Six matches, four draws, no wins
LAFC have not won a league match since July 25. Six games have gone by since, four of them drawn, and they still sit third in the Western Conference on 37 points. That combination says a great deal about how compressed this table is, and how little margin the club has left before the postseason.
Red Bull New York arrive on Wednesday night in worse shape. Michael Bradley’s side (7-10-6, 27 points) have slipped to 10th in the East, below the playoff line on goal difference behind Philadelphia, and have not won in five since beating Orlando 3-2 at home on Aug. 1. Saturday’s 0-0 draw at Seattle counts as a decent night’s work in a historically awkward venue. It was also the first of four straight on the road.
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The reason LAFC spent late
John Thorrington signed five players in the secondary transfer window, four of them after Aug. 25. The logic runs through two names. Denis Bouanga and Son Heung-min have combined for 17 goals and 19 assists this season. Both are past 30, and Marc Dos Santos has been managing their minutes with October in mind.
“It’s a needed situation,” the LAFC coach said. “There’s no doubt that there’s changes in our roster right now that makes it challenging, but I think the core that is here is really good, and the additions are important because they’re also young. We have an older team and it’s not a secret, and we need some dynamic type of players, some new blood, I would say.”
Two debutants in the away dressing room
Bradley has arrivals of his own to weigh. Ronald Donkor serves a card-accumulation suspension on Wednesday, which opens a place for David Ruiz, whose loan from Miami closed last week, or Devin Padelford, signed from Minnesota a day later. Both came off the bench in Seattle.
“David and Devin both did a really good job when they came on the field,” Bradley said. “David had had three training sessions, Devin had had one, but they, in a short amount of time, have both done a really good job of integrating themselves into the team.” Four away games in a row will show how quickly that holds up.
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