Soccer - An ignominious season comes to an end

I am sort of glad that I am no longer covering the Galaxy on a regular basis. This past season would have an exercise in coming up with metaphors relating to failure. For the first time in their brief history, the Los Angeles Galaxy have not made the MLS playoffs. Despite a decent pick-up in form upon the hiring of Frank Yallop, the 2-8-1 start under the shaky stewardship of Steve Sampson was too much to overcome. In this just-completed season's wake comes a long overdue clearout and revamping of the Galaxy roster (which was well past due during the endgame of the Sigi Schmid era).
The two more obvious needs for the men in green and gold is a proven goal scorer (they traded Carlos Ruiz to make room for the golden child, Landon Donovan) and a midfield maestro. Both such positions are amongst the hardest to fill and talent at those positions come at a premium. For example, the Galaxy have never truly found an adequate replacement for Mauricio Cienfuegos during his salad days. Another problem will be finding personnel that maximize the golden child's talents. Said golden child performs best as a withdrawn forward in a 3-5-2. The current crop of Galaxy midfielders look quite unable to fulfill that requirement.
Yallop has already stated that only the golden child and defender Chris Albright are safe...and that everyone else will now be playing for their job. It will be interesting to see what shakes out during the off-season.