Friday, May 6, 2016

Crew SC Heartburn

2015 Table, get pumped.
It's no secret that Gregg Berhalter discounts the early part of the MLS season. In his first season, he weathered a one win in sixteen early season run. In his second year (last year), he had late Spring swoon of just two wins in twelve.

His Crew team is currently on a two in ten run that dates back to the playoffs last year. It's not fun, of course, but is it a bad thing? After all, he did make the MLS Cup final last year. At least, that's the qualifier.

A single MLS Cup Final appearance doesn't erase the horrid runs his teams go on, though. Fans still have to sit through them. Some even pay to go watch them, even though the head coach himself said they don't have to kick it into gear till later in the year.

You might be asking yourself why this poor run of form feels different. Is it the MLS Cup thing? Yeah, mostly. Let's say that is 50% of it. The other half of it, whether you know it or not, is because it's happening right at the front end of the season. Which kinda matters, despite what Berhalter says.

Last year, four of the bottom 5 teams in the East didn't make the playoffs. The exception being Montreal. Big qualifier there, if you remember. MLS moved heaven and earth to lighten their load in the CONCACAF Champions League. High hopes dashed in the final (reminder that MLS teams all crashed out early this year).

Taking out Montreal, there isn't a single Eastern team that jumped more than two positions after this point in the season last year. What this means is Columbus (currently sitting 2nd to last) will have to jump more than that just to make an extremely easy MLS playoff experience. On that...

...ah forget it. I had more on this, but the way MLS has this thing framed up sucks and barely worth talking about. What a drain it's become to pick it apart.

Here's some old Pulp. You don't need me to take you home.

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