That's fair. I'm not trying to convince you to be more enthusiastic, but I do see progress. For me, the improvement I saw is we did a much better job of being defensively organized. Even though we gave Houston a lot of the ball, we did a much better job of controlling where they played than last year. It's a big improvement IMO but it's mundane because really it's something that even the crappiest team should be able to do (which is indeed why we'd lost to scrubby teams because at least they were ORGANIZED). It's basic soccer, but it's something we failed to do often last year.
Hopefully you're right and the first game is indicative of better defense this year. In the end, it's just one game, so probably doesn't really tell us anything.
The 2009 season we went 1-1-9 over the first 11 games but ended up winning the Western Conference, finishing a point off the Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup runner up. MLS a totally different league, the 2020 Galaxy isn’t the 2009 Galaxy and GBS isn’t Bruce. One thing I think is the same 11 years on, is early season form is largely irrelevant to an MLS Cup run.
True, though MLS is competitive enough that there aren't many points between success and failure. People still seem to have this idea that playoffs render the regular season meaningless but it's rare that games in the final week of the season have nothing riding on them.
Yeah, let me try again: I was trying to say, we had a very imperfect and one dimensional offense last year as well. Mostly because once Romain went down, we really relied more than we really planned to and should've on Zlatan (and substandard options like Antuna and Alvarez until Pavon arrived). We were shut out in 7-8 games, if I remember.
I know you weren't a fan of the way we played with Zlatan as a focal point and you blame that style for a lot of our defensive problems. I don't think that was the big problem for our team but that's "just my opinion man." But in any case - for whatever the reason - we scored the 3rd most goals in MLS. Only LAFC in their record tying year and NYCFC on their postage stamp field scored more. Our offense was good enough to have as the top of the standings. Unfortunately our defense shipped the 5th most goals in all of MLS and that undid all the good work done up top.
PS - I agree with you that our defense vs. HOU looked more organized and better than last season. It's amazing what replacing blunder-fest Sjoioki with Insua does for our defense. I also thought DePuy added a lot - even more than Steres. He was just more proactive, imo. Don't get me wrong - I still think we are razor thin on defense and that we won't be great on that end, especially with the midfield continuing to be soft. But I'm thinking maybe our D won't be a complete clusterfxxx this season?
I hear ya. I should say, it's not that I wasn't a fan, per se. Zlatan did amazing considering he was basically a one-man attacking force until Pavon arrived and delivered some legendary moments. It just became clear to me that to support him, we were giving up the ability to control games and that's crucial to having good defense. Why could LAFC confidently trade Zimmerman and why haven't they gone to shambles in the back? Because they have a system that allows them to control games, with and without the ball and that insulated their defense (including their very questionable keeper, Miller). We couldn't (or wouldn't) do that with Zlatan. We did score a lot of goals, but I would counter with the fact that we were also held scoreless 7 or 8 times, all but 1 of them resulting in losses. My original point was, sometimes we were just a really, really bad team to watch.
Just another note on offense / midfield: here's a 25-pass sequence leading to goal from last year. This is from the 3-2 win against MIN where Zlatan was out. 📕 Textbook.The 25 passes that led to @ChrisPontius13’s goal, with final assists from @EmaBoateng and Rolf Feltscher. pic.twitter.com/0h9Mbil0sk— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) March 17, 2019