"Cafeteria?" Left at the windmill, right at the clogmaking class"It has been a school year of change on the shores of Lake Ontario. After Preki Junior High was shut down last year, with crusty Dean Mo Johnston run out of town, many wondered what new curriculum would be brought in. When it was announced that the Winter Technical Institute was to open in PJH's place - the dumb jocks knew their days were numbered.

"Let's get it on, you Reds!"TORONTO (16TH) VS. NEW ENGLAND (18TH)
　
BMO FIELD - SATURDAY 12:30PM EDT
TV: TSN RADIO: FAN 590
　
THE KICKABOUT:
After Tuesday night's potentially club-changing win in Champions League, Toronto FC finds itself basking in a rare glow as the season comes to an end.

Not a Chip Butty in sightIt's that time of year when loved ones gather to give thanks for all they have received over the past year. While some Reds' supporters may have not reaped the harvest they expected in 2011, there are still some morsels worth savouring.
　
Yes, an autumnal playoff bounty is beyond our reach once again, but hopes of a winter (or Winter) seeding gives supporters a light ahead for spring.

Ah, the GD. No, not "God damn" (although TFC's may make you blurt that) nor "Gerry Dobson" (although you may blurt "God damn, Gerry Dobson stop showing me TFC's GD!"). The GD we refer to today is of course "Goal Difference" (or differential if you're a high falutin' professor type. Nerd.) Currently Toronto FC has the worst GD in MLS at a whopping -19, a full -9 worse than the next most useless club.

Even the architecture is 4-3-3!
When Preki Junior High permanently closed its doors last year, and crusty Dean Mo Johnston was sent packing, no one knew what place of learning would take in the young Reds. Then, just before the school year began, word emerged that the prestigious Aron Winter Academy of Total Learning would open its doors with promises of cultured education and advanced philosophy nurturing the minds of Toronto's footballing pupils.

This is The Fixture List, your weekly dose of wildly inaccurate schedule predictions from yours truly. Before that, though, let's take a quick look at last week's efforts. Incorrect results are in red, blue indicates a correct result and green highlights exact scorelines. Actual results in brackets:
Columbus Crew 0-1 Real Salt LakeSporting KC 1-0 Chicago FireNew York Red Bulls 2-1 New England RevolutionPhiladelphia Union 1-1 Real Salt LakeDC United 0-2 San Jose Earthquakes Houston Dynamo 2-1 Chivas USAPortland Timbers 3-2 Colorado RapidsLA Galaxy 3-0 Toronto FCSeattle Sounders 2-0 Vancouver Whitecaps Columbus Crew 2-0 Chicago FireFC Dallas 1-0 Sporting KC
FOUR correct results, THREE of which were exact scorelines.

This is The Fixture List, your weekly dose of wildly inaccurate schedule predictions from yours truly. Before that, though, let's take a quick look at last week's efforts. Incorrect results are in red, blue indicates a correct result and green highlights exact scorelines. Actual results in brackets:
Chivas USA 3-2 Vancouver WhitecapsLA Galaxy 2-1 DC UnitedToronto FC 1-2 Sporting KCNew York Red Bulls 0-2 Columbus CrewFC Dallas 1-1 New England RevolutionChicago Fire 1-2 Seattle SoundersColorado Rapids 0-1 Philadelphia UnionReal Salt Lake 3-0 Vancouver WhitecapsSan Jose Earthquakes 2-1 Houston DynamoChivas USA 1-1 Portland Timbers
The less said about that the better.

All effort and no ball sums up the entire Galaxy-United match.

We always miss players when they are away, but we could have won the game at the end of the day. I don't think we didn't play well because of missing Landon. – David Beckham

The only one good thing about tonight is that we lost these games at home last year.

Juninho battles Shalrie Joseph in the Galaxy's 1-0 win at New England on May 28th.

Three games in eight days has become almost routine for the Los Angeles Galaxy this season, and for a few other teams as well, as the schedule makes room for not on the US Open Cup, and the CONCACAF Champions League, but also the CONCACAF Championship, the Gold Cup with the winner getting a slot in the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2013 in Brazil.

Welcome to The Fixture List, your weekly dose of wildly inaccurate schedule predictions from yours truly. Before that, though, let's take a quick look at last week's efforts. Incorrect results are in red, blue indicates a correct result and green highlights exact scorelines. Actual results in brackets:
Philadelphia Union 0-1 Chicago Fire (1-2)
Houston Dynamo 2-1 New York Red Bulls (2-2)
Chivas USA 0-2 LA Galaxy (0-1)
Seattle Sounders 2-1 Sporting KC (1-0)
San Jose Earthquakes 2-0 New England Revolution (2-1)
Portland Timbers 1-2 Columbus Crew (1-0)
FC Dallas 0-0 Real Salt Lake (0-0)
Colorado Rapids 2-1 Toronto FC (0-0)
Not a bad week, if I do say so myself.

This evening the Los Angeles Galaxy and Chivas USA meet at the Home Depot Center for the first 2011 installment of the so-called "SuperClasico". For most of its history the clash has been less than Super with the Galaxy dominating the outcomes. The only time parity has even been a conversation piece was during the Alexi Lalas as GM years when the team imploded, especially 2007 and 2008.

Last week's predictions may just have been my worst effort so far. Such a shame to take a step backwards when things were beginning to look up with one or two exact scorelines coming in.
Here are those predictions (actual results in brackets). Red for incorrect result, blue for correct result, green for exact scoreline.

Angel gets his second gol of the season in the Galaxy's dismantling of Sporting KC

Apologies for not getting comments on the recent games sooner. I'm traveling on the East Coast and its playing havoc with my blogging schedule. But it has been interesting to note how much my take on Philadelphia is tempered by watching the Kansas City game.

I want more of this tonight: Edson Buddle and Sean Franklin from last season's game winning gol celebration.

Today's game between the Philadelphia Union and the Los Angeles Galaxy promises to be a defensive battle. The Union have one of the top defenses in the league, quite an accomplishment for a second year team, despite not playing with their full first-choice defense for many of their games so far this season.

Another week, another round of Major League Soccer fixture. Week eight presented more draws than definitive results, but there was plenty of excitement on offer. Here's how I predicted the schedule would play out:
(Actual results in brackets. Red for incorrect result, blue for correct result, green for exact scoreline)
DC United 1-1 Seattle Sounders (2-1)
Houston Dynamo 1-2 Colorado Rapids (1-2)
Portland Timbers 1-1 Philadelphia Union (1-0)
Real Salt Lake 2-0 Chivas USA (1-0)
Toronto FC 0-2 Houston Dynamo (2-1)
DC United 3-1 FC Dallas (0-0)
Columbus Crew 2-0 Seattle Sounders (1-1)
New England Revolution 0-2 Colorado Rapids (0-0)
Chicago Fire 2-1 Vancouver Whitecaps (0-0)
LA Galaxy 2-0 New York Red Bulls (1-1)
As you can see, another poor effort.

I don't think I've ever been this entertained by a 1-1 draw in MLS since I started watching the league back in 1996 as a half-season ticket holder for DC United. And it's not just because that's the scoreline I predicted yesterday (because it you read me regularly, you know that's basically a fluke).

There isn't going to be very much that's pretty about today's clash between New York Red Bulls and the Los Angeles Galaxy. The Galaxy are not yet last year's fluid ball-handling team and are still experiencing drop-offs in the defensive end and the offensive third. New York had the best midfield unit in the league when you combine talent with their ability to work with one another.

This post didn't go up on Friday like it was supposed to due to problem with Wordpress. -NHJ

I know this is Friday morning, a time for looking ahead to the next game, not looking back at the previous one, but we never got a review of the FC Dallas match up due to a combination of lame amateur blogging and really heinous back-end problems with the blogging software.

A combination of crippling man flu and a short vacation starting tomorrow (not a good mix in itself) means I'm bringing you a streamlined edition of The Fixture List this week. Below are my predictions for this week's games, as always, but first I'll reflect on my guesses last week.
Correct results in brackets.

Five games without a win, only 4 points from the first 6 games. Not the type of start to the season that most fans were expecting heading into this season. Yes, most people thought that KC would struggle to pick up points at time, but I think the first half of the road trip is where fans saw the team picking up the majority of their points on this 10 game road trip.

The Sunday afternoon clash between the Los Angeles Galaxy and FC Dallas (4 pm FSW and Galavision) should, on paper, be a wide-open affair. A young team filled with speedsters playing in a warm-weather city versus a more mixed team of savvy veterans and young developing talent with a proven set of attackers should provide for many gol-scoring chances and back and forth action.

There's a saying here in Britain - you wait ages for a bus, then two come along at once. That's how I feel right now, because like Thierry Henry, my drought is finally over. In one weekend I went from 0% exact accuracy in my 2011 season predictions to being able to boast a pair of correct guesses! Still not a great performance overall this year, but is it a turnaround?

That's an aspirational headline, not an outright prediction. But, having hedged my professional prognostication reputation with that disclaimer, let's just put it right out there: despite the rigors of cross-country travel and lurking parity, the Los Angeles Galaxy is the better team in each of the three match-ups that start tonight with the contest at RFK Stadium against DC United (then Toronto FC and Chicago Fire).

Because we love you, we occassionally bring you the best in LA Galaxy and worldwide futbol videos. Today that means the video highlights from Saturday's game and the recap from the LA Galaxy media team, plus a fun video of one of the youngest LA Riot Squad members leading cheers during the game. And finally, from our friends at Soccer America, a video from last week's internationals, in this case Uruguay vs Ireland.

Leonardo scores his first MLS gol off a Beckham free kick, sealing a 1-0 victory over Philadelphia Union

In the words of @mattyhuffine's Twitter stream: "#LAGALAXY win with 10 men in what turned out to be more of a card game than a soccer match."

Right?

Or as my favorite futbol curmudgeon, Grahame Jones, put it in today's LA Times, "[R]eferee Paul Ward, .

Soooo.... you will notice that we conspicuously left last week's debacle in Sandy alone and concentrated on... other things, like Tony Meola and Jovan Kirovski's past with Manchester United.

I'm hoping that was the right decision and that by doing so we're relegating one of the worst games from a good Galaxy team I've seen since the worst games from the bad Galaxy teams of 2007-2008.

The reserve league schedule was announced today, and the Swope Park Rangers will have a similar set up to the first team this year. Most of the team's reserve games at home will not come until the stadium opens. In fact, the Rangers will only play 1 game at the Swope Park training complex. Their other four games will be played at Livestrong Sporting Park.

The season is just over a week away from starting. Seriously, containing my excitement for the season is getting hard to do. While I still have my questions about the team, I'm so ready for this season to start. I mean a week from now I'll be in LA for the opener against Chivas USA. Trips to LA and Chicago to kick off the season will certainly help with my excitement for this season.

One week to go.

One week to MLS First Kick 2011 and the opening of a do-or-die season for the Los Angeles Galaxy. I recently wrote that 2011 was Bruce Arena's MLS Cup or Bust season.

But of all the teams that could be considered contenders for MLS Cup at this point, you have to like the Galaxy to bring it all home.

The Los Angeles Galaxy media team did a couple of videos while the players were in pre-season training in Arizona. In one they focus on some of the rookies and their new experience as professionals in their first weeks with the team. In another they focus on the 'keepers and on the long-time relationship between new Galaxy assistant coach Curt Onalfo and Head Coach Bruce Arena.

I'm kicking off a pre-season video series here as we enter the last three weeks of training with footage from the two games against the Vancouver Whitecaps. What is notable about the one from the earlier game is that it includes Juan Pablo Angel getting a gol in Galaxy uniform and doing it in gritty striker style.

Galaxy players in training at ASU earlier this month (from The Bleacher Report)

The 2011 MLS season, the 16th edition since play began in 1996, starts in one month.

No matter how you look at the off-season moves that Arena and crew made, there can be only one conclusion: Bruce Arena sees this year as the year he brings the Cup back to Los Angeles.

We're officially less than a month until Sporting Kansas City kick off their season, and less than 24 hours before the first MLS teams kicks a ball in a real game when Real Salt Lake and Columbus play the first leg of their CONCACAF Champion's League Quarterfinal match-up. And today after 5 days away, KC returned to Arizona for the rest of their preseason training.

It took a little longer than I think most people expected, but today the MLS schedule came out. But not before MLS fans in the Twitter world had some fun at the expense of MLS with the hash tag, #MLSScheduleIsLateBecause, started by Ives over at Soccer By Ives. That at least brought plenty of humor to the day before the schedule was released.

"Honey, I found a Tuesday in November..."

For some wacky reason known only to Don Garber and his band of merry New York execs, it seems to take Major League Soccer longer every year to release the regular season schedule. But alas, after much waiting, supporters' patience was rewarded today with the release of the full fixture list.

Del Boy's got loads of TFC clobber back there! Lovely Jubbly!

There are so many glaring differences between the 2011 TFC training camp and those that were held under the old regime. The current "Oranje Revolution" management are open with information, invite seemingly qualified trialists to camp and schedule challenging friendlies.

The MLS schedule is finally set to come out this coming Thursday, February 10th. That's seven days later than last year's announcement. The frustration in the delay in the schedule is coming from all sides, especially fans who are really anxious to get their year planned around the schedule.
The delay is kind of understandable with all the teams not controlling their own venue, but with more and more teams doing that, you'd think getting the schedule out more than 5 weeks before the first game would be possible.

Head Counsellor at "Camp Wannafooty"
Dispatches from camp always have to be taken with a grain of salt. The campers often have a wide variety of emotions from good to bad and send the strangest messages to their loved ones waiting for news. TFC camp isn't all that different - lots of wide-eyed youngsters, surly camp veterans and wily counsellors make for an adventurous few weeks where anything seems possible.

"You are safe to play The Crew now"

The first photo-op of any preseason is of eager (well, mostly eager) players arriving at their club and getting ready for their annual medical. Down at BMO Field, Toronto FC's crack medical team will be putting the Reds, both old a new, through their paces to make sure they are up to scratch.

Cann, LaBrocca, Gargan and Harden get ready...

Yes, it's a bit of a slow news day when you are discussing your club's travel plans but things are a little more interesting than in years past. From 2007 through 2010, Mo Johnston's Reds usually dilly-dallied around Florida for a few weeks while testing their "strengths" against far from formidable opponents such as out of season NCAA squads and Sunday League ex-pros before winding up with a mediocre display at the annual Carolina Challenge in Charleston, SC.