Why SKC should win the Supporters Shield

I think in the immediate term, Toronto is going to bite some teams that underestimate them. Granted, I only watched them in the CCL where they looked decent against LA and Santos and have not watched them play any MLS matches. Apparently, they are an enigma.

Ouch, that's gonna be rough on Houston.

[/QUOTE]I don't think DC will be in the mix for the SS, but I do think NY has the potentials. Like us, they've got to show consistency over the long haul - something that has eluded both the Red Bulls and us over the last number of years.[/QUOTE]Perhaps it's totally unwarranted, but while I am afraid of what NY can be... I also expect them to underachieve because of Backe - particularly in the way he deals with the younger players. Team chemistry and attitude also seem like they could be problems.

I don't follow the other teams nearly as closely as some people, so perhaps I'm lacking in knowledge or otherwise off-base, but that's my impression at least.

Basically, they could be great, but I figure that they're setup to underachieve again.

And it is a little unfair to pick on Montreal when they are both an expansion team and our extra team. They also could very well pull things together by mid-season... they have decent enough players to do it, for the most part.

Agree - Toronto looked pretty good at times, even very good, in CCL. That they should do so horribly in league play is mind boggling. They apparently are capable of producing, and perhaps the CCL games are the exception, but it's also possible that their current form is somewhat of an outlier.

You know, I was bored the other day and was curious to see what the odds were of SKC going 5-0-0 if they were just an "okay" team (i.e. 33% chance of a win, 33% chance of a draw, and 33% chance of a loss in any given game).

The odds of an "okay" or "average" team winning 5 out of 5 games is 0.41%. My conclusion was that SKC is very likely a better than average team.

Same goes for TFC. The odds of a "normal" team losing all 5 games is still 0.41%. So either Toronto are just really unlucky, or they're actually just not very good. Personally, I'm betting on the latter... though with Frings coming back I think they'll get better. They really can't get much worse.

That number sounded artificially low to me at first, half a percent... but when you think about it that's one in every 200 5-game stretches, overlapping, for any team, that goes all W's or L's. It sounds more realistic that way. So this should be relatively simple to check against reality. If only I had the time and ambition.

SportsClubStats has our playoff probability currently 99.49%

http://www.sportsclubstats.com/USA/SportingKC.html

Their stats have us dropping to 99.2% if we drop both road games and climbing to 99.8% if we win both.

i was under the impression that philly are in more trouble than montreal.

Come back in 28 more games.

did I predict 24 points at the end of May earlier in this thread? we might have 24 at the end of April

Actually you didn't predict it but you stated at the start of May not the end of May. Pretty incredible either way.

First time I had to do a calculation for SKC

Maximum points potential
SKC 99
SJ 97
SEA 97
CHI 95
HOU 95
RSL 93
LA 93
VAN 92
DAL 91
NY 91
PHI 91
CLB 91
DC 90
CHV 90
COL 90
NE 90
POR 88
TOR 84

I remember in some thread saying that if we had 20 points by the end of April, I would be pretty damn happy. That was when we were looking at LA/RSL/@VAN/@PDX in our next 4 games. Other than losing due to an own goal in Portland, I am pretty much .

Glad we get a break now to recover a bit. Montreal has two games between now and our game on 5/5....would love to see us back in peak, well rested form and maybe pull off our first comb of the season in two weeks.

The Montreal game will be interesting with their CC game at home vs Toronto only 3 days before, if they go for it with their first team (and that wouldn't surprise me) they could be tired

it almost doesn't matter really, if we are being honest we all expect three points from Montreal each time we play them this season. I know I have been called arrogant on this subject but we will find that many games through out this season will have a lot more to do with us than our opponent.

Maximum points potential
SKC 99
SJ 97
SEA 97
CHI 92
HOU 92
RSL 91
LA 91
VAN 92
NY 91
DC 90
DAL 89
CLB 88
COL 90
PHI 88
CHV 87
NE 87
POR 85
MTL 83
TOR 81

i'd hope both toronto and montreal play that game to win it. MLS postseason's looking pretty unlikely for either of them at this point.

How's that working out for ya?

This thread needs to be locked, then burned, then burned a second time. Then put in a bucket, covered in concrete, and tossed into some relatively deep part of the Kansas River.

Tonight's game is exactly why this thread has been premature, overreaction from day 1.

Let's not overreact in the opposite direction. The past two games have been frustrating, but we still have a shot at winning the S.S. The schedule is fairly favorable. We have to get our stuff together, that's for sure. After last season, I trust this team's ability to bounce back from a rough stretch.

The schedule is favorable, but tonight showed exactly how teams need to shut down KC. And when you shut down plan A for KC, they don't seem to have a plan B, other than to keep trying to win a set piece, and we're not going to score on one every game. After a two week break we came out totally flat. We had little creativity. Now granted Zusi hopefully won't have another game that bad again this season. But we need to work on breaking down a tight defense, because we're probably going to see more like what Montreal put out, especially at home, cause it worked in shutting KC down. Until KC proves that they can really beat it.

Teams knew how to do this for some time now, it's nothing new... much of late last season consisted of teams trying to put players behind the ball. Yet we still did quite decent through the end of last season.


I mean, it's not like we revamped the team and are employing different tactics than we did last year... and I'm positive that most coaches around the league watched the EC final as well... and somehow I'm supposed to believe that Marsch figured out something that Arena, Kreis and Hyndman didn't see at all? That's not to take anything away from Marsch either - he did come in and set his team up for a point and hoped that they'd take their chances to get three...

But he and his team had nothing to do with us coming out flat or not having creativity... being static, not turning over the ball, not linking up especially well, being out of sync - there's a lot of things that made this game crappy and we are responsible for a good number of them... and when it comes down to it the reason we're so pissed off right now is because it is very uncharacteristic of this team to play like we did.

I just think it's stupid to put so much importance on one game, and ignore the other 8 we played. I'm not saying we should start printing T-Shirts or anything, but any talk of "see? we're totally not going to with the SS now" is just as premature as saying that we definitely are going to.

I also simply don't see another team

That is absolutely true. But this thread is just bad for our karma.

Haha, sorry - ignore this. I forgot to delete it when I decided I'd rambled on enough.

I think tonight showed us how badly we need a true attacking midfielder. We need someone that can create chances and provide service to our forwards on a consistent basis. We need someone that is going to do the leg work and be able to punch a ball right through that can simply be put away. We arent going to be able to luckily score on one of our million shots every single game. We cannot rely on getting goals simply because we shot enough that one went in because we were fortunate for it too or rely on corner kicks. We are going to have to have some actual creativity so that on nights like last night where nothing seems to be going our way and the shots arent falling, we have someone that can create some creative chances.