Are you talking defensive runs? Because he was nowhere near scoring a goal on any of his so called "runs" in the offensive zone. Crazy think is Zubak may have actually scored on one of those crosses that Chicharito was too short to get to.
I thought that this was the best game I have seen Kitchen play for the Galaxy. IMO he was the most effective of the midfielders. Next game I would like to see Steres replace Gonzalez and JDS replace Sasha.
Late to the party, but it was so much fun to watch the Galaxy play (on TV)! My thoughts: Katai had a decent offensive first half, but man, he abandoned Rolf down the right (wince). Rightfully pulled first. Midfield? What's that? JDS, get better soon (still the MVP of this team)! If you look at the boxscore, you'll see a nice hole where either Sacha or Perry should be stopping some plays or showing up for some passes. With due apologies @73Bruin , I don't think either were good today. Too reactive. Don't think it was a coincidence that we got better offensively when Corona came in and actually played some midfield. Depuy was the quieter of the two CBs. Sadly, I'm not surprised. Bingham with an absolute dime to Pavon! Pavon was my MOTM. 3 key passes, and what a golazo. Still think he could be rusty which should be scary to other teams. Disappointed in Lletget. Way too many backpasses and nothing forward. Needs to play like he does with the Nats. Insua wasn't terrible...and he does serve in nice passes from the left. Rolf = making me nervous just like in previous years. Chicharito had zero service, made some nice runs, and kinda was just there. Hopefully things get better as the midfield gels. I know we're going to give up goals, so hoping the midfield gets their act together.
Perry is a defensive mid, who has been rightly criticized for ball watching, being slow to react and not playing effective defense in the box. In short a shadow of the player he was at DC. Today, I thought that he played great defense in particular in the box. Last year, we saw that all to often, the Galaxy relied on JDS to be a superman covering the entire field. I think that if Perry can play consistently play defense at this level, it will make JDS and by extension the Galaxy's offense more effective.
I don't think so. A win would've been a great result. A tie away is a good result. You don't have to agree. Maybe you want to go back to the glory days of 6 months ago when we lost to the same team 4-2, with a line-up consisting of 7/11 of the same players.
Bingham made a typical Bingham game : sometimes an amazing thing, and a questionable decision a few minutes later. He showed why GK is an area to improve, but probably for next year. Give credit to Feltscher : he was exposed a lot of times but he held his ground. Decent game from him. Good game from DePuy, but what impressed me was the improvement from last year. His aggressiveness is still here but he looks so much comfortable with the ball. Insua had an encouraging first day. Some firepower on his wing, and he can cross the ball. Better performance than all I saw from Skjelvik. I agree on Perry. He did his job. I didn't see Sasha's magical service in the final third, and whithout it he's mostly useless. Seba didn't bring much to the team either. Overall our defense looked a little bit better than last year, but Houston was without Ellis and Quintero, and Ramirez was on the bench. I liked we were winning balls in the last 15 minutes and were attacking the Houston goal.
Then why are we crossing headers to a short guy? I saw Javier make several great runs to try to start something off. It was great. The problem was the middle field never saw him and never got a pass off. He was looking for a pass on the ground to run on to or a loft over the top. He didn’t get either. He did get the ball taken to the sides and then crossed in. That scares me because I’m afraid GBS is trying to run the same play as last year. But time will tell. I actually thought Rolf was decent in this game. He stood up strong and disrupted several plays. Insua also looked good. I saw nothing inspiring from Katai or Sascha.
If you watch how the play as it unfolds my take is Gonzalez is ball watching and totally unaware of his man making the through run so when the through ball is played Bingham instinctually reacts like it’s a 1v1 - coming off his line and making himself big, but Depuy sees the play and makes a great recovery run and slide to try and cut off the far post shot which Bingham didn’t expect and rightly so. He’s off his line and more near post than he needed to be but he did already react to the original threat given the absolute breakdown of the defensive marking. The shot deflects off Depuy but still bounces down and on frame. So the primary culprit is Gonzalez. Some help from one of the midfielders so that pass wasn’t so easy to make might have been nice and the GK is always a little to blame anytime a shot that’s not a wondersrike goes in, but primarily we should probably mark or trap anyone waltzing into our box.
That was my take too. Mistake by Gonzalez and mistake by Bingham and that's a goal. We probably have to expect that at least once a game. Feltcher was surprisingly good when he was back in defense, but as always he had trouble getting back. I don't know how much his aggressiveness in attack is by design.
Highlight Time Folks 2020 So it begins,... Chicharito on the game GBS on the game Pavon on the game My brief thoughts. I missed the first half so I can't judge it fairly. However the second half showed that we might want to consider running 2 dmids until JDS is back. We had zero possession in the midfield at the end. That and ref not calling fouls didn't help either.
My observation is that we are not yet complete without Jona. I need him in there so I can see if anybody keeps playing like crap or if they improve. This goes for the team as a whole, of course. This early and without JDS? I don't know... Funny to see Javier getting into it with others early on. He feels the needs to do it right and isn't afraid to point it out to his team mates. I like it. I will take the tie playing like we did.
It might be a decent result if it were against a decent team. Houston seems like a bottom feeder. But who knows this year? No, I don't to go back to last year, or 2 or 3 years ago. I want to go back a few more years than that when the Galaxy were an enjoyable team to watch. Saturday's game was among the most unwatchable games I can recall. Though you're right, we've had more than a few over the last few years. If the standard of the past few years is what you're going by, sorry, i'm not buying.
It was a pretty forgettable game for us. Aside from Pavon's goal of the week, we did basically nothing notable. Our defense held strong. Very questionably positioning by Bingham on Houston's goal. I think if we play like that against a better club, we will lose a lot of our road matches. Our offense was dead. Chicharito was a non-entity all match, but I expected this. As I mentioned before, it will take Chicharito some time to get used to the team. What did worry me was how bad we looked going forward via our midfield. Sacha and Lletget didn't provide much offensive support. Kitchen MOTM for me. I'd love to see him stick in the team and have Dos Santos as the box to box role. Harsh on Corona though who I think deserves a starting spot somehow.
Yes, it is! We enjoyed some "yell/chant/singing" practice during the game. plus Josh Wolf and Claudio Reyna showed up and brought pizza, Getting very excited for MLS to finally arrive in Austin. It would have been perfect had the Galaxy scored one more goal.
Great to hear. I may retire there and if I do Austin FC would be a big plus for me entertainment wise. I can take shooting guns with my relatives for only so many hours a day .....
Apparently folks have forgotten, so let me remind you about our results against teams that didn't make the playoffs in 2019: 4-2 Loss @ Houston (finished 10th) 4-3 Loss Home to VAN (finished 12th) 2-1 Loss @ Rapids (finished 9th) 3-1 Loss Home to San Jose (finished 8th) 3-0 Loss @ to San Jose (finished 8th) 2-1 Loss Home to NER (finished 7th, but at the time were in a death spiral) 1-0 Loss Home to Rapids (finished 9th) Maybe people mis-remember that we had an exciting, swashbuckling offense but were only unmade by crappy defense. Not true. We often were shitty on both sides of the ball and anemic on offense, even against bad teams. We were often terrible to watch. We also only tied 3 times all of last year. Tying more games like this one (rather than losing) is an improvement.
I thought our first 70 seconds was amazing. Often all our problems were made worse by games against teams we thought we'd handle "easily". When we have all of the ball and our defenders are sucked way up field trying to help break down a bunkering/ countering team that often creates just the right environment for total defensive break downs and goals against.
Yes the tie against Houston wasnt a bad result but our defense >was< by far our biggest problem last season. I know its hard to remember but there were Galaxy teams who would have had a winning record with the goals scored in the losses you listed. Good teams get 1-0 wins regularly.
Also good defenses get ties when the offense falters (which it does even for the very best teams). Our crappy defense meant that in games where we scored 0 or 1 goals salvaging a draw was highly unlikely.
Good teams draw rather than lose. We didn't draw enough games last year. It's an essential skill to ride out a result so it doesn't end up in a loss I certainly hope this past weekend's match might be a step towards that.
Good teams draw rather than lose. We didn't draw enough games last year. It's an essential skill to ride out a result so it doesn't end up in a loss I certainly hope this past weekend's match might be a step towards that.
But we were not a strong team last year. I wouldn't call a slight improvement on a sort of random, hand-picked stat as any indication of anything positive. Anyway, I'm basing my opinion more on the flow of the game, not the result. And that was as uninspiring a performance as any I can recall (with the exception of Pavon's goal of course). We just had so few threats on Houston's goal.