2015 HELLTOWN PLAYER OF THE YEAR

The all-caps title is kinda over the top. Been using the same tools to measure performance here at Helltown, five years now. Bradley Wright-Phillips is the HELLTOWN BEER PLAYER OF THE YEAR for 2015. I'm as surprised as you are. I trust my system, though. Stay up to date. Throughout the year, I keep this MLS stuff updated on the right-hand nav of this site...

Below - past winners of such, this as.

2014 - ROBBIE KEANE 

DARLINGTON NAGBE - 2013

MLS 2014-15 Combined Standings, Cost per Point

There are many ways to measure success in Major League Soccer. Outside of performance in the playoffs (which, by the nature of it, can be influenced by loads of outside factors), perhaps the cleanest was is to look a regular season table points total of the last two years.

Pts	Team	GD
115	Seattle Sounders FC	23
114	FC Dallas	23
112	LA Galaxy	42
110	D.C. United	13
110	New York Red Bulls	24
105	Columbus Crew SC	15
105	New England Revolution	6
103	Vancouver Whitecaps FC	11
102	Portland Timbers	11
100	Sporting Kansas City	10
97	Real Salt Lake	5
90	Toronto FC	-10
81	Houston Dynamo	-26
79	Philadelphia Union	-13
79	Montreal Impact	-16
77	San Jose Earthquakes	-13
69	Colorado Rapids	-29
66	Chicago Fire	-25

Next up is a look at the point differences, 2014 to 2015.

Team	Up/Down
Montreal Impact	23
San Jose Earthquakes	17
New York Red Bulls	10
Toronto FC	8
FC Dallas	6
Colorado Rapids	5
Portland Timbers	4
Vancouver Whitecaps FC	3
Houston Dynamo	3
Sporting Kansas City	2
Columbus Crew SC	1
New England Revolution	-5
Philadelphia Union	-5
Chicago Fire	-6
D.C. United	-8
LA Galaxy	-10
Seattle Sounders FC	-13
Real Salt Lake	-15

Going to have a little bit of fun here and whip up a little metric. We'll call it POWER POINTS. Consistency (repeatability) is extremely important in sports, so what I'm going to to is take the absolute value of the year to your point total difference and subtract it from the total of the two years.

Example: New York Red Bulls. 110 pts - 10 point, year to year difference = 100 POWER POINTS.

Power Pts	Team
108	FC Dallas
104	Columbus Crew SC
102	D.C. United
102	LA Galaxy
102	Seattle Sounders FC
100	New England Revolution
100	New York Red Bulls
100	Vancouver Whitecaps FC
98	Portland Timbers
98	Sporting Kansas City
82	Real Salt Lake
82	Toronto FC
78	Houston Dynamo
74	Philadelphia Union
64	Colorado Rapids
60	Chicago Fire
60	San Jose Earthquakes
56	Montreal Impact

Crew SC get a gold star here. Their point totals year to year were 52 in 2014 and 53 this year. That's about as consistent as you can be. In fact, best in the league. I love results like that. For me, it's the first place I look when trying to figure out if something is going well or not. One year improvements like Montreal, San Jose or the New York Red Bulls suggest instability just as much as teams that dropped points like a rock in Real Salt Lake, Seattle or the LA Galaxy.

COST PER POINT

Another clean way to look at success in the regular season is to take the aggregate (year end) salaries of both years and divide them by total points earned in the regular season.

$ p Pt	Team
$75,547	D.C. United
$76,057	FC Dallas
$79,456	Columbus Crew SC
$85,879	Real Salt Lake
$100,091	Sporting Kansas City
$100,185	Chivas USA
$105,319	Portland Timbers
$109,892	Vancouver Whitecaps FC
$116,918	Houston Dynamo
$118,635	San Jose Earthquakes
$122,525	Colorado Rapids
$126,126	Philadelphia Union
$131,657	New England Revolution
$138,175	Montreal Impact
$138,249	New York Red Bulls
$153,226	Chicago Fire
$198,897	Seattle Sounders FC
$291,386	LA Galaxy
$429,503	Orlando City SC
$438,746	Toronto FC
$495,258	New York City FC

You can see that there are basically three tiers of teams in MLS, in regards to spending on the competitive nature of the regular season (versus jersey sales, or ticket sales or what have you). DC, Dallas, Columbus and Salt Lake are clearly smart spenders. NYCFC, TFC and Orlando are wasteful.

The measure of success of any season is based upon goals each team sets forth (failing to set goals is a fail, of course), so it's impossible to know who achieved what on a team by team basis. What the above can do is give you a read on which teams are healthy and which are not.

MLS TV Ratings Flat in Playoffs

During a week where FOX announces a record-shattering 16 billion minutes consumed online, a regular season NFL game pulling 29.4 million viewers and even the Breeders Cup locking down 4.6 million (a 20 year record) - MLS playoffs on ESPN and FS1 see no improvement in viewership in their Sunday afternoon / evening slots.

There was a lot of soccer happening on Sunday, November 1st. Here is the breakdown of what people watched here in the United States.

1. USA - EPL: BOURNEMOUTH / SOUTHAMPTON (416k)
2. NBCSN - EPL: SUNDERLAND / EVERTON (395)
3. UDN - LMX: TOLUCA / AMERICA (386)
4. UDN - LMX: GUADALAJARA / PACHUCA (348)
5. ESPN - MLS: PORTLAND TIMBERS/VANCOUVER WHITECAPS (249)
6. FS1 - MLS: SEATTLE SOUNDERS / FC DALLAS (220)
7. ESPN - MLS: D.C. UNITED / NY RED BULLS (219)
8. FS1 - MLS: MONTREAL IMPACT / COLUMBUS CREW (136)

Despite being on channels with less distribution, a weak EPL clash on NBCSN match and two Liga MX games on UDN beat out MLS programming on ESPN and FS1.

ESPN boasts an industry-leading 92 million homes and likes to promote "flagship" programming across their family of networks like ESPN2 and ESPNU. UDN, on the other hand, has less than half the subscribers, but Liga MX beat out MLS by nearly +50%.

Perhaps even more damning for MLS on ESPN is that the league is regularly the least watched programming on the network each Sunday. Here is Nov. 1st, listed most watched to least...

Program, Start Time - Viewers
NFL COUNTDOWN, 11:00 AM - 1122k
SPORTSCENTER WEEKEND, 8:00 AM - 884
SPORTSCENTER WEEKEND, 9:00 AM - 862
SPORTSCENTER WEEKEND, 7:00 AM - 784
NFL INSIDERS: SUNDAY, 10:00 AM - 748
SPORTSCENTER, 12:37 AM - 638
NFL MATCHDAY, 6:30 AM - 530
COLLEGE FOOTBALL REPEAT, 6:00 AM - 480
SPORTSCENTER EARLY, 7:30 PM - 455
SPORTSCENTER LATE, 11:00 PM - 455
POKER, 10:00 PM - 383
CHAMPIONSHIP DRIVE, 1:00 PM - 374
POKER, 8:30 PM - 354
COLL FTBL SCOREBOARD, 1:30 PM - 280
MLS PLAYOFFS, 5:10 PM - 249
MLS PLAYOFFS, 3:00 PM - 219
CHAMPIONSHIP DRIVE, 2:30 PM - 200

One thing I'm learning about MLS on TV after tracking it all season is that there seems to be a faithful following of about 200-250k fans that will follow it to any network. FS1, ESPN, ESPN2 or UDN. I'm not sure you can call that a positive because the league doesn't attack the rest of the soccer watching public in the country.

By this point, it's widely known that NBCSN Premier League games regularly get above 500k each Saturday and Sunday. Bundesliga matches, the new product on the US TV soccer block, were out slow out of the gates this year, but their figures are already in MLS range on Fox Sports.

Many (many) words have been written on this site about ways to improve MLS and why the larger soccer loving public does not watch, so no need to go over the list. We are 20 years in on this MLS thing and the league has gained zero ground on the competition.

You don't need to be an industry insider to know that live sports programming is the most valuable property in television right now. MLS needs to make hay or it will risk falling hard when the inevitable "sports bubble" bursts (and it will).

[Facts, Figures via www.sportstvratings.com]

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Final note here is a lesson in narratives - Fox is starting to regularly report streaming viewership numbers. Turns out baseball isn't dead, or even dying (as you have been told since 1994). As a matter of fact, it is leading the way into the future of sports consumption. Imagine that. Here's a picture of the 800k fans showed up to World Series champions parade in KC.

About 800,000 people celebrated the @Royals’ #WorldSeries title Tuesday. Photo by Roy Inman, special to The Star pic.twitter.com/CqGw2nbf55

— The Kansas City Star (@KCStar) November 4, 2015

Crew Trying to Right the Playoff Ship

It only took ten or so games this year for anyone tuned into MLS to realize that Columbus was a playoff team. After the 2014 New England playoff disaster a year ago I'm not sure what I expected from the local team a year ago.

Here we are, though. Halfway through the 2015 two-legged eastern conference semifinals. Crew SC down a goal after an away matchup with a strong, Drogba infused Montreal Impact.

Columbus wasn't just facing a good opponent last Sunday. With most of the players from last year back, they were also trying to wash away the sharp sting of last year's failure.

Both teams played their game, for the most part. Crew controlled the ball well enough while the Impact defended well and were able to get off quick breaks and counters. No surprises. The difference maker was that Montreal did what they do well much better than Columbus. They also proved, once again, that bottling up Ethan Finlay first leads to an ineffective Kei Kamara.

Earlier this year I dug into Opta data and discovered that the Crew average more crosses into the box than any other team in the 14 tracked leagues by WhoScored. Most (if not all) of that, comes from the overlapping wing backs and Finlay. All of them crosses to essentially one person - Kamara.

Laurent Ciman (photo credit: ©BELGA)

This isn't to say that Columbus can't play a different style. They can. They absolutely can (see the 5-0 demolition of DC United in round 34). If they want to be a team that can win the MLS Cup they will have to learn to play with Kamara the way they do without (if that makes sense). Pumping the ball in on crosses might put you atop a number of simple offensive categories against normal MLS talent all year, but it will get you nowhere against experienced defenders like Marco Donadel, Víctor Cabrera and Laurent Ciman.

Even still, Columbus Crew SC were able this year to hang with a team like Montreal in the playoffs - at their place. Reminder that this is a team that worked their way to the CONCACAF Champions League Final. Crew SC are not out of the woods yet, of course. This story could take a turn for the worst yet still. There is a real fear there, considering the Impact's roster make-up of intelligent and experienced players.

It'll be interesting to see how Gregg Berhalter approaches this weekend's game. Based on what we've seen the past two years it's safe to say it'll be the same as all year. Is that enough to go +1 on Montreal this Sunday?

The story of the 2015 season has been waiting this moment for Crew SC. Berhalter has proven he can create a winner (and winners) during the regular season. MLS Cup is a wacky place, but it's still the time on the domestic league calendar where games are games.

This weekend is the place he can prove he can do it when it matters.

Effort, Some of the Time

"Most people only try as hard as they have to most of the time." - Bob Knight... I think. It could have been Dick Vitale, Mike Krzyzewski, Dean Smith, Jim Valvano or one of the other coaching greats that I was fortunate to hear during my summers spent playing basketball as a youth. Thinking back, all of them likely said similar, just used different words in an attempt to communicate what makes a player special from the rest.

I've been thinking about that quote a lot as the MLS Cup playoffs get underway. A lot of good players last night that had been in "regular season" mode were having to play at a higher effort level. I'm not talking about players like Taylor Kemp for DC United or New England's Keyln Rowe. It's more about guys like Jermaine Jones, Gio dos Santos, Steven Gerrard and even Chris Rolfe.

The opening night of the playoffs were as much chaotic as they were exciting. Some of the midrange guys were out there toiling away on wary late season legs, while the stars were trying to crank up cold engines.

Cynically put, it's the real start of the MLS season. Games that have meaning and consequence are finally here.

The DC vs. New England match had more of a messy midweek MLS match feel for most of it, but there were moments late in the match where the players finally locked in and said, "Okay, let's play the kind of game that we know will get us a win." Then realize they didn't know what the hell that was because they were talented enough to not have to play at full speed for most of the previous eight months.

"Regular Seasons," as we know them in the United States, are breeding grounds of mediocrity where less talented players are pouring their guts out while the top players on big contracts offer varying degrees of effort that is required to get the team into the playoffs. Not ALL of the top guys are doing that, of course. Nor does it mean that regular seasons aren't fun.

It takes special player to give their everything all the time, but if you've watched MLS the past few seasons (outside of your own local team) you know who the guys that do and don't. One could even float the theory that the Supporters' Sheild winning teams often aren't the teams with massive wage bills and star players precisely because they are filled with players still working their way up. The mid-range to upper mid range guys. Dax McCarty, Felipe Martins, Conner Lade types that can't afford to take a night off, because if they do, they get benched.

The low wattage regular season efforts contributed to the chaotic first 20 minutes of the Seattle, LA match last night. It looked like the first game of the season for these two star-heavy teams. Defensive mistakes, communication errors, players making runs they hadn't all season. The hard surface at CenturyLink only highlighted these things.

Soccer doesn't have the flashing lights, timeouts, commercial breaks, loud music and other shiny things that keep fans mesmerized during bad NFL, NBA or NHL games. No place to hide in soccer. No subbing out to cool your head or rest. From the owners of the organization to the players, you stand there naked, 45 minutes at a time. It's a giant playing surface out there. The sport needs consequence and pressure to bring out effort, and therefore, greatness. Effort not just from players, but from the top of the organization. MLS team investors like Andrew Hauptman in Chicago or Robert Kraft in New England need real consequence to perform.

We've got two more knockout MLS games to go tonight. Win or go home. The Montreal / Toronto match might be the chaotic match tonight while the KC / Portland will be the more measured of the two. We'll, see. Regardless the quality, it will be refreshing to see most of the players putting forth max effort, most of the time.

Over There is a League

MLS playoffs kick off tonight just days after the heavily hyped "Decision Day" event this past Sunday. In the East - DC (is somehow) hosting New England, kick off at 7:30 PM EST and for the nightcap we have Seattle hosting LA - two teams with the most talent, but least amount of motivation and drive all season.

Let's step back to #DecisionDay here for a second. It was frantic event (even for us at Helltown) that the league invested loads of resources into. MLS being MLS, resource allocation almost exclusively means increased social media presence. It's their comfort zone, which they've done well with.

There is a bad side to MLS's indulgence in social media, however. They invest so much that it's become their tent pole. It's how their target demo consumes their product. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Periscope. It's all the ways fans like to keep up with MLS. It's fast, it's free and you can do it whilst watching another program. Which, it appears, people do often. Therein lies the problem. Nobody watches the actual competition on the field.

This time of year MLS fans watch the NFL. Sure there is college football, NHL, MLB playoffs, BPL and the start of the MLB season but those have their own sets of loyal fans that watch even if there is a NFL game on. It's like having a recession proof business. Unfortunately, Major League Soccer is not NFL proof.

TV data that in the past was only available to industry folks is now easily available online. Which means it's never been more apparent than this season to people outside the league that Major League Soccer's courting of the NFL fan has been a complete success. In a bad way.

Here's a look at FS1 television ratings for 2015 MLS (NFL kicked off September 10th).

source: http://sportstvratings.com/

...and here is a look at ESPN2's TV ratings this year.

source: http://sportstvratings.com/

Even more worrisome for MLS is that the numbers are matching a hunch many had over the years in that the league just fades away during the most important part of the season. MLS games aren't on ESPN's "flagship" station a whole lot, but it has been enough times to notice a scary trend for the league as the season meanders into their playoff cup.

source: http://sportstvratings.com/

Now that this information is now publically available, will it push the league to make changes to their competitive format? For years, MLS people have defended tooth and nail the way the league handles league basics such as scheduling (Spring - Autumn) and the playoff format(s), but it's clear that there are fundamental issues if the most important part of the league calendar is the least watched.

By the measure above, the decision day promotions did little to nothing to get more people to watch the games. Did it help? Did it hurt? In my professional experience, it's a severe problem if you aren't able to answer those questions.

It's entirely possible that MLS has become a sort of "second league." One that people don't actually watch but can easily consume through tweets, vines and gifs. A post-modern ghost league, if I may. Evidenced by fans touting attendance figures that are so far off it's laughable to anyone actually watching games night in, night out.

Hey, playoff start tonight. Are you watching?

Yes, well... kinda? I bet you'll just follow along on your phone.

My MLS Team of the Year - 2015

Five years ago I decided that I'd create a player rating system to help me better understand which players were having standout seasons. It wasn't and isn't meant to tell me the difference between a player I have rated 6th vs. 15th. I just wanted to know who was in top 10% or top half or what have you because there wasn't anything out there like it. Squawka and WhoScored do it now, but I'll put mine up against theirs any day of the week. It's served me pretty well over the years, I like it.

With that, here is my team of the year for 2015. I used EA's FIFA profiles for the image (not my scores). If you want to check out more on these guys head over HERE (interactive!).

Regular Season Finale, 2015

[podcast] RCiH : Decision Day Special!

Major League Soccer's unique approach to the final round of the 2015 season called for a special edition of Red Cards in Helltown. Rick Gethin, Justin Bell and Larry Johnson talk about what happened and what it means (including the huge 5-0 Crew SC demolition of DC United). Thanks for listening!