by Debby von Winckelmann
Playing at home on Saturday night against the Vancouver Whitecaps, LA’s lineup looked quite different than it has in recent games. Those changes didn’t result in a win or more goals, however. Instead, the Galaxy suffered from a lack of chemistry that resulted in a scoreless draw against a team that was on a four-game losing streak.
The Galaxy has its own streak going. This was the 13th draw this season for the Galaxy and extended LA’s winless streak to six games. Still, coach Bruce Arena didn’t seem at all concerned about only getting one point at home.
“It’s not frustrating,” Arena said. “Our guys gave a good effort. They played a good second half, I thought.”
Arena’s players beg to differ, however.
Robbie Rogers, who returned to the Galaxy lineup after being out since June 2 due to injury, expressed his disappointment with the result.
“It was frustrating, we need to get three points at home,” Rogers said. “That needs to be our mission, that needs to be in our heads from the beginning and I thought we kind of lacked that killer instinct going forward especially, and I thought we were pretty good defensively. We kind of shut down a lot of their moments going forward but I thought when we won it we weren’t really finding that killer pass going forward. It was just slow, one guy, the next guy, and I thought if we could have maybe skipped a few guys and got at guys we could have been a little bit more dangerous.”
Playing without Robbie Keane, who will be playing his last game for Ireland next week, Arena played super sub Alan Gordon for the full 90 minutes. Gordon, who had a couple of quality chances, but couldn’t find the back of the net, echoed Rogers’ frustration with the result.
“It’s frustrating; we’re kind of stalled right now – can’t get anything going offensively,” Gordon said. “It’s a little bit frustrating; this feels like a loss, we need points.”
Vancouver came close to scoring early in the game, when a corner kick by Giles Barnes found the head of Erik Hurtado in the eighth minute. Hurtado headed the ball down, but the ball bounced up and hit the bottom of the crossbar, landing in front of the goal line.
Arena had to use two substitutes in the first half when Jelle Van Damme and Steven Gerrard both suffered injuries. Gyasi Zardes came in for Gerrard in the 31st minute and Daniel Steres replaced Van Damme in the 44th minute.
The Galaxy dominated possession throughout the game, but stepped it in the second half, earning eight corner kicks. Still, LA couldn’t turn those opportunities into goals.
The Galaxy’s inability to earn three points has dropped them to fourth place in the Western Conference.
For Vancouver, one point is a step in the right direction.
“Today was important for us,” said Vancouver head coach Carl Robinson. “Probably no one gave us a chance to get anything from the game, but I firmly believed in the guys. We tried to be organized and disciplined, which we were. I thought we could catch certain areas, obviously we had a little bit of luck in the last 10-15 minutes of the game and obviously Bruce Arena picked up a number of injuries which he won’t be happy with. Maybe it was our night to get a point.”
The Galaxy takes on the Columbus Crew at the StubHub Center on Saturday, September 3 at 7:30 PT, while Vancouver will face the New York Red Bulls at BC Place at 4:00 PT.
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