GBS Says he expects to sign LA Galaxy Trialist Gordon Wild to the roster for 2020. Says he has a good feeling about him improving over the year. #LAGalaxy #MLS— Corner Of The Galaxy (@GalaxyPodcast) February 19, 2020
In case anyone is wondering, Wild received a green card last spring while he was still a member of Atlanta United's roster https://www.ajc.com/sports/atlanta-united-verge-adding-international-slot/qiEi1lENfXAn4LlMf5yh5I/ https://www.atlutd.com/post/2019/05/31/julian-gressel-gordon-wild-obtain-us-green-cards
So I guess our roster is almost set : GK (3) : Bingham, Vom Steeg, Lopez. RB (2) : Feltscher, Araujo. CB (4) : Franco, Steres, Gonzalez, DePuy. LB (3) : Insua, Traore, Acosta. DM (2) : Jona, Kitchen. CM (3) : Lletget, Corona, Kljestan. CAM (2) : Alvarez, Cuello. Wingers (2) : Pavon, Katai. FW (3) : Chicharito, Zubak, Wild. That's 24 players. We'll possibly sign one or two young players for depth up top (my guesses are Kai Koreniuk and Cameron Dunbar), but I don't expect any big signing for now. Defense looks OK but our midfield is light (I don't have a lot of confidence in Kitchen and Sacha as starters, and Alvarez might be injured for a few weeks/months). And our depth up top is worrying. The three starters are great but beside them, there are good USL players but totally unproven at the MLS level. We should have a lot of cash saved for the summer and I'm OK with it.
Update on Efra FYI: Efrain Alvarez showed up to training in a walking boot, spoke to him briefly, says he’s in some pain and that when it happened, he heard it snap. Will have an MRI today. #LAGalaxy— Delmy Barillas (@DelmyBarillas) February 20, 2020
https://www.lagalaxy.com/post/2020/...ward-cameron-dunbar-homegrown-player-contract And Cameron Dunbar signing is official.
Didn't know much about this kid, but sounds like he has promise. 70 goals across all competitions at 17? Impressive.
Agree on with pretty much everything you said except this. I think our defense is the opposite of OK. We lost Polenta. Feltscher was a sieve last season. We hope Araujo works out but he is inexperienced. Gonzalez was inconsistent and doesn't seem like he could play 90min night after night. Acosta is out and Traore has a total of 220 min of not very impressive first team experience. Bingham remains a mediocre goal keeper -- not horrible, but not good either. All of this does not add up to a good defense. Worse is the fact that we have added no bite to our soft as butter midfield. In fact Kljestan is the opposite of bite. That likely means a lot will be demanded of from our iffy defensive corp. Best case scenario? We get Franco and he is a beast. Insua turns out to be good. Araujo is the player his fans hope he will be. We have almost no new injuries to our starter defenders. Bingham has a good season, by his standards. If ALL of those things happen we might not give up 1.74 goals/gm and have to sweat out every game like we did last season.
Why does Acosta have to be on that roster? If he’s out for the year, shouldn’t we just exclude him from the roster and save the cap space? I always thought the roster submission date was right before opening day and you’re not forced to put anyone on that list if you don't want to.
(1/2) #LAGalaxy GBS Injury updates:Efra - has not received medical report yet, hopes to know more this afternoon and hopes that he will not be out longer than 2 weeks. Jona - Training to the side today, GBS expects him to return to team training on Tuesday. Cont’d..— Megan Reza Kazemi (@megan_reza) February 20, 2020 Some good news in here.
Agree on with pretty much everything you said except this. I think our defense is the opposite of OK. We lost Polenta. Feltscher was a sieve last season. We hope Araujo works out but he is inexperienced. Gonzalez was inconsistent and doesn't seem like he could play 90min night after night. Acosta is out and Traore has a total of 220 min of not very impressive first team experience. Bingham remains a mediocre goal keeper -- not horrible, but not good either. All of this does not add up to a good defense. Worse is the fact that we have added no bite to our soft as butter midfield. In fact Kljestan is the opposite of bite. That likely means a lot will be demanded of from our iffy defensive corp. Best case scenario? We get Franco and he is a beast. Insua turns out to be good. Araujo is the player his fans hope he will be. We have almost no new injuries to our starter defenders. Bingham has a good season, by his standards. If ALL of those things happen we might not give up 1.74 goals/gm and have to sweat out every game like we did last season.
Seventy goals is indeed impressive but that stat needs a bit of context - 43 of them came against U13/U14 teams. Plus another 13 against U16/17 competition. In any case I'm happy for the kid, happy he's a true home grown from Carson, happy we are developing talent. I hope he develops into a Galaxy star in future years. Can anyone explain to me why Homegrown players like Cameron (who appears to not have yet played at the USL level) are signed to first team contracts rather than say a GII contract? I'm assuming it's part of the Homegrown contract rules but I'm not sure why it would be.
Wait--are you saying he scored 43 goals against 12 y/o as a 17 y/o? Because I agree, that is not impressive. I assumed he scored them against kids his own age.
Skydog can correct me but I think he's saying he scored the 43 when he was playing in that age group.
Haha, I hope not. Also I wasn't saying he wasn't impressive - just noting that we can't really tell from # of goals scored when he was playing against U-14's. At that age some players score a lot just based on superior athleticism so you have to look more at what you see skill-wise. Anyway here are his 70 goals. I think the most predictive part is his recent record against the more mature teenagers, which looks fine.
Why do you list CAM listed? It doesn’t seem like we’re playing a CAM this year (4-3-3). Also whenever I’ve seen Cuello and Alvarez play (open cup/leagues cup) they’ve played out wide last year. Cuello and Alvarez might not be the immediate backup at either wing spot (perhaps Lletget is) but I think they’re depth there.
I think many are envisioning JDS continuing a trend toward being more attack minded but I personally think he will (and should) continue to play more like a DM. Edit: Nevermind. I see you are specifically arguing that Cuello and Alvarez will play wide. Likely true for Alvarez (if he gets healthy). I could see Cuello being played and being ineffective at either position though.
Jona is probably both the best DM and box-to-box CM we have. He's also no slouch creating. I'm anxious to see the midfield firing on all cylinders; I think there'll be a lot of fluidity between the positions.
In the MLS “deep” evidently means more than 5 good players at a single position in the entire league. Baby steps!
Not that it makes a huge difference to the overall picture, but I think you forgot Steres, who is currently our best defender in my book.If we can sign that new CB from Argentina, we should be a bit stronger defensively than last season.
My point is more, why list depth at a position that we don’t field in our current formation? I’d be like if we also listed depth for sweeper or wing-back.