Gonzales left Altidore wide open at least 3 times in the box, the last one resulted in a joke of a penalty. He needs to get better, but last year says he won't. Zlatan would have scored a few, Chicharito looks like he is in pre-season form - hopefully that's all it is, he was average tonight. Pavon was the best player on the field. Depuy has promise. Klesjtan is fine as depth, not sure he is a 90 minute player anymore. I'm not sure what the ref was doing out there. There is no point in having VAR if that is the result.
Darn, missed the game. Was just about to start when someone's random mylar Valentine's baloons flew into a transformer and apparantly blew it out causing a power outage that has yet to be repaired
So Kljestan a "traffic cone"? ok... So Katai, a straight red? somebody elaborate. Deserved red? was a sloppy attempt or intentional? Really happy to hear our D has picked up where they left off.
Based just on highlights (game stupidly blacked out for my East coast viewing location) it looked like same old, same old. Great moogly-ass goal by Pavon and some nice shot goal attempts by Chich. But of course we can’t hold up at other end. We give up first goal with very poor defending in the box. And Bingham makes all those great saves but then cancels it out by gifting a penalty. Whether u agree with the call or not David’s last second body push on Jozy was daft and unnecessary. Disappointing.
So the re Agreed. I guess its preseason for the refs too. The highlights are great but I am about to watch the full match as they had a scheduled replay at some ungodly hour and I recorded it. So belated musings to come but hopefully all the slop and Chich missing those sitters + defense + Bingham not just clearing that ball are all part and parcel of the pre-season and the rust. Same goes for Pavon. Wonderful as it was to watch, he was given lots of room to do just that by Toronto's cone D.
I still don’t get why the Galaxy played a man down yesterday. That had to be an agreement beforehand. Because otherwise, I would have expected GBS and Vanney to work it out and put another player on the field. That’s just weird.— Corner Of The Galaxy (@GalaxyPodcast) February 16, 2020 I agree. The red card looked dumb, but the decision to not sub in a 11th player after Katai's ejection looks dumber.
Ok, so on second look with benefit of SloMo replays Katai bought that red. So sloppy that it left me SMHing. He is not that kind of player but even by pre-season standrads...just no. Having said that the coaches should kept the 11-vs-11 for the sake of balance and fairness to the process. Kljestan is beginning his argument for a space on the bench. Agree on that but like Chicharito and most of the team, lets see some more. It's looking like its going to be a slow process. Not that 2 or 3 pre-season games is to blame but, you know. Llegett, I want more from him. He disappeared at times. Not acceptable for the regular season.
Are there any "extended highlights" available for this game? Or anyone have a link for a replay of the game itself? I've only been able to access the 4 min highlight reel.
This is seconds before their first goal. What's up with Aruajo - is he defending a ghost? He is clearly facing the sideline but their are no players there. He needs to be connected to DePuy, helping him protect the space in the box that Achara and Morrow are attacking. This poor positioning puts him behind the play the whole way and leaves DePuy the impossible task of defending against two attackers in the box. And we end up with a lesson on how to get 4 Galaxy defenders on the wrong side of the ball: In the highlights I saw another couple of examples of both him and Acosta getting caught flatfooted and out of the play. Araujo at least is young, so hopefully he will learn better positioning because I like his game in other ways.
Well I didn't see that replay so I will stick with my interpretation of what I saw above until I can view it.
That supposes that both the ref and Greg Vanney were ready to let them play with 11. Now, maybe they both would have, but we don't know that - one way or the other. The ref would not have had to go along with it even if the teams were willing.
Kneejerks: -Pavon is ridiculous and fearless to boot. If this is how he plays in pre-season, then Jesus. Amazing goal. -Good individual performances from Lletget, Depuy and Araujo -Chicharito looks a little rusty -I thought individual defending was improved*, but team defense still seems like a problem -*With the exception of Pipo; was Jozy his man? Seems like he lost him many times and I don't consider Jozy a striker with great movement. Overall, somewhat disappointing for me. The biggest change I'm looking for is a team approach to offense and defense and I'm still not quite seeing that. We're relying a lot on Pavon to create magic, which he can, almost at will, even more so than Zlatan -- but that's not a way to manage games sustainably. I blamed a lot of the disorganization on Zlatan last season, but there are no excuses for GBS now. So for me, the biggest thing I look for is some glimpses of a consistent plan to create danger with possession and reduce it when we don't have the ball and I'm still not quite seeing that. Hopefully, a lot of it is still team chemistry and missing Jona is a big component of our midfield. (Kjlestan seemed very off with the rest of the team about when and where to press). But TFC passed through us too easily too often and that's the biggest area I need to see improvement. As others have said, we looked much more organized when down to 10.
They should be outlawed. I'm always picking them up out of the wilderness, or else seeing them out in a tree or field somewhere where I can't get to the trash. Just this weekend - 2 picked up, 1 irretrievable.
I don't know where you got that stat (not questioning it mind you) but mlssoccer.com claims it's the third hardest: https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2020/02/13/2020-strength-schedule-rankings-who-has-toughest-schedule But their "schedule difficulty" ranking system appears pretty weak: "calculated by taking the 2019 average points per game at home and on the road for each team's opponent. " That means they don't factor in any roster changes or changes in player age and experience (538 factors in that inexperienced players will likely improve with another year under their belt while older players are likely to decline). And even their rather simple measure shows pretty small differences in schedule difficulties. Our opponents averaged 1.43 ppg last year while a middle-of-the-table schedule difficulty is 1.40ppg; a 0.03ppg diff only adds up to 1 point over an entire season. The most I would conclude from the mlssoccer chart is that MIN probably has an easier schedule than most.
Nothing stopping TFC from playing with 10 men. Not that I would have done that if I were coaching TFC. Kind of silly to complain about a scenario that happens in the regular season. Once going up 1-0, it was the perfect opportunity for the Galaxy to park the bus and try to see out the win. Which the failed to even attempt to do, of course.
Funny thing is that Toronto dominated us at 11v11. It was much more even game at 10v11. I just watched the match having been out of town over the weekend. I’m happy to have this sort of performance in the second to last preseason game. Toronto is a top team. It shows us our issues and the work we have to do. We were missing several important players. Hernandez was getting his first minutes. Let’s see us put a near first 11 out there next weekend and have a very strong performance heading into the season.
I thought the difficulty rating was the same for the second and third team listed. I may have misread it
You did not - it was my bad. I just glanced at the ordering and didn't notice we were tied for 2nd most difficult. Anyhoo....This year every team plays conference opponents twice and ten of thirteen non-conference opponents once. So the differences in sched difficulty comes down entirely to which 3 teams you avoid. In our case they are CLB, MTL and NER. So yes we are a bit unlucky that we don't get to avoid any of the top EC teams. So I take back my initial statement that the schedule difficulty differences are insignificant. I'm guessing that on average teams get one powerhouse on their skip list and we got none.
Btw Skydog, I did catch that Araujo brainfart and had the same reaction. For everybody who will or is an ESPN+ subscriber: Is MLSLIVE not part of that service this year and does anybody else know if they have reverted to free streaming through MLS site or otherwise again an independent subscription service?