Crew 3 - Galaxy 2

Two words have not been uttered in Columbus in rapid succession for quite some time. Those two words? Winning and streak. Don't look now, but now the Crew are unbeaten in three matches, and have won their last two. In those last three games, the Crew have fought back from a deficit, and overcome a one-man disadvantage to win the game anyway. It seems the Crew have fought through their funk to gain a winning mentality, and have used that to play with true heart on the field. Let's just hope they can keep it up.

Unfortunately, I had to work on Saturday night, and therefore was not able to see the game live. Thanks to MLSLIVE.TV (not all of us can afford the luxury of DK and DVR), I usually watch the games the next day if I happen to miss one. Unfortunately for me, I accidentally learned of the score on a website that I didn't expect to see the score on, so I already knew the result when I watched the game. I don't know if everybody else feels the same way, but I always find it difficult to truly enjoy a game when I already know the outcome, and I found my attention wandering from the match on more than one occaision. Because of this, I won't be analyzing the match the way that I usually do, and so I'll just go over the basics of the game.

So what did we learn from the Galaxy game? At the beginning of the game, the Crew came out and played good attacking soccer, and were rewarded with Chad Marshall's goal after Schelotto was fouled outside the area. Things were looking very good for the Crew until the red card to EZ Ezra Hendrickson. It certainly didn't look like a red card offense to me (certainly worthy of a yellow, however), and was reminiscient of Pablo Mastroeni's sending off against Italy in the World Cup. However, the Crew showed remarkable character in recovering from the red card, and after two saved penalties following two soft calls, the Crew took a 1-0 lead into halftime. One thing Sigi is known for is having his teams play very organized soccer, and the Crew did just that for the remainder of the game.

Things went from bad to worse, though, after Schelotto succombed to what looked like some kind of muscle injury. In general, you can almost always count on a team that has a man advantage to score at least one goal when they've had that advantage for longer than a few minutes, so it was a safe bet that the Crew needed at least one more goal to put the game away, and it wasn't looking good with their best offensive player on the bench. We all know that Schelotto is an incredible player, but no matter how crucial he is to the Crew's offense, the Crew were a team before he got here, and they will be a team after he leaves - and they showed that even without their talismanic Argentine, they can still produce some goals, as evidenced by Grabavoy's goal after some good work by Oughton and Gaven, as well as Moreno's header that put the game away. I predicted a 3-1 win for the Crew, and it looked like that was going to hold up, until Buddle scored a consolation goal to make the final 3-2, but I'm still going to pretend that I got the score right.

Overall, the Crew showed magnificient composure and heart on the field, and showed that they indeed can provide some offence without the presence of Guille. Truth be told, a better team than LA probably would've put the Crew away, having a man advantage for so long, but take nothing away from the Crew's effort in this game. It's matches like these that make me proud to be a Crew fan. For now, the infamous "gel" period looks to be over with, as Guille further adjusts to the play of MLS, and the rest of the team gets some much-needed swagger as they try to climb up the standings over the course of the next few games. There's a lot of the season left to play, but there is good reason to be optimstic. Hope springs eternal yet, Crew fans. Thanks again for reading, and I'll have at least one (if not more) posts before Saturday's game.

"It is good for us. We needed a win, and we were going to come out and get it. Right now we are a very confident team. We were also a confident team when we started the season, but we had some ties that we thought could have gone our way. We were patient, and this team is never going to give up; we are going to continue fighting. Winning streaks are a habit, so I hope we can continue this one for some time."

-Ezra Hendrickson on the Crew's win in LA.