Only 17 teams in Major League Soccer history have finished with less than a 1.06 GF average.
THE GOOD NEWS: The Crew are only allowing 1.06 goals against per game. Only 16 teams have finished better than that. Bizarrely, 5 of the 16 are 2012 clubs. Eh? Going to have to take a look at the archives now...
After the 2008 year the floor dropped out from under Major League Soccer and goal scoring changed.
1996 - 2008 each team averaged around 1.50 goals for per game. Since then:
2009: 1.27
2010: 1.23
2011: 1.29248
2012: 1.29239
The way MLS is structured now, defensive minded teams make the playoffs. Last year's LA team only allowed 0.82 per game and the 2010 Rapids: 1.07. Having a strong defense is magnified by the the lack of Draws league wide. In fact, only 22% of 2012 games have ended in a tie this year. That's the lowest since 2002 and a 12 pt. drop from 34% last year(!). Hm. Some drop there.
Some might say too much of a drop to have happened on its own.
Robert Warzycha has the defense part down as a head coach. Only one team has scored more than two on his club this year.
Unfortunately two is enough to beat Crew v2012... Montreal put up two on the Crew yesterday which means there are only two possible results from that a Warzycha coached team can achieve; a Loss or a Draw.
Columbus has lost 4 of the 5 games where the opponent has scored 2 or more - and drawn only one. Last year they lost 8 of 10 (and 2 drawn) when the bad guys scored two. You have to go back to May 8th, 2010 to find a 3:2 Crew victory.
Weird.
Hell, MLS is all weird.
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...the Montreal game.
Columbus was outplayed for most of the game and there was very little cohesiveness betwixt the starting XI. My patience is running out for a couple experienced players. Too many missed games and inconsistency in effort level (Mirosevic).
Marco Di Vaio looked great for the IMPACT in the 2nd half and Zarek Valentin's goal was dope.
Not dope was Chris Birchall's foul in the box at the death. It was funny looking though.
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