis.

I'd say he's a caricature of a bad coach in a cliched sports movie, but he has so many bad qualities and so few good ones the writer would probably get notes for being unrealistic

 

I'm really hoping that the come back in the 2nd half won't overshadow the dumpster fire that was the 1st half. How many tactical subs has Onalfo made so far in the first half? Too many. That tells me that despite having the week to prepare and plan for his opponent, he consistently fails to get the plan right the first time.

The repercussions of that have to be huge. Why should the team trust him? Should players like Boateng or JVD who have been the victims of these tactical subs trust his judgment? The man management has been poor. When your two leaders are in a power struggle, and he openly takes sides, how does our team react? Do they splinter off in factions?

Btw, Guesman (Corner of the Galaxy) was reporting that the younger guys were upset that Onalfo wasn't holding the older guys accountable for their mistakes. Last night he pulled JVD.

Kinda tells us that there's already groups within our players. Even if he's addressing it, I don't know if the 30th minute of a game is the place to do so.

I don't think he coaches another game at SHC. He's done once we come back from the road 0-3.

 

Be still, my heart.

 

I'll do a match write-up because there's actually something to write about for a change. If this team can play like it did in the 2nd half, we may not be a championship contending team, but at least we'll be a team we can bother rooting for. The effect on the players both attitude-wise and tactically once Jones left was palpable. They actually looked and played like a team.

Gio: Happy to see him get the goal; I can see it meant a lot to him and I loved the energy in his celebration and also how he gave credit to Romney on the flick-on. I thought he showed leadership; he worked hard, even got some tackles and and tried to drop deep to create. His heart's in the right place, but he can slow things down and never, ever passes to the right side of the field (EVER, sorry Diallo, I don't care how much space is in front of you).

Zardes: Worked hard and did important work stretching the field, but will be dogged by some chances he spoiled with a poor touch and some shots he should've at least gotten on goal. Still, it's a sign of progress that chances are at least falling to him in dangerous places, which is more than I can say for previous weeks; hopefully he can keep building on this and find his form (would've been great for him to open his account with that header, alas). In good form, Zardes was a special player for us and the NT last season, so I think he can get there.

Pedro: Don't want to overstate it but...this was the most promising game I saw from him. He looked a lot more confident showing for the ball in dangerous places, had some good combinations, ideas and passes. Definitely something to build on.

I wanted to point out this difference: against the Union last week, when, according to Onalfo, we deployed a 5-man midfield with Jones as a 10 and Pedro and Husidic behind him to have a numbers-up advantage, the Union actually won more duels than us (42 to 50).

In this match, playing most of the game with a 4-man midfield with NO JONES against a much tougher team including Dax McCarty, Juninho and Peppa Pig in midfield -- we actually won more duels than the Fire (59 to 48, the only other time we've won more duels against a fully-staffed team was in the loss to FCD). We also earned more corners than we did against the Union, generally had better chances and, of course, scored 2 goals. In all, first time in a long time the players gave you something to cheer for consistently.

Fans: Weirdly ,the atmosphere has been good disproportionate to the play this season and last night wasn't an exception. Maybe only the most rabid and diehard fans are coming out at this point, but I'm proud of the Angelinos that braved the cruel (by our standards) elements to cheer for their team to get that 3rd goal right up till the end. Galaxy fans take a lot of crap for being plastic or whatever, but lots of people came out for a team that really hasn't been earning it lately and created pretty good atmosphere.

 

I was surprised also, I expected less people considering there was a much hyped boxing match going on at the same time. A win would've been nice but I also want Curt out. I want to see them show some fight also, we're a conflicted bunch.

 

I like your enthusiasm and all and I agree we played much better in the 2nd half. But part of that was due to Chicago making the same mistake Arena used to make - changing style of play to hold onto a lead. Chicago went into a much more defensive posture the 2nd half. And when they took out Accam that allowed us to push up even more without worrying about his counter-attack speed. So there were at least 3 variables that changed at the same time: Jones went out, Boateng entered, Chicago quit pushing forward. But you are right - the team became "cheerable."

Unfortunately there is also the bottom line - playing at home against a team that has been terrible on the road (0-3-1 before last night) we should dominate. Instead we got off a total of 2 sog vs their 6 sog. Luckily for us both of ours found the back of the net so we get a point.

Even if Onalfo knew what he was doing this team would be in trouble because it has major personnel issues. We have no consistent goal scorer, two slow and alarmingly unathletic defensive mids, and only one experienced outside back. Then add in a terrible coach (both tactically and man management wise) and it all adds up to our current 18th place in pts/g with the hard part of our schedule ahead of us.

All I can say is bless your optimism.

 

A sobering thought. At the quarter mark of the season Minnesota United have 33% more wins, the same number of losses and have scored 33% more goals. They have conceded more goals and have played one more game than LA. They also have less than half our salary spend and tied with D.C. at third lowest spend. They have no DPs.

 

Drop Jones. Play Husidic and Pedro together. Jones can be an impact sub.

DO NOT bench Van Damme Onalfo. You got lucky we tied after you subbed on Van Damme. Van Damme was the 2nd best defender in the league this season. You can't put any blame on him. If you can't get one of the best defenders in the league to play, well then that is on you.

 

I get the Van Damme sub. Curt was sending a message. The message was ...

"I'm not going to be around much longer longer."

 

I'm not ignoring the flaws the team has, but IMO there are concrete positives from this match. Yes, Chicago probably closed up shop too soon...but we were able to capitalize on it and consistently create danger in the final third -- that hadn't been happening before. We created more dangerous chances in this match than against the Union.

 

I really think most of you are letting your dislike of Jones cloud your vision. For example your comments about Pedro, completely overlooked his continued failure to play even poor defense. Trotting along behind the play and passing the ball back to the central defenders have been two area where his play has not changed since game 1 of the season. And he continued to do this long after Jones left the game. Can you or anyone else reference attacks that he broke up by virtue of his own play?

Yes, I will agree that his overall play was somewhat better after Jones left, but IMO that was more because Husdic took over the defensive mid role and Gio dropped back to the attacking mid role. Meanwhile Pedro played the just don't get in the way position.