Progress as promised for LA Galaxy
Arena encouraged by improvement shown by club in early season
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Arena and the Galaxy, however, might have had the last laugh after a 1-0 victory.
"I'm encouraged by the things I've seen in the last month," he said. "We're starting to get better."
It has been a difficult and frustrating season for the Galaxy (1-1-4), who go back on the road this week for visits to Real Salt Lake on Wednesday and Seattle on Sunday. Injuries, suspensions and distractions have not exactly made it easy on a team that has missed the playoffs in each of the last three seasons and underwent a major revamping of the roster during the offseason.
Slowly but surely the Galaxy are making strides. Starting goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts, who missed the first two games of the season with a groin strain, already has two shutouts -- equal to the number of clean sheets the club had in all of 2008.
Central defender Gregg Berhalter has been a steadying influence on the back line since he arrived from Germany less than a month ago. So has veteran left back Todd Dunivant, who recently returned from microfracture ankle surgery.
Last year's second-leading scorer Edson Buddle, who made his season debut only a week ago against Colorado after battling a strained quadricep muscle, drew praise from Arena for his play on Saturday. Arena, in fact, didn't find much to be unhappy with against the Red Bulls, but he also admitted he wasn't completely satisfied.
"Am I entirely pleased with our performance? Of course not," he said. "We're rebuilding this team. If I'm not mistaken, we have 19 players on our roster who were not here last year. It will take time to get better. It doesn't happen overnight.
"At the end of the day we're six games in and it's good to get our first win. We've only lost once, so it's not a major crisis here."
The Galaxy, who won on Landon Donovan's penalty kick in the 39th minute, limited the Red Bulls (1-5-2) to just one shot on goal, none in the second half. Their only scoring opportunity came on a deflection by Kevin Goldthwaite from the top of the goal area in the 23rd minute, but Ricketts was there to make his only save of the night.
"Any time you win it's a good win," Arena said. "And the timing was right for us to get a win."
Veteran midfielder Chris Klein, who was honored before the match for playing in his 300th career MLS game, said the players were more than pleased when it was over. They felt it was overdue, he said.
"I think it's a sense of relief," he said. "But we're not all that surprised. We feel we've been playing well lately. We haven't lost games ... just getting over that hump and putting together what I thought was a pretty complete game was good.
"To get that win kind of rockets us up very early in the season."
Berhalter said the victory helped alleviate growing frustration.
"It's anticipation, frustration, a whole bunch of adjectives," he said. "When you start the season you want to win games, and when you don't you get a little frustrated.
"But the group held together. We believe in ourselves. We grinded out today and it was a good result."
Larry Morgan is a contributor to MLSnet.com.
