“Yes I do. It wasn’t just Donovan and Keane, there were five players that started tonight with the Galaxy that aren’t typically in their strongest eleven. So much so that when I got their lineup I was nervous to even write it up on the board. I was wondering if there was any way I could just sneak it in that they were playing LA’s strongest lineup. I feel that our guys have had a tendency over the past to let down when they are playing a team that they think is weaker than they are; and tonight they got shown that team isn’t weaker than we are. Their eleven was better than our eleven.”
Thoughts on RSL’s FW’s Alvaro Saborio and Robbie Findley being late scratches:
“It’s difficult as we’ve seen in that past, it’s difficult if we don’t have a target to play to up front. Someone like Sabo, someone who is going to stay central for us the majority of the time. Garcia worked extremely hard and was dangerous all night. Plata had moments where he was dangerous, but they were playing so wide of each other in the first half that there was very few times that we could play to a forward in a dangerous position, to hold the ball up for us and to get more numbers involved in the attack. Tactically there is still a lot to learn from those guys.”
Thoughts on missing a veteran forward when down a goal(s) in the match:
“Somewhat, somewhat; especially because you know that the space is going to become very limited to play in behind teams when they have a lead, especially a very well organized Los Angeles Galaxy team. You’re going to need to be able to play in front of them, play off of somebody and move in around them. That guy for us typically is Sabo who provides that target and that person that will hold the ball up for us so that we can join him.”
Thoughts on second half changes and efforts:
“Just looking at what we were up against and where I thought we needed to get to be dangerous, I wanted to see if we could get somebody that would be in wide attacking positions that would open up the midfield a little bit. I wanted to see if we could free up Javier and Kyle’s role a little more in the center and I thought the answer to that would to bring (Yordany) in to sit and he actually proved to be a little dangerous in the attacking third. It’s just trying to do different things, when your down two-nil at home I think it’s drastic measure time and we just tried everything we could.”
Thoughts on Olmes Garcia being unlucky by hitting the post four times this season:
“It is his fourth time, and I think all of them have been crossbars, the first one against Dallas might have been a post but post and crossbar even, I don’t know. So yeah, a little bit unlucky but you’ve got to figure that it will come for him.”
Thought on the away team being willing to go for it on the road due to the results of away team victories the past four RSL-LA meetings:
“I don’t know that you can look at the whole picture of all the four games and make any general statements. For me it’s more just informational and it is more exact if you look at performance by performance and tonight I felt my team wasn’t ready to start. In fifteen minutes we were in an absolute lull and if you give two goals away to a team that’s as organized defensively as they are you are going to be in for a difficult night. They made it difficult on us. I do appreciate our guy’s reactions; I do appreciate what they put into the second half, we are unfortunate not to score a goal, but we need to own up and be responsible for what happened in the first fifteen minutes.”
Thoughts on consistency lacking:
“Absolutely. We have not strung together two wins this year, we have strung together I think a couple of positive results. If you look at the positive result in Vancouver and then positive result last week, that positive result we were winning that game at a certain point so I don’t know if you can look at that as much of a positive as I would like. For me it’s that we are finding our way a little bit, unfortunately I felt that when we’ve had a good performance we have had a drop off immediately after. That comes from guys just feeling a little too comfortable with what they did, and thinking that they have arrived a little bit. We saw our last really big match we had against Seattle; we went the very next week to Colorado and were very poor. Then last week was arguably maybe our best performance of the season at home against Chivas, and we started out the match today very poor.”
Thoughts on that lack of consistency being related to the many new faces on the team:
“I don’t know; I’m searching for an answer myself, but when we have as many veteran players out there as we did tonight Borchers, Beckerman, Morales, Grabavoy, Rimando, Schuler now, and Beltran these guys have been around the league long enough that you wouldn’t think they would play inconsistently. I’m not making judgments of any individual player, but I think collectively that we have to really build ourselves more up for these games and recognize that in every single match that if we don’t put in everything that we have we will get beat. We will get beat even by teams that are missing five starters.”
Thoughts on using tonight’s game as a gauge to see where the team is at:
“I think that I have the same conclusion that I’ve had all along; that if we don’t put everything we have into it, if we are not very focused on the detail, which we weren’t tonight, that we will lose games.”
Thoughts on Saborio’s and Findley’s injuries:
“Both of these injuries game yesterday, not even during training but after training. It was in shooting that we do just to get the guys sharp. Saborio strained his quad and apparently it might be pretty bad, and Findley, we thought that he would actually be closer to being available tonight than Saborio, but he actually pulled out of the warm up before Saborio, and his I think might have been a little bit of a knee issue.”
Real Salt Lake MF Javier Morales
On preparing for Keane and Donovan and not having them in lineup:
“No, that doesn’t matter, I don’t know about Keane. But we have to be ready to play the Galaxy not against players, so it’s not an excuse. It’s even worse because they didn’t play.”
About going down 2-0 and LA sitting back:
“It’s going to be tough, especially because if you give them two in the first 20 minutes like we did. When you play at home we have to be ready in the beginning of the match, like the last game. In five minutes, we created maybe two or three chances on goal and today in the first 20 minutes they scored two goals, fast. And then after that, we played well. We were looking forward to tie the game, but it wasn’t good enough. We gave them the first 20 minutes.”
On week to week inconsistency:
“We’re working on it. Especially because we had two good weeks before this one and I was excited for the game. Because I have confidence about this game, but when we start to play, the first 15 minutes was terrible for us. I believe that was the match, the first 15 minutes we gave to them and then they just sit back and they wait.”
On Saborio not playing:
“Yeah, always it’s tough when you lose a player like Sabo. He’s the top scorer of this team, but especially because he was ready in the warm up and then he couldn’t play. But we have good forwards. Even Robbie Findley, he was hurt, Plata had to play or Devon. That is not an excuse for us.”
Real Salt Lake MF Ned Grabavoy
Thoughts on the loss:
“It’s very frustrating to lose at home. To start that way, and at that point we’re fighting uphill the whole time. To give up a first one is immature from a pretty mature group. We can’t give away the second one, because that pretty much locks things down for them and they feel pretty comfortable letting teams go at them with an organized back line. It was pretty much our game plan vs. their game plan and theirs won without question with those two early goals.”
On the absences of the key players on both sides:
“If we didn’t have a strong lineup for our team, then I don’t know what a strong lineup is. That’s a good enough team to get a result from anybody. I’m not making any excuses on our side, but obviously they rested some guys, or sat some guys who had some knocks. In this league everyone has to understand it. You don’t think that guys who don’t play much want to play? Those guys are sitting behind Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane. Doesn’t mean they’re not good players, so when they get their chance they’re going to try and make the most of it. They came as an organized group and played together. Those two early goals kind of killed us.”
On the week to week consistency:
“I can’t really put my finger on it, because I think the group we put out tonight, it’s a pretty mature group. Guys who have played a lot of games, been in a lot of situations. It just seems that sometimes we don’t deal with a loss or we don’t deal with a win the way that we should. I think coming into this game that we had a great opportunity to kind of get rolling here and get three points against probably the best team in the league, and didn’t do that, so you drop some of these chances. And let’s be honest, they were missing some of their key players and you feel like you drop a golden opportunity a little bit to get a Western Conference rival and a defending champion. It’s frustrating without question.”
Real Salt Lake MF Kyle Beckerman
Thoughts on what went wrong in the first 15 minutes:
“Well I think it was pretty much a Bruce Arena type game to a T. They have a score off of a set piece and get one right after that. They stay really organized. It’s just a matter of breaking down all eleven players and we weren’t able to do that.”
Thoughts on the frustration of multiple missed shots:
“It always is. You want to be creating the chances if you can continue to do that, then hopefully the bounces will go our way, but it’s a disappointing result.”
Thoughts on L.A.’s lineup:
“Anytime you see the lineup like that… maybe it’s something that consciously went into our minds, but I thought we said something about it to try and make sure it didn’t get to us. Maybe it did. I think maybe we were a little shook up. We lost two forwards before the game where we didn’t expect that. They just came out for the better 15 minutes and it ended up costing us the game.”
Los Angeles Galaxy
Head Coach Bruce Arena
On beating Real Salt Lake on their home turf:
“I don’t think we dominated, but we played well enough to win. We won the last time we were here last year. We really came in today prepared to win the game – no question about that. Our guys held together for 90 minutes.”
On the Galaxy’s move into second place in the Western Conference standings:
“It’s great, and we need to keep winning games.”
On the reasons behind the recent streak of road team victories in the LA-RSL rivalry:
“I have no idea. I didn’t know that was the case. It’s one of those facts that you can probably throw right out the window. I don’t think it means anything.”
On Brian Rowe’s performance:
“He was outstanding. There’s no other way to put it. We obviously felt that, coming into the game, that he’s a good goalkeeper, however he had no experience in the league. You’re always concerned in the first few minutes of the game, but he looked pretty composed right from the start. He had a good save early, and had great concentration to make a bunch of saves throughout the evening. As I said, I thought he was outstanding.”
On the performance of the younger players:
“Charlie did a good job. He kind of hit the wall a little bit in the second half, as expected, but a good first goal – a good first game. Again, he’s another player who played his first game tonight. We were really pleased that he got a goal in his first game. We can’t complain about that, for Rowe to get a shutout in his first game, on the road in Salt Lake.”
On how the veterans helped the younger, less-experienced players on the road:
“They did a great job. There’s seven veterans on the field, so it’s not like we just had a bunch of kids. The group of DeLaGarza, Gonzalez, Sarvas, Juninho, Magee and Franklin were giving our young players confidence in helping us get the result.”
On his team’s overall performance:
“Our team shape is very good. Our center backs did not stand and drive, they were organizing the group ahead of them, our line moved pretty well and we got good blocks in the midfield. Early in the game, [Real Salt Lake] tried to get behind us, and we dealt with that pretty well. When we needed a save, Brian [Rowe] came through.”
On how the game-plan changed for the second half, after going up 2-0:
“I told the team that if [Real Salt Lake] didn’t score a goal, from what I know about the game, is that we’re probably going to win. We took care of defending, and we’re satisfied winning 2-0.”
LA Galaxy MF Mike Magee
On why he scores so often at Rio Tinto Stadium:
“This is a game that we definitely prepare better for. Obviously, we won 2-0, but by no means was it an easy game – this is probably the most sore that we’re going to be all year.”
On the performance of some of the younger players:
“I thought Brian Rowe was the best player on the field, and Charlie [Rugg] was great. A lot of the time, we left our forwards on an island, because we had scored two early goals. We were just sitting back, and did a great job holding balls up.”
On what he told Charlie Rugg before the game:
“I talked to Charlie – every time someone comes up onto the field, a million guys try to tell him what to do. I told Charlie just to ‘be fast, be strong, and stay in front of the defensive backs.’ He really did better than I told him.”
On whether the two early goals took Real Salt Lake off guard:
“Definitely. I don’t think that this is a team that goes down by one goal, let alone two goals, at home very often. It obviously wasn’t in the game plan to score two – you hope for it, but we did a break job of bunkering after that.”
On whether playing at Real Salt Lake takes more time and preparation:
“Obviously, you have some games that are more difficult than others, and this is one of them. This is a team that we definitely don’t want to lose to, because we know we’re going to see them again.”
LA Galaxy DF A.J. DeLaGarza
On the team’s overall performance:
“With what we put out there, we should win every game. Today, we had a couple of guys that really took advantage – the debutants, I guess you could say.”
