Columbus Crew exercise complete control over LA Galaxy

The Columbus Crew handed the LA Galaxy (9-5-7, 34 pts) their worst defeat of the season 4-1 on Saturday; an affair that was as close as 2-1 but got out of hand when Bruce Arena made substitutions pushing for the equalizer. The lone goalscorer for LA was Gyasi Zardes, who has the hottest foot on the club.

Zardes is just the second homegrown player in MLS to register double digit goals in one season, a positive benchmark for the program. He's been especially hot as of late scoring in four straight matches, and nine coming in his last ten times out.

Alan Gordon made his Galaxy debut, going in as a target as LA chased the equalizer. With Gordon in there and Robbie Rogers replaced by Baggio Husidic, the team was effectively 3-4-3 and instead of creating extra chances it just led to the team getting overrun in the midfield and unable to cope defensively.

This was only the fifth loss for the club, second fewest in MLS. LA still holds the best goal differential in MLS at +12 despite being -3 on the night.

The Galaxy are on the road again midweek and have a practice at home until Thursday at the earliest. It's going to be a tough eight days, and this result wasn't the way they'd hoped to kick off this stretch.