This and the OP is a stupid question (sorry). Of course we want Zlatan back but that and a rebuild are not at all mutually exclusive. At worst, it means ditching Gio & giving Ibra his DP slot.
Again, I confess that I have given up on trying to understand MLS roster rules. If we could dump Gio and give that slot to Zlatan (assuming he even wants to stay around now) it would be perfect. BUT, can we? Is there any way to unload Gio unless someone is stupid enough to take him off our hands? Gio can loaf through another season, feign injuries, and collect $5 mil. He's not going anywhere voluntarily. Where would he ever get another deal like that?
Why would we need to give Zlatan a DP slot? He is already signed through next year without it. So what we should do is unload Gio to some Mexican team, even if we have to pay half his salary, and then get another new DP to add to the mix. Of course that's all easier said than done...
I think we could technically waive Gio but we would still be on the hook for his salary (I don't think it would count against the cap but would AEG be happy about paying it?) unless we get someone to buy him. I didn't realise that he was signed until next term. I guess I just assumed that his non-DP salary was a temporary thing until they freed up a spot.
I had forgotten Z was under contract for another season. You are right that we should unload Gio even if it costs. But who would take him even at half price?
OK, half may have been optimistic. Maybe some team would take him for, say 10% of his salary??? The novelty of having a part timer NT guy that used to have some cred to sell some shirts must be worth at least that much, no?
It depend's what's in Zlatan's contract. If I were his agent, I might give one year at a low salary, but I'd make the exercise of the option for a second year come with a big increase.
I'm not manager, but I think that's how it works. He is currently signed through 2019 at I think around $1.5 M. To keep him through, say 2020, plus also ensure he does not bail out on his 2019 contract, the Galaxy could offer him a one year extension for, say $3 M in 2020. That way, he plays all of next year for non-DP wages, then in 2020, when we can realistically plan to have a DP slot open, he can become a DP. The question is, will a 39 year old Zlatan be worth a DP slot at that $. That is a tough call, in my book. I would probably not do that deal. Start the search for someone younger.
That's what I'm wondering. Do we know his 2019 wage? Maybe his contract already has an escalator. DeJong had a contract that would have made him a DP which was why we had to dump him.
Yes Ibra just turned 37, which isn't young. Also I thought he let us down in the most crucial game of the season. But we should also factor in that his 22 goals and 10 assists in 24 starts (27 app) is the greatest offensive production per 90 minutes in the history of MLS.** By a lot. Here are some comparisons for context. MLS Leaders in Goals+Assists Per 90 Minutes Ibrahimovic 1.34 Giovinco* 1.12 Martinez 1.12 Keane* 1.07 Drogba 1.00 BWP 0.99 D. Villa 0.97 Donovan* 0.88 Ola Kamara* 0.68 Wondoloski* 0.65 Zardes 0.58 Ola Kamara 0.57 *Career stat. Otherwise 2018 stat. ** Unless I'm forgetting someone. *** I don't actually have a *** up there but wanted to note that over 25% of Martinez's goals this season are from pks.
How everyone is talking about Zlatan and where he’ll be next season (from the media, player, and FO), it seems like the 2nd year is a players’ option. Perhaps it was negotiated that way because there was a lot of unknowns with Zlatan coming back from injury at his age. Suppose he was struggling all year and his value had dropped he probably wanted a security year, at that rate, just in case. One thing is for sure is that Zlatan knows his value. He knows he’s the #1 selling jersey, everywhere he sees sold out stadiums, and he knows when he does anything notable it makes the rounds through social media and traditional media around the world.
It's a shame because you forgot a true Galaxy legend: Cobi Jones' epic 1998 season in which he scored 19 goals and had 13 assists in 2136 minutes. That 32 goals plus assists ties him with Zlatan this year in total production but Zlatan actually played 7 more minutes this year than Cobi did in 1998, which means Cobi's 1998 production is still the best in MLS history per 90 minutes. Some other crazy seasons from Galaxy players (certainly not an exhaustive list, just some of our higher producers' best seasons): Cobi 1998: 1.348 (G+A)/90 Zlatan 2018: 1.344 (G+A)/90 Keane 2013: 1.227 (G+A)/90 Landon 2008: 1.222 (G+A)/90 El Tanque 1996: 1.085 (G+A)/90 Cienfuegos 1998: 0.989 (G+A)/90 Ruiz 2002: 0.947 (G+A)/90 Buddle 2010: 0.811 (G+A)/90
Not a shame because you fixed it! Thanks for doing the work to flesh this out. I had a **Unless I'm forgetting someone" qualifier in there because this was a quick and dirty off the top of my head list. And when I saw how high Zlatan's was I thought there was a good chance it wasn't bested. Looks like I was wrong by 0.004 g+a/gm! Anyway congrats to Cobi! Sadly I missed that season - I was still a DCU fan in 1998 (boo, hiss!). I started watching Galaxy games regularly sometime around 2007 or so.
A question - why isn't this extremely important stat reported more regularly? Its a much better measure of a player's offensive contribution than goals scored alone. Why isn't there a list of leaders of "Goals Created" or "Points" (=2*goals + assists) anywhere on mlssoccer.com. And why aren't players like Cobi honored for having the best offensive season in MLS history? In the old days there seemed to be more recognition of leaders in "points." Season leaders, per 90 minute leaders and career leaders were all listed somewhere. I remember some objecting to the points weighting system and pushed for goals created=goals+assists like reported above. But both measures seem to have faded away despite the fact they are far superior measures of a players offensive contributions than "goals scored", especially when the latter includes a lot of pk's the player didn't earn himself. This brings me to another point. Why is MLS (and by MLS I'm talking about their publicity arm mlssoccer.com) lagging so far behind other US sports in talking up advanced metrics? In the NBA, NFL and MLB the official league sites publish all kinds of advanced stats like PER, VARP, WAR.... These stats provide useful fodder for sports writers and generate more interesting and advanced discussions of teams, players, and tactics. Nerds are a big part of most sports fan base - MLS is starving the guys. The only "advanced stat" we publicize is the laughable half-time "Audi Index" score which is completely uninterpretable, often seems unreleated to on-field performance and c) put up only to advertise Audi. The stat is so bad that when they flash the graphic the announcers usually sound like they are under gunpoint to mention which number is higher and then quickly move on to something that actually makes sense. I guess this is the wrong thread for this. Maybe I'll copy it to the statistical thread that exists somewhere on bigsoccer.
I don't mean to clip your whole post but I would certainly participate in a Galaxy centric stats thread on here. I haven't parsed through it all yet this season because I'm busy as all get out but one player who stood out as awful defensively was Cole. Even compared to the rest of our defense. His (anomalous) offensive production this year led a lot of people into thinking he wasn't terrible, but he was.
I think that's probably soccer in general (re: the lack of stats), not just an MLS thing. If anything, MLS is probably bigger on stats than most soccer leagues. I'm of the mind that soccer is unique to other American sports in that the narrative of the match is hugely important to contextualize any stats, making stats themselves less important / interesting. There is huge variability in how teams go about winning matches and matching up head-to-head that is not revealed or accounted for with stats. For instance, I see nothing "lucky" about RSL's win, or our tie against SKC a few weeks ago or Chelsea eliminating Barcelona in the Champions League, despite all those teams being outshot and out-possessed dramatically. At this point in soccer fandom, my biggest pet peeve is getting into arguments about how much of a travesty it is when "negative" teams win soccer matches, when it is a perfectly viable and effective tactical approach. People droned on about how the 2016 Rapids run a couple years ago was unsustainable, but they only lost to the eventual champions. Having said all that, I find the Impect Score to be pretty interesting. Here's the thread on it from the World Cup forums. I'd be curious what our resident stat heads think.
Thanks, that was interesting (although the discussion wasn't terribly good and I think that's part of the problem with soccer statistics; you don't have a critical mass of people who want to think about things in that way) I would love to see the impect score for our team. For those who haven't seen it, the basic idea is that it's hard to beat a defense that is arrayed in front of you. It is easy to hold the ball, but this doesn't get you much (which is why possession is a poor statistic). You can shoot from distance but these are low probability shots (which is why shots are a poor statistic). What you need to do is get behind defenders (cue Ray Hudson) and that's what the impect score measures - how many defenders were "taken out of the play" by dribbling past or passing past. We would have a high impact score against us given the number of times we were beaten on the defensive side. On the offense, my guess is that we outperformed the statistic given that Zlatan is above average in converting chances.
The HOU elimination game (and the entire Galaxy season) was a great example of the importance of this "arrayed defense" principle. In the first 35-40 minutes our midfielders were rushing to get back behind the ball after every turnover. They filled in the seams in our defense and the result was HOU kept running into an almost impenetrable defensive wall. They could find neither space nor time anywhere in the vicinity of our goal. Even if they beat one defender, another one was on them like a fly on poo-poo. This was the moment that I thought Dom had actually taught the team how to play defense. Segue to second half. Defenders spread all over field, midfielders not coming back. Rolf dribbling up the sideline, making a bad pass and then just letting his man run past him into the open space he had just abandoned. No attempt made to recover quickly and no midfielders rushing back to help. So HOU ended up with a 2 v 1 in open space at the edge of our box and hilarity ensued. Rest of 2nd half was just more of the same crap and our season was over.
I would definitely participate. It would be great to have stats to add to our understanding of the team and players. I just don't know where to get the level of data we would need. Let's start with Cole's defending as an example. I happen to agree with you that he was a sieve on defense. But what kind of stats would you use to back up this point? I watched Cole regularly lay off wing attackers by several yards because he lacked speed and didn't want to risking getting burned. This meant opponents were given time/space to get their heads up, find their targets and launch in high-quality, dangerous crosses. But when those crosses resulted in goals many just blamed the cb's but failed to notice how Cole's soft defending allowed the cross in the first place. (For a reference another slow defender from our past - Todd Dunivant - was so much better at closing down and denying opponents room or time to get off a quality crosses. Duni also often stole the ball from dribblers, something that only happens accidentally with Cole.) Anyway I don't know where to find a stat for "crosses allowed" or "crosses contested" or "crosses leading to goals" based on area of the field or closest player when ball was launched. And when we were playing four in the back we gave up many goals simply because Cole ran to the middle and opened up space for late runners to attack the open space he had just abandoned. But where does one find stats to back that assertion? Btw, on a non-stat related point, for the record I thought that Cole became less of a defensive liability when when the coaching staff moved him further up the field later in the season. And he does deserve credit for all his nice assists. Yes it was very much an outlier season for him (he was woeful in final third for several seasons prior) but those assists still count and he still deserves credit.
Exactly. What I like about impect score is it gives some indication of how teams were attempting to play. In the WC, Belgium and Brazil bypassed opponents the most, but also suffered the most bypassed defenders among the top teams. France didn't get behind as often, but they suffered the fewest bypassed defenders among the top teams. France had lots of firepower, but ultimately they were very defensively sound and conservative in their approach.
Thanks for the link. I like the metric - a lot. The description gave me one of those 'Damn - thats so simple and smart, why didn't I think of it?" moments. I can already think of improvements on it. For example the worth of a pass can be approximated by # of players it bypasses, but in reality it would be much better described by an inverse non-linear function of the # of players not bypassed. If Opta provided the necessary data it wouldn't be that hard to calculate a significantly more accurate formula than simple counts of "# of players passed" and "# of defenders passed." In any case Impect, improved of not, would be much more valuable stat than what we currently get. For example our current "% passes completed" makes Kitchen look like a good player! But I can guarantee you he would have awful "Impect" scores, both offensively and defensively.