I have experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance (ok, confusion) watching our team this season. There are many reasons for this team being hard to figure out. One of the more obvious one is our wildly different home vs road performances: Home: 6pts, 1 win, rank 22nd (every other team has at least 3 home wins) Road: 16pts, 5 wins, rank 1st (only one other team even has 4 road wins, the rest have 3 or fewer) So not only are we playing much better on the road than at home as a team, we have literally the best and worst records in the league, respectively. That is likely the first time this has happened this deep into the MLS season. But why? Here is a part of the explanation: LEAGUE RANK (by ppg) OF OPPONENTS, BY LOCATION: Home Opp ranks: 2,5,8,10,13,16,18, ave=10.2 Away Opp ranks: 6,9,11,15,18,20,21,22 ave=15.2 On average our home opponents have been significantly better than our road opponents. Over half of our home opp have been in the top 10 (important, see below) while half our road opponents have been ranked from 18-22. So part of the explanation of our superior road record is explained by the fact we are playing easier teams on the road. But it isn't just home/vs away results that has surprised me. Despite all of our home losses, the repeated complete defensive breakdowns, having no decent right back, often playing what should be a 3rd string gk, one of our key players (Zardes) having a subpar season (by his standards), and our coach making bizarre in-game and out of game personnel decisions and in general being a clown -- we not only are above the red line, but our 1.47ppg is the 7th best in the entire league! How can that be? What I see on the field doesn't look like a top team, but our record suggests we are. So what gives? Part of it obviously is the outstanding play of Alessandrini who has snatched us many wins and draws we wouldn't have otherwise achieved. And maybe Onalfo is a better coach than I think (but I doubt it). But I think the real biggest explanation is how the schedule has worked out. Our team looks great record wise, unless you look too closely. When you do, here is what you find. Overall record: 6W-5L-4D, 5th in WC LEAGUE RANK (by ppg) OF OPPONENTS, BY RESULT: Wins: 11,13,15,20,21,22 Losses: 5,6,9,10,16 Draws: 2,8,18,19 So against teams ranked in the top 10 we are 0-4-2. Conversely half of our wins have come against the very worst teams, teams ranked 20, 21, & 22 respectively (CO,MN,RSL). Overall our "best" results would have to be our draws against the 2nd and 8th ranked teams (CHI & HOU). Not a lot to hang our hat on. Btw, the teams we haven't played yet are ranked 1,3,4,12,14 & 17 starting with #4 SKC. So the real test is - can we beat a top 10 team? Tonight we find out!
I know I was too wordy and too "numbery" so most won't wade through what I wrote. So here is a "tldr" version: Our surprisingly good record has come against a fairly soft schedule and we haven't actually beaten any good teams yet. Also our home schedule has been significantly more difficult than our road schedule (which includes the worst 3 teams in the league) and that is part of the reason for our better road record.
Great analysis @skydog . Last night didn't help with the evaluation though. Though we lost (which was expected per your note), we didn't do it playing 11 v 11. Aka, Diop's two howlers cost us the game. Yes, the defense helped (backing off of Espinoza and Romney letting Opara go), but still, both of those goals should have been handled by Diop. What does that mean? Who the hell knows.
I think a fair result would have been a 1-1 tie. There is no way SKC should have scored the first goal. But the 2nd SKC goal was more legitimate. Yes Romney should have stayed with his man better and yes Diop should have come out stronger. But "on the other hand" (as Louis CK likes to say) the ball did drop in the perfect gap between the back line and the gk and Opare did make an absolutely fantastic shot and we are going to make some mistakes every game. So I would say that in most cases we come out of this game with a tie. Like we did against Chicago and Houston. Which is more evidence that we still aren't good enough to beat top 10 teams, at home or away. It's also evidence that this team has very little room for error. We have to be at our very best to even have a chance of beating playoff level teams.
Not that you're arguing for it, but it's poor analysis in my eyes to say "well, if Diop didn't let in the goal, we'd have gotten out of their with the 1-1 draw" as I've seen several posters intimating. It assumes that the game would play out exactly the same. The goal switches game states which completely change how games are played, and the second goal makes SKC even less likely to push forward trying to score again away from home. We have no idea how the rest of the game would shake out. Maybe SKC keeps pushing and scores another goal a few minutes later that isn't a result of Diop's incompetence. Maybe if's 1-0 in the second half, SKC pushes forward more to try to get that insurance goal and gets it anyway. Maybe we gain confidence from our goalkeeper not making a terrible error for once and go on to win 4-0. It's an impossible thing to tell. Maybe if SKC is only up 1-0 going into the second half they are able to keep it tighter at the back and we don't score and the game ends 1-0 in favor of SKC. What we do know is that SKC was dominating us in the first half (a familiar theme throughout this season) despite being up a goal or two were still able to continuously put our backline under pressure. I find it hard to imagine this pressure would have decreased had the game been tied 0-0. It's like in the 2010 World Cup. You can't say that the US would have lost to England if Rob Green didn't let in a very soft Clint Dempsey goal. If Rob Green makes that stop easily, the US continues to push to find an equalizer and the game is a very different one from the game that actually played out. They wouldn't say "welp, that was our only chance of scoring against England in this game, let's pack in the 1-0 loss'. The main point being you can't pick out a significant point in the game (unless it's at the very end of a game) and remove it from the timeline and say the rest of the timeline would happen just as it did. It's even difficult to make overarching comparisons regarding "well, we both played fairly equally, thus a draw would have been a fair result". Again, game states dictate that if that first goal is safely stopped by Diop, there isn't a way to assume that our play after that would have been the same as it actually was.
So I took a look at strength of schedule league wide and thus far, we've had a pretty easy schedule overall. We've had the 7th easiest schedule overall thus far (79th percentile in terms of 100 being the easiest and 0 being the toughest), the 14th easiest at home (50th percentile) and the 3rd easiest away (90th percentile). These numbers absolutely jibe with @skydog 's findings, but it's interesting to note that overall we've had a rather easy schedule to date, even at home were we've faced basically an average group of away teams. For our remaining games, we have a tougher schedule overall, but our away games get way tougher and our home games get easier. We have the 16th easiest schedule remaining (36th percentile). For our remaining home games, we have the 4th easiest schedule (82nd percentile). For our remaining away games, we have the 20th easiest (11th percentile). Basically, numbers indicate we should get better at home and much worse on the road going forward. Overall, we will be getting worse ppg going forward.
You are correct I wasn't arguing that. I was just countering the possible perception that "we should have won" because we gifted them the two goals they scored. I consider one of the goals an absolute gift that we save 99% of the time but the other one as more of a "shxx happens" when the ball is in your end of the field and your opponents do a great job of exploiting errors. Plus what you said.
Great job. I didn't have the data to compare all the SOS's but that is what I wanted to do. Best I could do was use the current rankings of our past and future opponents as a proxy.
I get your point, but I also think it's not a problem to say that Diop's errors cost us points. I didn't see a SKC that ran us off the pitch, though they were the better team. Hell, look at the XI we put out there. SKC should have been the better team. That's all to say, I don't think anyone is saying that if the goals weren't allowed in it's immediately 1-0. Thanks for the analysis on the rest of the schedule. That leaves me with heartburn.
The GK is part of the team, so it's little comfort to say we played well except for Diop's bungles. I don't doubt that SKC's players were told to test Diop from distance, which, in retrospect, makes me less forgiving of Cole allowing space for the shot (or perhaps the blame should fall to Onalfo, who should be giving this direction to his backline to mitigate the risk of his GK's deficiency. Of course, we don't know he didn't). But Diop does reflect an aspect that's missing from the analysis, which is strength of our team. Not only were we playing weaker teams on the road, we also had a stronger team: Gio, Rowe, Husidic and Steres featured in those games. OTOH, when we faced Houston at home, we couldn't even dress 18 players. What has been remarkably consistent despite injuries/absences, home/away, to the point of exception, is the team's ability to score goals. Only a handful of the top teams in MLS have scored more goals and I'd bet we'd be in the top 5 if you just measured since the Chicago game. Of course, we eat a lot of goals, too.
A rewording for clarity: So far our schedule overall has been at the 21st percentile for difficulty. From here on out it will be at the 64th percentile for difficulty, with most of our most toughest opponents being faced on the road.