LA Galaxy managed a narrow 1-0 win over Houston Dynamo and it could have been a very different result had it not been for some poor refereeing decisions according to the opposition manager Owen Coyle.
The former Bolton Wanderers manager felt that his team should have been given a certain penalty that was not deemed as a foul by the referee. To add to the misery, his team considered an injury time goal despite having seen the opposition reduced to just 10 men after Sorto was sent off. Houston Dynamo were unable to get the much-needed goal that would have given them entry into the play-off places.
As it is, it is LA Galaxy who leapfrog them into the sixth place with both teams having played the same number of matches. LA Galaxy have one more point than Houston Dynamo in what is turning out into a disappointing campaign for the club. The much anticipated arrival of Steven Gerrard cannot come soon enough for Bruce Arena. Houston had managed to keep LA Galaxy out of the danger for 90 minutes, but the goal in the 91st minute brought a sigh of relief to the home team manager. The defeat means that Houston’s two match winning run has been brought to a halt.
“It was a penalty. There’s no ‘could be’ about it. The free kick, the foul, takes place inside the box and we’ve been awarded a free kick four yards outside the box. … So at the end of the day we don’t want anything that is not ours, we only want everything that we think is fair and that penalty was missed. We came here in good form. I think we certainly deserved something tonight, we never got it, but that’s what this game does. We have to pick ourselves up and we go again,” said Coyle.