Heading into last Saturday's game against Real Salt Lake, Galaxy head coach Steve Sampson mentioned that he might make some changes to his lineup to shake things up a bit.
He made more than a couple personnel changes in his starting 11, and then was forced to go to his bench early when Pete Vagenas and Cornell Glen went down with first-half injuries.
More noticeable than the lineup changes was the way the Galaxy lined up on Saturday. Sampson scrapped his usual 4-4-2 formation for a 4-3-3 formation. Herculez Gomez and Glen started the game up top with Landon Donovan playing just in behind them. The formation change paid dividends as the Galaxy scored a season-high three goals, Donovan scoring one and assisting on the other two.
"It helps do a couple of things," commented Donovan about the new alignment. "One, it helps me get the ball in a deeper position and find the game. If I'm coming from a deeper spot I can take chances and go forward.
"At the same time I can get in spots, like the goal (I scored) with Eddie (Pope), where I can pressure people and not worry about not having cover behind me."
There were hints of this sort of freedom for Donovan late in the Chivas USA game. When Gomez came on as a second half sub in that game, Donovan dropped back a bit deeper into the midfield. He assisted on two late goals in that game to help lead his team to a come-from-behind 2-1 victory.
Another player who's enjoying the new lineup a bit more is Gomez, who got his first goal of the season on Saturday. In the 4-4-2 formation, Gomez was relegated to the bench, but now is finding more minutes and more of the ball as well.
"I still feel like I'm playing out wide, but its good. It forces me to get more touches on the ball then I'm used to," said Gomez. "I'm a lot better when I'm not playing with my back to goal."
With Gomez and Glen playing out wide, both forwards were able to make diagonal runs into the box and exploit the space that Donovan created when he had the ball.
"In Salt Lake we exposed their defense. Landon went running at them," said Gomez. "It just seemed that we had a lot more offensive action then we did in previous games."
Another early-season problem that the Galaxy struggled with was connecting the back line to the midfield. It's something that Sampson thinks might have been addressed.
"I like the way the team played for the most part against Salt Lake," said the Galaxy manager. "We were able to find our midfield very quickly and kept the ball when we needed to."
Whether or not this new formation in the Southland was just another step in an ongoing experiment, or is the finished product, remains to be seen.
This weekend when the Galaxy play the New England Revolution, the formation the Galaxy chooses to employ will go a long way in discerning what the look in Los Angeles will be the rest of the season.
Greg Daurio is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
