Pre-match: Metroscum @ DCU (Playoff Edition) 11/3

Sandy WAS a bad hurricane. I'm not sure what you're smoking.

 

Are they paying the money I lose from taking off work? And people's non refundable travel expenses?

 

Anyone who doesn't believe home field helped us in 2004 against the Revs wasn't there.

It's gonna be a tough Mom O Si on Sat.

Thx,

Jay!

 

By itself, this doesn't have any statistical meaning. It's like the oft-quoted-but-utterly-irrelevant saying that "the team that scores first usually wins" -- well, yeah. It's a fairly low scoring sport, in which 1-0 scorelines or shutouts aren't unusual. It's a bit of a tautology. What's important is how often the team wins the series, not how often they win the series if they win the first match.

In principle, what's needed is the answer to *these* questions: how often does the first-game-at-home team win the series? And how often does the second-game-at-home team win the series? Only then, there's a bias in the other direction, since normally the second-game-at-home team is the higher seed (which isn't the case for us now), so you'd naively *expect* that team to win the series most often.

The other factor to consider is that, to the extent that one believes in homefield advantage at all (and here I'm not talking about the advantage of having extra time + PKs at your venue, but rather having a crowd supporting you), this switch dramatically hurts our homefield advantage *and* dramatically hurts our ability to cut into theirs. Now, given just two days to market the match and correct the advertising of the last four days, we will have a lower turnout at our home match, while they'll have more fans down here than they'd have been able to send on Wednesday night. And on Wednesday, we'll have fewer fans up there than we would have on Saturday. That's yet another thing that sucks.

 

No, and they shouldn't have to, either.

 

Amen.

 

You're right -- the league should. They won't, but they should.

 

Yeah that's what I heard on tv too.
Listening to news reports you'd think hurricane camille came back for round two.

 

People could always tweet Merrit Paulsen. Apparently that's worked before!

 

Insensitivity, thy name is greatscott.

Pathetic.

 

Lol you are a dork. That storm was caused by a Romney super PAC run from Beijing

 

Toms River is about 60 - 70 miles from Harrison. For god's sake it's a ********ing game. If Ben and the team are dealing with it, maybe we internet nuts should as well.

 

I guess it's too much to expect any level of class from MLS. We wouldn't want to inconvenience the Red Bulls by making them play in one of the myriad available venues, including RFK.

 

Several other better options. 2 games at RFK, move the first game in NY to Wednesday and move the Eastern Conference finals back to start on a Wednesday. Move the game to a neutral site (Columbus). This is just lazy pandering to the NY market.


Oh and no this storm was not that bad. I don't take NBC News's word for it...again NYC bias.

 

And this is where we diverge. I've already given you that the higher seed more often than not wins. And since that team usually is the home team for the 2nd game, it fools people into the conclusion that being home in the 2nd leg is meaningful. I'd submit it's not. If it were so meaningful as you seem to think it is, the home team would do better than 4wins and 7losses after losing the first game away by only a single game. Yet and still, they don't. I don't see how we can claim that our chances our reduced when the numbers over a 7 year period show that it doesn't. Bottom line, if we win at home in game 1, we are heavy favorites by the numbers to win this series. If we had lost the first game in RBA, we'd be heavy underdogs by the numbers to win the series. So sure, it hurts us if we don't win our game at home. But that's a big "duh". The second big "duh"? We're more likely to win that first game at home than in RBA.

 

I love both of you as DC brothers. But that is just completely intellectually dishonest. How are these 2 situations comparable? That was a one-off game. Not a home and away series. Of course being home in a one off game is an advantage! Unfortuntely for your arguments, this is not a one off game. Not even close in impact to what we are looking at here. And yes, I was at that game. It's silly to compare the two situations. Absurd, really.

 

They don't even know if they can host a 2nd leg!!!! Neutral site (Columbus!)

 

They probably should have played in front of an empty stadium.

Having said that, I'm not going to get too worked up about this. I deleted a post a couple of hours ago after thinking about what a lot of people in the NY/NJ are going through right now. Seems a bit self-centered.

 

This is exactly what upsets me about the situation. I understand much of the area has been affected, but there should have been backup plans before they felt a breeze. Instead the public was stuck waiting to find out if the field was even playable. Eventually they release information that the field and the rest of the stadium are fine, but they still chose to be quiet about the rest of the situation. Now the problem is that it's currently not easy to get to the stadium and that the power has gone off since it was last restored. If the issue is ease of getting to the stadium, who are they serving by changing plans for both teams or even considering different venues?

 

The only advantage gained by HFA is ET and PK's. One-off or two legs, that's where the advantage now lies in NYC RBA.

Thx,

Jay!

 

Now I just want our boys to tear RBNY's lungs out and smash them like a two-bit Jersey boardwalk. I mean more than usual.

Too soon?

 

Audio of the press conference

 

It's silly and classless to downplay the severity of the storms. It's fair game to debate the impact of the storms on that area and if that team did anything with the intent of hosting as scheduled.

 

They're going to refund the $60 I sent to the Screaming Eagles for a bus ride and a game ticket? Really?