The ailing Columbus Crew will return home Sunday afternoon at 3:00 to face the red-hot and undefeated Los Angeles Galaxy. Coach Tom Fitzgerald and the boys left town 4-1, sporting a three-game winning streak and in first place in the Eastern Conference. They returned three weeks later 5-3, injury-plagued and in second place behind D.C. United.In Saturday’s match against the Miami Fusion, the Crew lost Stern John for 2-to-4 weeks with a separated elbow. John has been working out with the team with his arm wrapped up to prevent another separation, Fitzgerald said. “It is looking like it will be closer to weeks,” Fitzgerald said.Team co-captain Mike Lapper suffered a season ending injury when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament during the second half of the Fusion game.Lapper will undergo surgery to repair the torn ligament and will then spend the next year rehabbing the injury. The date of the surgery has not been decided, Fitzgerald said.The U.S. National Team will be using the services of Brian McBride, Brian Maisonneuve, Thomas Dooley, and Juergen Sommer for the next seven-to-nine games. The four players the Crew lost to the U.S. National Team are two more than any other team in the league.”It’s a huge disadvantage, but it’s an honor to play on the U.S. National Team,” Fitzgerald said. “It will be difficult for us, but we’ll carry the torch while they’re gone.” In short, the Crew fans will see a team with only five of the 11 starters that were on the field when the team last played at home April 18.Although the next few weeks look rather bleak for the hardest working team in soccer, Fitzgerald is optimistic.”This is why we got so many quality players before the season,” Fitzgerald said. “This is their chance to prove that they should have been playing before the World Cup.” Mark Dougherty, who entered the season as Major League Soccer’s all-time winningest goalkeeper, will be tending the net while Sommer is gone.The Crew had the best goal-keeping statistics for 1997, with Brad Friedel, and this year is no different. Sommer won the MLS Player of the Month award for April with a goals against average of only 1.17, best in the league. Dougherty’s only appearance this year was in the season opener, which the Crew won 2-1 over the Tampa Mutiny, March 1.”I’m really excited for Dougherty, he’s been waiting a long time for this,” Fitzgerald said. “He had a great game against Tampa.”In Sunday’s match Ansil Elcock and Mike Clark will be returning to play with the Crew after missing the Fusion game. Elcock missed the game while representing the Trinidad National Team in Paris, and Clark was serving a one-game suspension for receiving two yellow cards in the April 30 match in Tampa. The match against the Galaxy, who has a MLS-record 14-game regular-season winning streak dating back to September 7, 1997, will prove to be a difficult one for the Crew. But Fitzgerald is confident that his squad matches up well with L.A. “We have as much speed as they do, I’m really happy with our team,” Fitzgerald said. “This is it, they all need to step up for a total team effort.”The Galaxy will be without defender and team captain Dan Calichman, who broke his right leg in their May 8 match against Colorado. They will also be without Cobi Jones, who is with U.S. National Team.The Galaxy has a league-leading 26 goals, converting 46.4 percent of their 56 total shots on goal.They are coming off a league-record seven-goal explosion against the Colorado Rapids May 6.The key match-up in the game will likely be between Crew defender Mike Clark and Galaxy forward Welton, who is second in the MLS with seven goals.