MLS Wins and Losses: Week 26

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The first win of the week went to Chivas USA, who scored a goal! ending their scoreless streak at 596 minutes. They still lost though, 4-2 to Seattle, then lost 3-0 to Columbus midweek, so now have just 1 point from their last 9 games. Rather neatly that 1 point came in a 0-0 tie with Vancouver who now have the longest active goalless streak at 411 minutes and are desperately holding on to their playoff hopes, in 6th place now, fighting Portland for the final spot in the West behind the clear top 4 of LA, Seattle, Real Salt Lake and Dallas.

2 of those teams played in the week's big game, RSL coming out on top 2-1 over Dallas as Alvaro Saborio marked his return to the lineup for the first time in months with the winning goal.

The biggest win came from L.A who are on fire right now. After getting the news that AJ de la Garza's new born son Luca had died from his heart condition, they seemed inspired and crushed Colorado 6-0, helped by goalie Joe Nasco giving up a penalty and getting a red card just 33 seconds in, fastest in MLS history. Landon Donovan continued to wreak his revenge on Colorado for an unimpressive parting gift with 2 goals and 2 assists. LA have now scored more goals than any other team, conceded fewer than any other team, and have a preposterous +27 goal difference in 26 games. Gyazi Zardes also scored two, he now has 14 goals which breaks the record for a homegrown player, breaking Diego Fagundez' record.

Colorado meanwhile have now lost 7 straight, and head coach Pablo Mastroeni is getting all philosophical about it: "For a really young group, there are a lot of guys that are seeking answers," Mastroeni said after Friday's loss. "The secret about life is that the answer comes from within. There is no guru that will give you the answer. There is a lot of reflection, self-analyzing, and then someone in that group stepping up and putting the team on their back. That's the only way you ever come to terms with situations like this."  which is a bit deeper than Greg Vanney's ' we need to go faster'

Remember that blind draw, that robbed Chicago of Jermaine Jones and sent him to new England instead? well guess who played this week. That's right, and yep Jones set up the winning goal for Charlie Davies with exactly the tenacity, drive and skill in midfield that his play so nicely exposed as Chicago's weak spot. Chuckles all round, thought not so much for Frank Yallop, who seems a bit bitter about it still, and that was New England's 4th win in a row as they close in on Kansas and DC up at the top of the east.

Quote of the week, well it's fun to make fun of San Jose right now and this time it's Chris Wondolowski's turn to supply the pathos after he scored twice in what ended up a 3-3 tie. "I don't know what to say," Wondolowski told reporters after the match. "I'm a bit speechless. To a man in the locker room, we know that it's just not good enough right now. It hasn't been good enough all season. We keep finding ourselves shooting ourselves in the foot. It hurts."

And one last bit of schadenfreude to cheer us all up, let's turn to Montreal, who lost 3-2 in Houston and Frank Klopas, who quite remarkably is only going to get a bronze at best in this year's sack race, and who wasn't happy with the ref, telling reporters postgame. "At the end of the day, again, we have a clear penalty, in the end of the game," "With this referee [Fotis Bazakos], I don't know if it's because he's Greek and I'm Greek, but we never get any calls. Something has to change. We need to start getting some calls. I'm not saying to give us calls, but it's clearly a 100 percent PK that's not given and the league's got to do something about that. It's embarrassing." He later added, "I'm disappointed with the refs that we, us, the Montreal Impact, we never get any calls. It's a joke."

Yes Frank, yes you are, and with this little bit of bonus footage for the written version of Will Johnson throwing a mid game tantrum, that's your MLS wins and losses for this week.