Thanks. Thought it might have been the game where Keane chipped Kennedy and where the Galaxy had tiki-taco in full effect.
Man, it's nice to be on the winning end of one of these, no? 3-0 30 minutes in, I'll take it. Cabral at least had an assist and hit the keeper. Grandsir found his finishing boots!!!! And should have had an assist, and earned the penalty! Vancouver had zero idea what to do with him down the left. Vazquez was pretty good centrally as well. Brugman had weird short-pass-itis. Julian did NOT leave the bad juju in Minnesota. Culpable in both goals. But whatever, a 5-2 scoreline? I'll take it. What this team needed.
Fun game to be at. Vancouver clearly didn’t show up. Massive game on Friday at home for our season hopes. Looking forward to it. game takeaways: -clearly Grandsir and Cabral with Costa sitting is our best bet if we insist on playing wingers. -our backline, no matter who is in, is always a calamity waiting to happen. That’s an equal problem to our bad dp signings on the list of why this season will likely end in the “failure” column. -ready to sell araujo at a profit. Feel like his stock will never be higher. -Brugman and Delgado are a good pair. Looking forward to adding Puig in there. -I love Vasquez so happy to see him have a great performance in this late stage of his career. Hopefully he and Puig can stay healthy and play the spot for 90 minutes between them from here on out.
If you weren’t at the game and only watching on tv, you missed the most intense action of the night… 1558845800490250242 is not a valid tweet id
Riqui was out there celebrating with the players to help get acclimated Welcome home, @RiquiPuig 💙🤍💛 pic.twitter.com/6iVDb4Teot— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) August 14, 2022
I have a feeling that he's gonna be targeted by opposing teams once he gets on the field. Both by defenders who'll want to get under his skin by testing him physically, but more importantly by opposing offensive players who know he's not the most aggressive or willing defender. He's going to have to adapt quickly, or else I think we won't see the best of him until next season when he's had a chance to really implement an off-season strength and conditioning program. Worked wonders for Cabral!* *Preseason only.
Nice game regardless how Vancouver came in to play. Great to see Grandsir score in bunches. Maybe that will give him a permanent boost of confidence. Same with Cabral working himself up to actually scoring himself. He had a decent match. Hell of a golazo by Vazquez. Efra with his sugarfoot. The issue of course is in consistency. Next is Seattle and Vanney's old pall Schmetzer. No matter how Seattle is doing in general they usually have an answer for galaxy. I'll get a better feel if this was just a flash of the pan or we are actually moving in the right direction. GALAXY!!!
Can Puig be someone like V Wouldn't you be the one in the best position to know where in hell the performance came from???
Yeah, so what went right in this match that we can build on? This is actually the formation and line-up we used a lot in the beginning of the season. Vasquez had a very good shift in the hole, so maybe that alone was the difference, or maybe Vancouver played right into our hands.
Based on my newbie observation, it seemed the Galaxy were able to exploit Vancouver both out in the wing and centrally. It seemed Grandsir was always available in the 1st half. I think Taylor was right that Vancouver's back 3 formation couldn't handle the width of Grandsir and Cabral. As for centrally, it looked like even though Vancouver packed the middle, the G's midfield had just good enough individual performances to get through it with their passing to keep the pressure on. IIRC, it seemed there were fewer instances of the Gs backpassing to the centerbacks to reset everything in the first half compared to the other matches.
i think the combination of Vazquez and Brugman helped keep possession in the middle moving in a positive direction better than when Raveloson was in Brugman’s spot. Edwards also played a bit more under control, while he and Araujo still offered the ability to go forward.
Okay I was not able to watch the game while it was running and had to watch a replay. It looks like Vanney must have been reading this thread because he essentially did exactly as I suggested except he also went with 73Bruin's suggestion of having Victor as starter and have Costa off the bench. Vanney also changed it up by having Grandsir start over DeJan. Grandsir put on his shooting boots as did Victor. Cabral also decided to be solid on the wing. End Result=We whooped their A$$ with Zero Excuse. I am now really looking forward to see what we look like with Riqui as CAM. P.S. After witnessing the utter beat down of Man United I am glad this win was as resounding as it turned out.
Another aspect of the game, and one of the reasons that Grandsir and Cabral were able to be as effective as they were, was due to the the Gs finding them on the run by providing good passes into space.
You are both right. This game is an example of how to fix what I complained about not happening last game. If you are going to play with wingers then they need to be able to create nice and consistent service. Plus it helped to have someone in the middle ready to receive for this service able to distribute forward consistently. Victor was the CAM for that job; and so long as Brugman and Delgado were willing to cover him defensively then it would mean he wouldn't need to drop back and wear himself out immediately. Plus since Cabral was on the wing, it was nice to have fullbacks willing to overlap to help not only create additional service but to defend out wide as well. Costa came into the CAM spot later and keep the same game plan going. And Sasha came in late enough to maintain his legs and help on defensive midfield duties. Again I can't wait to see this team with Puig who is supposed to be Victor Vazquez part 2.
Victor has been a goal generating machine wherever he’s been. Puig not so much. Now clearly Vanney wants Puig to be another Victor - but will this tiger change his stripes? Hope so, but that is a rare occurrence in my experience.
Getting Costa out of the starting lineup helped our midfield tremendously. He kills our flow with his dribble, dribble, dribble then bad or useless pass cacophony.