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L.A. hosts TFC with sights set on top spot

Oct 3, 2014 - 8:22 PM Carson, CA (SportsNetwork.com) - The high-flying Los Angeles Galaxy will continue their pursuit of the MLS Supporters' Shield on Saturday when the club welcomes Toronto FC to the StubHub Center.

Los Angeles enters the weekend tied with Seattle Sounders FC atop the overall MLS table with 57 points apiece, and a win over Toronto on Saturday would apply some additional pressure on the Sounders to take maximum points from their meeting with the Colorado Rapids on Sunday.

The Galaxy are in superb form, too. They earned a comprehensive victory over Red Bull New York last time out to extend their unbeaten streak to nine games, the club's longest run without a defeat since a 14-game stretch in 2011.

"I don't want to do anything differently. We want to try and keep getting better as a team," said Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena. "There is certainly a bunch of challenging games ahead. We are playing teams to close out the season that all are important. Toronto is fighting for a playoff spot. Dallas is jockeying for a good position. And obviously, Seattle is with us battling for the first spot. All these games mean something."

Landon Donovan recorded three assists in the win over New York, putting him level with Steve Ralston for the all-time MLS career lead. It was also his league-leading sixth multiple-assist game this season.

"I'm proud of it," said Donovan. "To get an assist record, you have to have a lot of people scoring goals, so it's not just putting the ball in the right place, it's people finishing, and they scored three very good goals tonight, which helped. I've had a lot of guys score a lot of goals on my behalf, so it's a credit to all of them, too."

Toronto will be tasked with containing the Galaxy's potent, league-leading offense, a daunting objective for a club that has conceded 45 goals in league play this season.

But the Reds come into the contest on a two-game winning run, most recently overturning a two-goal deficit to get a 3-2 win over the Portland Timbers.

"That was quite the comeback," TFC coach Greg Vanney said. "The guys were committed, and I felt like once we got out of that first period where we took a couple of goals, we needed to be a little more aggressive and create some dangerous moments. At halftime, the discussion was to be aggressive, believe you can do it, keep moving forward and things will happen. All the credit to the guys because the amount of work they put in, together, to make it happen was fantastic."

Aggression seems to be a consistent message relayed by Vanney and his coaching staff.

"Sitting back and waiting is not our strength as our strength is to get the ball forward and get the ball into our attacking players," Vanney said. "We want to be able to give our forwards and our wide guys chances to score goals and when we do we can put a lot of teams under a lot of pressure and then we become very difficult to handle."