Speaking at LA Galaxy training ahead of his side's trip to Dallas at the weekend, head coach Bruce Arena was in no mood for critics. "I have not read an article or heard from anybody who knows a whole lot about the game, to be honest with you," Arena said. "There's been teams that have won games that actually haven't been good at all, but (critics) don't know the difference. They don't understand what's going on on the field anyway.
"They completely don't know what they're talking about. They also don't know what the issue was in rebuilding a team.
"There are 18 players on last year's roster that aren't here, and out of that four remain in MLS. And only one of them (D.C. United goalkeeper Josh Wicks) has played any minutes. We've had to completely rebuild a team without having the advantage of, say, an expansion team with allocation dollars that's well above everybody else, preferential draft positions and player allocation positions. On top of that we started at the end of 2008 well over the salary cap.
"It's not something that changes in a matter of months. It's a process. We have to correct some wrongs that were created over a number of years."