The last two episodes of Greg Roche's Pitch Pass podcast have been really interesting to listen to. I always enjoy hearing from Pablo Mauer and the more recent one is an interview with Sebi Salazzar. Sebi goes deep into the topic of the club losing its core support in the area, a good overview of the short sightedness of FloFC deal, and a view from a STM and the challenge of renew or not to renew.
Rooney was completely useless this weekend. The only time in the entire game when he did anything positive was when a sprinted into the corner as defensive cover after Mora had been pulled out of position. Acosta, though, I thought played well in his limited minutes, According to Twellman, Rooney was going to be benched against Portland but got pulled into the squad when Kamara got injured in practice. If we're going to watch Bennyball for the rest of the season, which I am 100% on board with, then I'm hoping that Rooney comes off the bench for either Kamara or Acosta.
Honestly I am good at this point with them playing the guys who are going to be here next year. I don't think I am naive enough to believe that the current bunch could find the form to run the table at Atlanta, Philly, NYC and LA to bring something home so, F it. I'm sure the odds exist someplace but I'd guess we're under 30% to climb over Toronto and force us to by a home playoff game.
Last year, the best thing about Rooney wasn't his play but that he raised the level of everyone else around him. It seems like it may be the opposite now that we all know he is counting down the days.
Sportsclubstats says United is more likely to finish as 4 (55%, plus a 3% chance to finish 3rd) than Toronto (25%, plus a 1% chance to finish 3rd). 538 gives United a 47% chance to finish 4th; Toronto is at 26%. DCU's ending schedule is home to Seattle, at NYRB, home to Cincy. Toronto's ending schedule is at LAFC, at Chicago, and home to Columbus. Plus they have two Canadian Championship matches to worry about as well. It's pretty easy to see why the odds favor DCU to climb into 4th.
I think there's a decent argument to be made that United's catenaccio is better on the road, especially against a possession-oriented team like TFC.
Yeah. I am not so sure I want to see United play full on Bennyball at home in the playoffs against a team like Toronto.
Think that’s overly optimistic that we’ll come up with 6 points from Seattle & Cincy and make up a -2 GD or get a share of the points in New Jersey.
It doesn't assume we'll do that. It just says we're likely to best Toronto over 3 games. It's probably just the home vs. Road nature of the schedule and that Toronto plays LAFC.
Toronto has pulled 11/15 in their last 5 with away draws at New England and NYC. We've pulled 6 of the last 15 points with OG leading the way last week. I think the only reason this is even up for discussion is that Seattle has to come all the way across the country to play us. Further we've taken 1 point of the last 15 on offer with NJ so we have to probably count on making goal differential up, which can happen. LA could drop 5 an almost anyone in this league. But I think the odds are longer than coin toss, so I question the model behind the math, not the math.
https://sports.yahoo.com/rooney-lambasts-mls-over-domestic-124819032.html Haven't seen this discussed here yet. Of course Rooney's right, and at least he's lending his voice to this topic. He compares the average salary for American players in MLS vs the foreign DPs (like himself) and average salary in MLS vs the EPL, and probably even the second division. Unfortunately, professional sports in USA (and Canada) have a very different economic model than soccer in other countries. American sports leagues are enclosed corporations. Every team is in the same economic boat: salary caps; expenditure caps (e.g., limited number of non-scheduled charter flights per season that Rooney has commented on before); no relegation; best teams are indirectly penalized; lesser teams are rewarded. Its more pronounced in MLS than in other sports, but every league has this same basic economic model. So, unless and until MLS gets more significantly more TV money, and possibly a slew of richer owners, MLS salaries will always be behind the bigger leagues in Europe and even Mexico.
Depends on the algorithm. I look at that site sometimes, but I don't know how many variables it takes into account.
If two sites with two different algorithms are spitting out results that are not too different from each other, what else do you want?
To update after Wednesday's games: SCS's 4th place odds: DC United 46%, NYRB 33%, Toronto FC 17%. 538's 4th place odds: NYRB 40%, DC United 37%, Toronto FC 18%.
I went to the Seattle vs Dallas game last night. What a freakin' snoozer. Seattle had no creativity and Dallas barely held the ball in their attacking third. The game picked up when Morris came in around '70 but barely. He also took a knock to the head and I was surprised he wasn't taken off for examination. Unless Seattle do an about face, Sunday's match will be a real opportunity to pick up 3 points for United.
I just looked it up. This is not very sophisticated at all... I don't even know what 538 does, but it *has* to be better than this. From SportsClubStats "Sports Club Stats calculates each team’s odds of making the playoffs, how each upcoming game will impact those odds, and how well they have to finish out to have a shot. It knows the season schedule and scores for past games. Each time the league owner sends in new scores it simulates the rest of the season by randomly picking scores for each remaining game. The weighted method takes the opponents record and home field advantage into account when randomly picking scores, so the better team is more likely to win. The 50/50 method gives each opponent an equal chance of winning each game. Both methods let an appropriate percent of games end in a tie or go into overtime in leagues where that matters. When it’s finished "playing" all the remaining games it applies the league’s tie breaking rules to see where everyone finished. It repeats this random playing out of the season million of times (try it yourself), keeping track of how many "seasons" each team finishes where. Finally it updates this page with the new results for you to read with your morning coffee. To help flush out each team’s highest and lowest possible seeds, I force them to win or lose all their remaining games for a small percentage of the simulation runs. Click the league (on the left) to compare all teams."
538 has an explainer on their website. https://fivethirtyeight.com/methodology/how-our-club-soccer-predictions-work/
By their scoring, fivethirtyeight has us ranked as the 9th best team in the East, so we can at least assume they aren't overestimating our ability because of our place in the table.