LA Galaxy looking to retool midfield in summer transfer window

The LA Galaxy had an unexpected bye week last weekend, and head coach Greg Vanney used the power outage at Stanford University that forced the California Clasico on Saturday to be moved to September to get some more training sessions in before the next burst of regular game action.

That next burst kicks off Wednesday, when LA host Minnesota United, but with the summer transfer window opening officially on July 7 and the Galaxy seeming to need some tweaks to their roster to really contend this season, Vanney said his hope is the club will add reinforcements soon.

“Hopefully it’s soon,” Vanney told reporters on Monday. “Our goal is to try at the very early stages of the window is to have somebody in who can help the team. We’re assessing a potential second move along the way and seeing what options might be available. I would say in the next few weeks, probably.”

Vanney, who had previously hinted at wanting to bring in another attacking midfielder in the upcoming window, mentioned on Monday his priority is actually to find a pure defensive midfielder to free up the current stalwarts in the middle of the park to play more natural roles.

“I think we need another midfielder, I think we need a little more of a natural defensive midfielder, because that frees up Rayan [Raveloson] and Marky [Delgado] to be more of the running, attacking No. 8s, two-ways,” Vanney explained. “I think that gives us the opportunity to use playmakers in different parts of the field, we can use them coming off the widths, we can use them as a natural No. 10, I think it allows us to do more things in our group and it creates some balance. Because for me, Rayan and Marky, they do the defensive midfield but they’re not defensive midfielders, and we miss — Marky covers 13 [kilometers] over the course of a game — we could utilize that in the attacking half of the field because he’s such a smart runner and he’s aware and he’s a great balancer and he can get through the lines, he can keep the game fast on the attacking end. We can use that a little bit higher up the field and we can use some of Rayan’s presence in the box, just from a higher midfield position he can get in almost like a second forward at times and he can give us some presence there.”

While it sounds like a defensive midfielder could give Vanney the chance to use a diamond midfield in a 4-4-2 arrangement, thereby putting both Chicharito and Dejan Joveljić on the field at the same time, it’s unclear if Vanney is actually looking to do that. It’s worth noting that Delgado has considerable experience as a midfield shuttler (the “wide” midfielders in a diamond) with Vanney, but if the pieces fit that could turn into a legit option to potentially get the in-form players on the field at the same time.

While the transfer attention in Los Angeles is currently being taken up by LAFC signing both Giorgio Chiellini and Gareth Bale in recent days, it’s unclear if the signing(s) the Galaxy bring in will have a profile anywhere near those two, but the important thing is getting effective players who can help the team win. If they do that, the Galaxy will have done the right thing in the summer transfer window. Time will tell.

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