The weekend in soccer

Saturday started with the Merseyside Derby.

Everton v. Liverpool 0-0 (draw) 

The Reds with an eye toward the second leg of the Champions League semi-final played a weakened side so a draw was a reasonable outcome.

Hull v. QPR 4-0 (loss)

Ugh. QPR isn't a top level team so don't expect them to win all the time but they are usually at least competitive and they weren't today.

Falkenberg v. Eskilstuna 2-0 (win)

Off to a good start with two wins. Can they keep it up and get back to the top tier? "Laget vid havet!"

Atlanta v. LAFC 5-0 (loss)

Did the stunning loss against LA Galaxy last weekend leave the team still out of sorts? Or perhaps Atlanta is simply too much for LAFC to deal with? In either case, Bob Bradley and the brain trust will need to look at their situation after the glossy start.

Sunday provided two matches for me to follow

Kalmar v. Elfborg 1-0 (loss)

Ooofff .... off to a bad start with two losses. 28 matches to go. Hopefully, they will get their feet under them soon!

LA Galaxy v. Sporting Kansas City 0-2 (loss)

SKC dominated possession of the ball in the first half but LAG defense was up to the challenge for much of the time in the first half. But there was one bad patch early in the second half when LAG surrendered two goals. Those were not outrageous world class goals. However, they were clinical finishes to the opportunities granted by some poor defending from LAG.

The first goal was off a weak clearance off a corner kick that got pounced on by SKC.

The second goal was essentially a 1-against-3. Give the guy credit for taking it to the LAG defenders Steres and Cole and after ditching them, he got it past the goalkeeper Bingham. Any one of Steres, Cole, or Bingham could have prevented that goal but none did rise to that occasion.

LAG had shots of which three hit the woodwork. Jonathan Dos Santos and Romain Alessandrini were back in the line-up but did seem a little rusty: pace and passing was just a little off.

The defensive group does seem a bit slow and teams that have speed will cause problems for LAG. Cole is astute but his 37 year old legs sometimes let him down. Skjelvik looks promising and don't recall him getting overwhelmed against SKC but he clearly got outpaced on goal #3 that LAFC scored. Steres has the physical tools (he made a couple of good tackles against SKC) but over his time at LAG errors seem to crop up. Perhaps it is focus and decision making that will improve with experience? Feltscher seems to be settling in but am concerned that without smart positioning and situational awareness he might not have the speed to catch up if he gets up too far forward on the attack. Kitchen has been very helpful to the defense but it seems the sum of the parts haven't gotten to where LAG needs to be to be consistently competitive.

Meanwhile, the Zlatan phenomena continues but no Hollywood ending tonight. He got in for about 30 minutes and put some shots on goal with one or two of the chances that got the crowd hopeful.

From the General Admission side of the stadium, it was hard to tell how good were his shots on goal. Judging from video replays I saw after the game, two of them looked like good efforts that if the goalkeeper has shut-off for a moment would have yielded a goal.

Sigi and company have a lot to chew over.

Defending put them in a three-goal deficit against LAFC and a two-goal deficit against SKC. Don't see Ciani or Romney as a better option than what they have out there now. So they may simply have to live with what they have. Do wonder how much upside does youngsters Hilliard-Arce and Arellano have?

As LAG offensive players advance in fitness returning from injury, it will be interesting to see which players will get the minutes upcoming and whether they will stick to the 4-2-3-1 formation - probably. It seems that when Zlatan is in they switch to 4-4-2. Will he go on the road to Chicago? And how many minutes will he get?

Tough loss that could easily have been a draw. No time to panic as the team is still a work in progress with the arrow facing in the up direction.