Trend: MLS Table, Previous 10 Weeks

Here is a look at the overall MLS table since the last week of June.

Team	PPG	GD
New York Red Bulls	2.20	1.50
L.A. Galaxy	2.00	1.11
FC Dallas	2.00	1.00
Columbus Crew	1.91	0.09
Colorado Rapids	1.80	0.10
New England Rev.	1.63	-0.13
Vancouver Whitecaps	1.60	0.60
Sporting Kansas City	1.60	-0.10
Portland Timbers	1.50	-0.10
San Jose Earthquakes	1.45	0.18
Toronto FC	1.36	-0.09
Houston Dynamo	1.36	0.09
Chicago Fire	1.18	-0.09
DC United	1.11	-0.56
Montreal Impact	1.10	0.00
Real Salt Lake	1.10	-0.60
New York City FC	1.00	-0.55
Philadelphia Union	1.00	-0.11
Seattle Sounders FC	0.90	-0.70
Orlando City	0.60	-1.50

...and here it is when teasing out just the Eastern Conference teams.

Team	PPG	GD
New York Red Bulls	2.20	1.50
Columbus Crew	1.91	0.09
New England Rev.	1.63	-0.13
Toronto FC	1.36	-0.09
Chicago Fire	1.18	-0.09
DC United	1.11	-0.56
Montreal Impact	1.10	0.00
New York City FC	1.00	-0.55
Philadelphia Union	1.00	-0.11
Orlando City	0.60	-1.50

A couple quick notes:

► NYRB and Crew SC are the only teams with a + goal differential

► Crew SC are on pace to catch DC United for the 2nd playoff spot (bye)

► DC United has an atrocious goal differential over last 10 weeks

► Outside the top 3, the East has been tough to watch. Lots of bad soccer this year.

THE EASTERN CONTENDERS 

NEW YORK

It's looking like the Red Bulls have the mojo going into the final set of games. On top of the results, they appear to have great team chemistry (comradery, spirit). They've been on an unbelievable run over the last 10 weeks, near perfect, and doing it with an astonishing +1.50 goal difference. What separates them from the rest of the pack is their balance. Overall, on the season, they are 3rd in GF and 4th in GA. The observation over the years has been thus: Good defenses get you through two-legged series. You have to be able to lock a team down.

COLUMBUS CREW SC

"Surging" is the best way to describe Columbus after an inconsistent first half of the season. No question they have qualified for the MLS Cup, but they do have some false horizons during this recent run, however. In their last four they have played an inconsistent (but improving) Colorado, a bad NYCFC (twice), plus a shorthanded Sporting KC. Another red flag for me is that they are not able to stop opponents from scoring. It's been an issue Gregg Berhalter has been willing to live with, but it will hurt them when playing a stout defense (which, in the East, only NY has).

Team	GA
New York Red Bulls	0.90
Montreal Impact	1.30
Chicago Fire	1.36
New England Rev.	1.50
Philadelphia Union	1.56
DC United	1.89
Columbus Crew	1.91
Toronto FC	2.09
New York City FC	2.45
Orlando City	2.60

NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION
Here we are again with a healthy Jermaine Jones fixing most of the issues the team had early in the season. The Goals Against (GA) above is a little misleading as Jones has grown back into the line up they have shut out 3 teams in the last 5. Albeit weaker opponents, not many MLS teams have been able to do it. Outside of stellar recent results you have the concrete surface they play on to consider. No team is going to want to face New England.

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That's all I've got for my stretch run analysis this week. Feels good to finally get to this part of the season (the first part can be a bit of a slog). One thing not touched on here this week was the impact of international week(s) coming up. It will hurt the jockeying for spots and may trip of some of the form for some of the better teams. That's MLS though. Managing league quarks is half the battle. Stay tuned for more next week.

Final 25% of Season - East Playoff Race a Dud but Table Position Important

A tweak to the 2015 Major League Soccer MLS Cup playoff format is making for a somewhat interesting final quarter of the season that is otherwise falling flat.

Change is the norm for the MLS Cup. The way it works this year is the top two teams in each conference are going to get a bye and placed into the conference semi-finals - while the teams finishing 3rd to 6th (3rd vs 6th and 4th v 5th) will battle it out in a single-elimination round to meet them there.

Were the playoffs to start right now, the seeding would look like this:

1. NY RED BULLS
2. DC UNITED
3. COLUMBUS CREW SC
4. TORONTO FC
5. NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION
6. MONTREAL IMPACT

What this means is that both Columbus and Toronto would be awarded a home playoff game.

3. COLUMBUS v. 6. MONTREAL (at Mapfre Stadium)
4. TORONTO v. 5. NEW ENGLAND (at BMO field)

The lowest seed to advance in the above games will face NY RED BULLS and the other will face DC UNITED in a two-legged series. If Columbus were to win they would be guaranteed to face DC, regardless of what happens in the other game.

Competitively and financially you could argue that the best place to finish is in 3rd (which is where the Crew are). Why? Because you are playing the worst team in the group and you are getting a home playoff game.

EASTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFF RACE IS A DUD

What isn't interesting about the MLS Cup is the qualifying format. Six of the ten teams in each conference renders large chunks of the early regular season about as intense as a Sunday rec league.

There's also a problem that the league is facing now in the Eastern Conference where the teams not making the playoffs are nearly locked in with 25% of the season to go. Projecting out the table based on current PPG shows a large 6 point gap between 6th place Montreal (proj. 43 pts) and 7th place NYCFC (37 proj. pts). Of course, it is possible for NYCFC and Orlando to make up the point difference but it would require them to finish out their final games at a 1.70 Point per Game rate. That's nearly 5 wins from the final 8 they have left.

Both have only 7 wins from their first 26 games.

Quick! MLS Eastern Conf Final Table Prediction

The Major League Soccer season is here already so here's my look at where teams in the Eastern Conference might finish based on projected player minutes, goals and team carryover.

Projected Pts : TEAM
67 : Sporting Kansas City
53 : Houston Dynamo
52 : Chicago Fire
51 : DC United
47 : NY Red Bulls
46 : Columbus Crew
44 : Impact Montreal
42 : Toronto FC
42 : New England Revs
42 : Philadelphia Union

The way I approached it was to start with minutes and then from there use players historical goal scoring rates (if available). While there is definitely some dark arts involved in estimating minutes for players, it's not just a blind guess. Putting this together I found that 8 of the 10 East teams are bringing back greater than 75% of possible MLS minutes in a 34 game regular season (there is even a healthy 146 of the 279 players in East registering MLS minutes in previous two years).

For the new guys I made projections based on groups, like; 1st year MLS college player, starting international signing, roster signing (in the 18), non-college youth signing, etc. From there I made general estimations based on position, expected minutes and goals. It is also based it off of my observations of the league since 2011.

There is also a tricky third group that players like Dom Dwyer fall into which is guys that have played in the league but will be getting significantly more minutes.

Here is what I'm projecting for goals for:
53 : TFC
52 : DCU
50 : SKC
47 : NY
46 : MTL
46 : HOU
46 : CHI
43 : CLB
43 : NER
40 : PHI

TURNING GOALS INTO POINTS

Once I got minutes and goals down looked at goal to point values for each team over the last two years. Goal value here is how many points each goal is worth to a team or Points per Goal (league average is 1.05 pts earned per goal scored). I like pts earned per goal because it takes in to account goals against (defense) and it is simple.

Pts Per Goal : Team (pts, goals last 2 yrs)
1.36 : SKC (121,89)
1.17 : HOU (104,89)
1.14 : CHI (106,93)
1.08 : CLB (93,86)
1.04 : PHL (82,79)
1.01 : NY (116,115)
0.99 : DCU (74,75)
0.98 : NER (86,88)
0.96 : MTL (91,95)
0.79 : TFC (52,66)

Now that I had what a goal is worth to each team I multiplied times my goal projection to get a points projection at the top of the post.

POINT RANGE

They range you see on the chart from each team is based on returning MLS Minutes (carryover). The idea behind that is teams that bring players back or build rosters with experienced MLS players tend to be more successful (and predictable).

I kept it simple so, for example; I'm estimating that 83% of Dynamo minutes this year will be played by former Dynamo / MLS players. What this means is that 17% is all new (that's about average). I just added and subtracted that percentage from my expected pts to get the range.

The reason the Crew has such a wide range is because so many of the 33660 possible minutes will be played but new-to-MLS players (32% projection, even greater than Toronto! but then again, who knows what the heck their roster will look like by year end).

PLAYOFFS THE GOAL

Because of the structure of MLS the goal of each team is to really just finish in the top five. Looking at the chart I see that Sporting KC, Houston, Chicago and DC United are likely participants based of this model.

DC not being a surprise because they are stocked with MLS players. In a strange way they have out Bezbatchenko-ed Toronto's new mastermind Tim Bezbatchenko.

MUSHY MLS

Again, this is just putting a little bit of something behind a prediction than just going off, well... nothing. Running up and down the rosters player by player and looking at what they've done the last couple years is very informative. Brushing up on how well teams have done over the past few years is also good for me.

With MLS roster rules the way they are the starting point for these teams might look very much different in just two months. Throw in a World Cup right around the time teams are finding stride and injuries to key players and things go sideways.

This makes me wonder why I do this! But it's fun and also need to look back at after the year is done and match up some of the expectations.

Abruptly, Suddenly and With Damage

MLS Round 3 round-up in the books over at Massive Report. Got crazy with the doodles this week. First up is the top 11 image that actually only has 10 players. It got tricky and crowded. + All the best players are Montreal. It got tedious for this early on in the season.



The post title image was a Archer like Ben Speas image. He's a big story these first three games. It's interesting to me that he is playing as well as he is. Makes you wonder how well some of the other guys like Ethan Finlay, Justin Meram, Eric Gehrig, and Aaron Horton would do with regular season minutes.

I was listening to Archie Bell and the Drells when I put it together. A bit before my time and certainly before Speas time, but great song. Felt it fit his playing style, his rhythm. It seemed to click so I went with it. Also, in a strange way it looks like a Sports Illustrated cover from the flip side.

Anyhow, check out the round-up. I thought about addressing the fact that Cody Sharrett did a round up for the Crew dot com recently after never doing it, but I didn't. I actually hope/wish club site would do more league stuff. Get's them looking outside their own bubble and all. Crew need some of that.

Actually. A lot of that.

MR Post: Conf Round Up

Have a new post up over at Massive Report that runs down MLS Rd 2 happenings across the Eastern Conference. Going to keep it going all year, hopefully each week.

Highlights this week
Montreal winning on the road again, New England Revs beating Chicago away

Lowlights
Chicago, The SkyDome and NASR picking Toronto's Earnshaw as player of the week.

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I'm fascinated with Montreal this year.
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Check the post out. In other Massive Report news, I'm planning on heading over to Hendoc's this Monday to see if I can get back on the podcast, been tied up recently. In the meantime listen to the one they recorded last night.

I've got a couple things cookin' so keep checking Massive Report every hour on the hour (I'll probably be writing Wednesday and Thursday evenings so, Thursday I guess).

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Here's full header art/illustration. All the photos were taken by Anne-Marie Sorvin for USA Today Sports. They are really excellent. Check out her other work too.

I felt like she was shooting portraits more than a sporting event and was drawn to the images. I think all of these were taken pre-game, their eyes tell a story.

Thanks for reading.

MLS: Eastern Conf Playoff Outlook

Somebody is going to be left out because there are six teams battling for five Eastern Conference playoff spots.

Last week I decided that opponent difficulty was too important to ignore in this league. So, let's first take a look at the average difficulty of each potential playoff team's remaining opponents as they stand on the MLS True Table:

Avg Opponent Rank on Table : Team
14.6 : HOU
13.0 : DCU
10.3 : CLB
9.5 : CHI
9.7 : NYR
7.7 : SPC

Houston and DC have the easier schedules on average. But with only 5 or 6 games left that number might be misleading. Let's take a look at remaining games against TOP 10 clubs.

Against Top 10
0 : HOU
2 : DCU
3 : CLB
3 : NY
4 : CHI
4 : SPC

This kinda leaves the Crew out in the cold as Houston and DC are the two clubs they are trying to catch. It's looking like the October 20 match up between the Crew and DC is going to be a huge six pointer for that last playoff spot.

The Crew do have an advantage in remaining home games. It's gonna be all DC and Crew, right down to the wire.

NYR : 4
CLB : 4
CHI : 3
HOU : 3
DCU : 2
SPC : 2

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While I'm at it... Federico Higuain or not, it's intensely frustrating to be writing about a team as talented as the Crew fighting for playoff table scraps. There is no reason for the Crew to be in this position at this point in the season. None. This team should be battling for home field advantage or even the Supporters Shield.

More on this in a month's time, SAYETH HELLTOWN.

Mothered Philly Frustrated

Bad weather the night before the game grounded Philadelphia's flight. The day of the game Major League Soccer stepped in and charted a flight for them that only got into town a handful of hours before kick off. That sort of disruption could bother even the best pro.

I also believe that another frustration for the Union is the addition of Freddie Adu. By all accounts Adu seems like a good guy, but the decisions to bring players in isn't so much the franchises or coaches. These decisions are arbitrated by MLS offices. Bringing in a player of Adu's stature is a distraction that will take a few weeks to get over.

The Philadelphia Union are a tight group. Before Adu showed up they had only fielded 19 different players. It's a great testement to the franchises consistency and conditioning. MLS average is 26. All the top teams have fielded less then that. The worst: Vancouver (30), NY (30), and Toronto (37).

The Union played a good game last night. Good control, possession, chances. But they just seemed frustrated. Maybe agitated. Peter Nowak's post game comments suggested that.

THE CREW
A 2nd good week for Kevin Burns. Last week against one of the worst teams and this week against one of the best. He is Manos Hands of Fate this game.

The Renteria / Mendoza connection will need time. Mendoza was not involved in the game most of the time. But, to be fair though, most of the game was running through Meram on the right because he Union is very strong opposite side. That strength was multiplied last night because Le Toux was dropping back so far. Did Renteria and Mendoza cause that drop? Or was it just Robbie Rogers.

Could have been Rogers. One of his first attacking touches lead to the opening goal. Rogers had another excellent game. The guy is on a roll.

This was an intense game. And physical. Not sure if Meram was up for it but he did seem to be in the right places at the right times. I think he is a work in progress as a MF player. His natural position is up top. Benardo Anor seems more comfortable filling in for Eddie.

Hard fought win for the Crew.