Once again I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that teams in mid season form are winning games against teams who are playing their first competitive matches in 4 months.
Are the Surfs the only team without a jersey sponsor?? They look pretty sad with nothing on the front.
I saw a car with a Raiders sticker and an LAFC sticker on it in Orange County this weekend. It struck me as a perfect summation of the LAFC fan base. Supports a football team that hasn’t played in Los Angeles since before MLS existed and an MLS team that didn’t exist before last season. I’m not saying every LA based Raiders fan is more in to the branding than the team, but the odds increase dramatically when it’s a Raiders/LAFC “fan”
Nah. Raiders were here, winning a SuperBowl for L.A. but, now the lambs play 'iN ThE hEaRt Of ThE CiTy". Even though they have our colors, they play right next to the stanc. As the 'new' teams in L.A., lafc fans remind me of ram and charger fans.
And again. BWP had a chance to kill this off late in the first half and shot basically straight to the keeper from the top of the 6; going up 0-3 would've really put Santos in a tough position.
And you don't always even have to change a letter, just change your thoughts. For example I think your oversight of this these issues suggests you should resign as our resident grammarian. I'll leave it to you decide which meaning I intend for both words.
I was thinking of a different way to visualize the standings this year. In my mind, the way to best compare records is to take home and away matches into account and I really consider that the basic expectation is to win your home games. Therefore I've decided, just for fun, to track a team's record by awarding them points won on the road and taking away points not won at home. That results in the following table: Place MBAR MLS East 1 MON 6 6 2 TOR 3 6 3 DC 1 7 4 CLB 1 7 5 NYR 1 4 6 FCC 1 4 7 NEW -2 1 8 PHI -2 1 9 NYC -3 3 10 ORL -4 2 11 ATL -4 2 12 CHI -5 1 West 1 MIN 6 6 2 SEA 3 9 3 CHV 1 7 4 SKC 1 4 5 RSL 1 4 6 POR 1 1 7 LAG 0 6 8 HOU -2 7 9 FCD -2 4 10 VAN -3 0 11 COL -4 2 12 SAN -6 0 The first number is my modified points and the second number is actual MLS points. Will this be interesting to follow? Maybe, I'm not sure but I kind of think it tells a more accurate story on how teams are doing at this point. This year is a little weird because of Minnesota and Portland extended road trips to start the season make it impossible for them to lose any points so need to keep that in mind.
This reduces to MLS pts - 3 x # of home games. Not sure if that is what you are going for? At the end of the season it will be Mbar PTS = MLS PTS - 51. I think you are on an interesting track to provide a single PTS score that is adjusted for the home/away effects. But home field advantage isn't that big (home teams aren't expected to win all their games) and my gut says it should probably be an adjustment based on proportion of home/away games as opposed to raw count of each. But the latter might defeat your simplicity goal. Interesting idea though and I like seeing statistical approaches being tried on BS. I think the topic is shortchanged by MLS. Part of the whole growth in NCAA, NBA and NFL interest has come from the analytics angle. Meanwhile we are stuck with that almost meaningless Audi Index.
Yeah I think I'm just looking for a way at looking at the standings early in the season to take into account the home/away effect which I've always believed is higher in MLS then in most soccer leagues (due to travel, distance, dramatic climate changes, flying coach, etc.) At the end of the year my standings won't be any different the MLS' as far as positioning I don't think. Looking after three weeks, my standings show a few things the regular ones don't: - Maybe Houston isn't actually that great since they've only played at home. - Maybe Portland isn't so bad since they are 3 matches away so far. - Maybe Montreal and Minnesota really are pretty decent. - Maybe we don't get too over excited yet since we haven't done anything too special. I don't know...just shooting the ****.
I think the trick is to figure out the proper adjustment to reflect for the home-field advantage. It seems your table over-emphasizes away wins and home defeats, where if you could find some simple formula (I know, not really that simple) that rewards away victories a little more than home victories, that would be a more accurate table.