Basic Preseason Crew Stats Thru 3

The Crew beat Philly on a late penalty goal converted by Federico Higuain (drawn by Ryan Finley).

Since the game was not streamed there isn’t much to comment on than basic stats as reported by Soccerway. So, with that, let's take a look at how the Crew are shaping up from a basic stats perspective. It can tell us a lot.

Teams, or the the organization setting up the event, have reported these figures (vs an official stat keeping firm) so take with grain of salt. NOTE: Because we have so few games here I have eliminated the penalty goal and the own goal from the record.

Here is how that breaks down:

After 3 games the Crew are leading their opponents in these major categories that I am able to get my hands on. In MLS there are correlations between winning and Shots on Target (SoT), Goal Conversion % (% goals from SoT) and Possession % (%POS). Of course three games is not enough to draw strong conclusions from but it is enough to say there are some good signs here.

Last year the the Crew struggled with shot conversion and ball possession. Both were main drivers in the team finishing 16th.

Perhaps just as informative as general team statistics are the number of minutes guys are playing. From this we can get a more clear picture of where players fall on the roster. I’ll break them up into groups by percentage of possible minutes played (3 games = 270 mins).

% OF POSSIBLE MINS PLAYED : NAME

67% : Federico Higuain
67% : Wil Trapp
67% : Michael Parkhurst
61% : Bernardo Anor
56% : Chad Barson
56% : Jairo Arrieta
56% : Hector Jimenez
50% : Matt Lampson
50% : Steve Clark
50% : Waylon Francis
44% : Dominic Oduro
44% : Tyson Wahl
44% : Josh Williams

This group appears to be most of the 1st team so far. If you include new signing Giancarlo Gonzalez you get the Crew starting 11. On the right column of this site you see my projected regular starters. I’m keeping Viana over there as LB because my hunch is Berhalter will fall back to him.

This next group looks to be a mix of trialists and gameday 18 players. I will put another asterisk next to guys I think will be regulars in the 18

33% : Patrick Slogic (trialist)
33% : Ben Speas *
33% : Agustín Viana *
33% : Fifi Baiden *
33% : Justin Meram *
33% : Ben Sweat *
33% : Kevan George *
17% : Tony Tchani *
17% : Adam Bedell (trialist)
17% : Eric Gehrig *
17% : Ross Friedman
17% : Ryan Finley *

This final group looks to be the guys that will either be practice players or go to Dayton. Ross Friedman (above) probably in this group, along with the trialists the Crew are looking at.

9% : Ethan Finlay
0% : Brad Stuver
0% : Matt Wiet
0% : Aaron Schoenfeld
0% : Matt Walker
0% : Daniel Paladini (injured)
0% : Daniel Withrow

GOALS, ASSISTS

Federico Higuain has two goals (one from a free kick the other a penalty), Josh Williams has a laser shot, Arrieta has one and finally Adam Bedell got one from the lone assist so far in three games from Agustin Viana.

The Crew have two more preseason games which will take the team into opening day March 8th. I would be a little surprised if Gregg Berhalter and staff decide to use the next two for any other reason than tuning up the 1st team. If the Crew is not sure about a couple players by this point the start of the season could be a little bumpy.