Fri Jun 20 16:16:33 2008

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Crew aim to slow L.A. offense at The Home Depot Center

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Carson, CA (Sports Network) - The Columbus Crew travel to take on the red-hot Los Angeles Galaxy on Saturday night at The Home Depot Center in Major League Soccer action.

The Galaxy (6-4-2) have won four of five and are the league's highest scoring team by a wide margin. Over the course of the last five games, L.A. has scored 14 goals, which has been enough to propel the side to the top spot in the Western Conference table.

The Crew (7-4-1), who actually have two more points than the Galaxy, snapped a four-game unbeaten streak this past week by topping Kansas City, 3-0. Despite going more than a month between victories, the Crew still have the second best record in the league behind the Eastern leading New England Revolution.

"I think we believe in what we're doing a little bit more," Crew forward Alejandro Moreno said. "I think we're a little more consistent in the way we are playing. We're more organized in the back. The team believes we are capable of getting results whether it is at home or on the road. It's good to start out the season the way we did. It gave us confidence. We hit a patch there that last month or so but we're back on it with a good result [vs. Kansas City]. I'm looking forward to [the match vs. L.A.]."

The Galaxy are coming off a 3-0 win over the San Jose Earthquakes in which forward Edson Buddle scored his second hat trick of the season to lead the offense with Landon Donovan absent on U.S. national team duty.

"We have a lot of quality players on this team and we are capable of playing like this every week," Buddle said. "I got some great service and I was able to finish. I have been working hard in training and just getting a lot of repetitions in. The balls that I get in training and in the game are on time and if I time my runs well I will have opportunities."

"I think we played well," L.A. coach Ruud Gullit said. "The team performance was good. We trained all week on certain things and we accomplished them tonight. Because a lot of players that normally don't play were in there tonight, we tried some new schemes for the team and the players that played today did a good job."

The Galaxy will be back to close to full strength on Saturday, with forward Carlos Ruiz the only significant player not in the lineup because of his participation with the Guatemalan national team.

Columbus will be missing some players with Ezra Hendrickson, Stefani Miglioranzi and Adam Moffat out with injuries. Moffat is actually our for the season after tearing his ACL. The team will welcome back left back Gino Pedula, however.