Vancouver Whitecaps headed to LA tonight and a lethargic display saw them torn apart by a resurgent Galaxy side, who comfortably made it three wins in a week.
Many felt this was a great test to how far the Caps have come this season. We can only hope it wasn't.
Vancouver went with the line up that beat Colorado last Saturday, but they looked like a different side from the off and went down to a 3-0 defeat that could have been a lot worse.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
The opening minutes had little of note, bar a few Galaxy corners and an early booking for David Beckham.
The home side got the breakthrough though in the 16th minute when Beckham hit a corner deep into the box and onto the head of Hector Jimenez.
His downwards header, led to some penalty box pinball and Joe Cannon did well to keep a goalbound deflection out, but he could only palm the ball into the path of Mike Magee, who had the easy job of tapping in the opener.
It was poor defending from a normally solid Whitecaps backline.
LA nearly made it two in the 29th minute.
Jay DeMerit was caught sleeping and dispossessed by Landon Donovan. The Galaxy captain bore down on goal, one on one with Cannon, but pulled his shot wide left when he should have at least got something on target.
It didn't matter as LA did add a second a minute later.
After neat movement and six passes, Robbie Keane collected a short pass from Donovan and the Irishman waltzed through three Caps players before easily slotting past Cannon.
It was more terrible defending by the Caps and Martin Bonjour, in particular, was left completely flat footed.
Things went from bad to worse for Bonjour two minutes later after he completely misjudged a harmless long punt, allowing Donovan to go one-on-one again with Cannon, but this time he pulled his shot right and into the side netting.
Vancouver already looked lethargic and a spent force and when LA made it three before half time, it was well and truly game over.
Once again, defensive errors were to blame.
DeMerit was again caught sleeping, this time on a long through ball, and this allowed Keane to get goalside of the Caps captain. DeMerit did well to close down but Keane's shot ricocheted of his left arm and the referee had no hesitation in pointing to the spot.
Up stepped Donovan and this time he made no mistake down to middle to make it 3-0 after 41 minutes.
LA kept the pressure on straight from the kick off and Magee forced Cannon into a save with a long range effort.
The Whitecaps had hardly spent any time on attack it seemed, but tried to get some kind of offense going in the closing minutes of the half.
Davide Chiumiento fired into the side netting in stoppage time, but that was by far the closest the visitors had come to troubling the Galaxy goal.
What Martin Rennie could say to the team after that first half performance, it's hard to imagine, but the key for the second period was not to have a display that would seriously knock their confidence going forward and hamper their goal difference in the process.
Things didn't start off much better for the Caps as the second half got underway, with John Thorrington limping off within three minutes with what appeared to be a thigh injury.
Camilo was the replacement and he nearly pulled one back in the 52nd minute after collecting a pass from Sebastien Le Toux and curling an effort just past the right hand post.
The Caps bad night continued in the 62nd minute when Jun Marques Davidson picked up a booking for a tough tackle, ruling him out of the next match in Colorado.
Camilo had another chance in the 69th minute but hit his 25 yard free kick straight at Josh Saunders.
Keane had the ball in the net again for LA with nine minutes remaining but the linesman had quickly put his flag up for offside.
Camilo was really the only player on the Caps attack that had any spark of danger about him and he forced Saunders into a diving stop as the game moved into stoppage time.
The second half felt like a going through the motions exercise, but at least Vancouver didn't lose another goal and go into any worse goal difference of minus one.
The Whitecaps now go into an eleven day break before returning to their road trip with what is another crucial match-up against Colorado.
The team responded well after their last break and came out all guns blazing and this was Vancouver's first defeat in six games. That's the positive way to look at this performance and move on.
A similar lethargic performance against the Rapids will certainly be punished and will make the second half of the season a lot more difficult for the Caps.
We can only hope that this off day was a blip and not what lies in store on this five game road trip.
ATT: 21,529
FINAL SCORE: Los Angeles Galaxy 3 - 0 Vancouver Whitecaps
LOS ANGELES GALAXY: Josh Saunders; Todd Dunivant, A.J. DeLaGarza, David Lopes, Sean Franklin; Mike Magee (Bryan Jordan 75), David Beckham, Juninho, Hector Jimenez (Michael Stephens 65); Robbie Keane, Landon Donovan (Chad Barrett 90) [subs Not Used: Brian Perk, Tommy Meyer, Bryan Gaul, Marcelo Sarvas]
VANCOUVER: Joe Cannon; Young-Pyo Lee, Martin Bonjour, Jay DeMerit, Alain Rochat; Jun Marques Davidson (Eric Hassli 66), John Thorrington (Camilo Sanvezzo 49), Gershon Koffie; Sebastien Le Toux (Michael Nanchoff 85), Darren Mattocks, Davide Chiumiento [subs not used: Brad Knighton, Jordan Harvey Carlyle Mitchell, Floyd Franks]
<p>