Glad excels at the 1 touch interception-pass too. It's so vital at keeping teams pinned when they try to break. Someone on Reddit posted the split not just for Glad, but for games when we play the Toia-Onuoha-Glad-Herrera backline, and it's just about as stark.
Yes, I thought that even thinking that the tackle was red card worthy was stupid so I couldn't figure out why Dunny was going about it. However, I didn't think that they were looking at a possible handball since you could tell that the ball hit Herrera in the chest, so I couldn't figure out why they were worrying about the tackle. It was all kind of confusing but then Baldomero Toledo was the referee so......
I think that accounting for the strength of the opponents is a really good point, but even if you do that the difference is pretty stark. One rough way to do this is to use Sagarin's ratings, which give a team rating and also a home field advantage number. For any game, you can estimate the GD by adding the home field advantage to the home team's rating, and then subtracting the away team's rating. If you do that for RSL over the 9 games that Glad didn't play, you get an expected GD of -1.93. Meanwhile, the actual GD was -15. To me, that suggests that Glad is playing a pretty important role. One other important point: most of the games that Glad missed were early in the season. It's certainly possible that RSL has just gotten better during the season, and this happens to correlate with Glad being on the field more. But to my eye, I think Glad plays an important part in RSL's success.
Sure Doyle. Choose LAFC as the great example. OMG RSL got destroyed by LAFC in the break. Well, so does everyone. But it wouldn’t have happened if Justen Glad had been on the pitch? LOL.
He did it because Glad was not playing well, regardless of Doyle’s personal opinion. He was tentative in his challenges. Forwards were getting behind him. And his ‘accurate’ passes were going out of bounds and to opponents too many times. Somewhere around the Tigres game the light switched on. I don’t know how to describe it, but suddenly he began playing with great confidence. Tigres would have kicked our a***s if not for his play. He challenged their forwards. He dribbled the ball aggressively. His passes were, indeed, accurate. He was a very important part of the recent good form of the team. But for most of the season that’s not how I would describe his play.
(1) almost all of the 7 losses came on the road against top offensive teams in this league. One came when we went a man down in the 17th. Like I posted earlier, maybe Glad would have kept a goal or two out. Maybe. (2) I don’t think Sagarin’s data can be relied upon when it looks at players in isolation. For instance, we have had much better form since Savarino came back. He’s been a different player and, imo, has been the spark for recent success. Many of Glad’s starts have come during this same period of the season, thus in Sagarin’s data he benefits from something that’s actually due to someone else. (3) does the data take into account red cards against RSL when Glad didn’t play. Let’s look at this: 3/16. DCU 5-0 RSL. On the road. No Glad. RSL had 2 red cards. Yet, Glad’s absence is why we were crushed and had such a large GD? 3/23. LAFC 2-1 RSL. On the road. No Glad. RSL got a red card in the 84th and LAFC scored the game winner after that. Without that red card RSL possibly earns a point on the road against the best team in the league...without Glad. 3/30. RSL 2-4 FCD. At home. No Glad. RSL got a red card in the 17th and FCD took advantage. Silva scored one of the RSL goals. The argument can be made that the GD would be worse had Glad played since it’s unlikely he would have scored. 8/17. RSL 0-2 LAFC. At home. No Glad. Each team got a red card. LAFC scored both goals after the RSL red. I’ve demonstrated here that of the -15 GD in games without Glad, 10 of that differential came in games in which RSL got red cards. So maybe red cards had more to do with the bad results and large GD than the absence of Justen Glad. To me it makes sense, but who really knows? However, it’s a good example of the complexity that Sagarin’s algorithms and Doyle’s “hey guess what?” tweets do not and cannot capture. I put much more trust in my own eyes tbh.
For sure Sagarin's ratings do not prove any sort of causation. Like I said, and as you pointed out, there could be other factors that happened to occur in the same games that Glad did not play in that explain the poor results. That could be red cards, Savarino's better form, the team overall getting better over time, etc. etc. etc. Who knows? BUT, to me it seems pretty coincidental that Glad just happened to be out for all of those bad results. I would never go so far as to say that Glad's absence is fully responsible for the -15 GD, but to me it seems likely that it is a significant factor, simply because the GD swing is so large and happens to coincide exactly with the games in which Glad isn't playing. Obviously, no one knows how RSL would have performed in those games if he had been in. Your take from your own eyes is that things would have been about the same. I tend not to believe my own eyes and rely more heavily on data, and to me the data says those results are pretty anomalous, and it would take a lot of coincidences for them all to line up that way by chance. But no one really knows, which I think we both agree with.
Interesting thoughts, but I don't agree with your premise. You make a blanket statement that Glad at most would have made a 1 or 2 goal difference in those 4 matches that lead to a -10 GD. That could be true, but I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest his impact could have also been much, much greater. In addition, you assume that Glad's absence had no effect on whether or not RSL would have gotten those red cards. That could be true, but again, I'm not sure we can say that's a veritable fact. See below. I haven't looked as closely at the data relative to Savarino, but if the overlap of absences with Glad is true, then I agree that you can't put it ALL on Glad but that's how +/- stats work. Which is why you tend to look at +/- stats across each player on a team. In hockey in particular, you tend to see entire lines with similar +/- ratings. 3/16 - Silva was one of the 2 red cards (the other was Savarino, btw). Would Glad have gotten a red card? RSL was down 2 goals when Savarino received the red card. Would Glad have changed that? If he had, would RSL have still received red cards which tend to come from being over-extended and sometimes desperate? The first goal came from a PK that Silva gave up. Good chance that's a different story with Glad. 2nd goal, Silva tries to play out of back and puts Herrera in a difficult spot to collect the pass and avoid the pressure, AND Silva lazily trots forward and does not get back to defend Rooney who scored the goal. IMO - Glad would not have done either. 3/23 - Glad's replacement, Holt, is out of position, marking nobody on the goal. Could Glad have made a difference on that goal? Absolutely. The red card was largely inconsequential as it came very late, and Zimmerman's goal was both unexpected and exceptional, so it's hard to say what role Glad would have played in either event. 3/30 - In the opening minute, Lennon makes a bad pass but Glad's replacement, again Holt, bites for the ball and gets beaten badly by being out of position. That is something Glad would most definitely not done as he's much more conservative with his positioning than all other RSL CB's. Did that opening minute goal change the entire complexion of the game? Did it play a part in Kreilach's frustrations which led to his red card? It's impossible to know cause and effect. Note: Holt was taken off a few minutes later for Silva. Silva then had poor positioning again that led to FCD's 2nd goal after Savarino had equalized. Would Glad have had better positioning? My guess is yes, but could he have stopped the goal? That's unknown. Once the red card was conceded, goals 3 & 4 would have likely occurred with or without Glad. 8/17 - If you watch THE key play of the night, you notice both Silva and Nedum making the exact same play as both played the ball and left Vela alone to slide in behind, hanging Herrera out to dry. This happened multiple times in the game, and it highlighted the problem of playing those 2 CB's together. They are both aggressive defenders (think Olave), and they are not a good complement to each other. They each need to pair with a Glad (think Borchers) who is more cautious with his positioning. Again, I'm almost certain that Glad would have taken a different approach on that play. Would it have stopped the pass to Vela? Who knows? Would LAFC still managed a short-handed goal? Who knows? But he certainly could have made a difference on that one key play in that game.
I'm not sure how anyone can say that Silva has been anywhere near the quality of defender as Glad has been this season. For stretches last season, I think it would be easy to argue that Silva was the better of the two, but that has most certainly not been the case this season. Whether you use the eyeball test or stats, I think this is very plain to "see".
I don't understand how that red card could be largely inconsequential. Zimmerman was unmarked at the top of the 18 when he scored that banger. I think it's very unlikely that he remains unmarked if our defensive midfielder doesn't get sent off.
It appears from the eye test that Glad's strength has improved pretty dramatically. He is dominating in the air (very new) and has the strength to get into a forward's back and not be pushed off so he can reach around with his leg and deny the ball (also new this year). Add in the fact that he has underrated speed and is playing with more confidence, and it leads to the conclusion that he MAY be back on track to be one of the top defenders in league. Let's see about consistency now.
thats a fair point, though the flow of that game was all LAFC and the goal felt like it should have come 90 minutes earlier. I wouldn't point to the red card as the reason we dropped a point. I'd say we were about to steal a point we didn't deserve in the slightest and reality was served to us in the form of a fantastic goal.
My whole point in writing was simply to say that I dislike tweets like Doyle’s in which superficial stats are given to draw people to certain conclusions with them. I argued that there are probably several factors that could have led to or contributed to the data he posted. I think everyone agrees that is the case. Further, his general observations about Glad’s play were only accurate regarding his play with (1) the US pre-senior national teams and (2) his pre-senior RSL career. Up until the last month his senior RSL play has not been good. I didn’t intend for the discussion to be more complicated than that. However, I appreciate all of the opinions posted therein. Otherwise, I have the same opinion as user @stucknutah posted above. The current version of Glad is what I had hoped to see when he came up. His recent performance has definitely been MLS starter level. I, too, now need to see it sustained. BTW, I have not recently posted that Silva is better. I have consistently posted that Nedum is. Last year I posted that Silva was better than Glad. He was. But not right now.
I didn't say that. I was saying that at that point, if the team was down a man, it didn't matter if Glad or some other CB was in the lineup.
I haven't gotten that impression from any of your posts. However, I think the dropoff from Silva to Glad is quite significant in their current forms. In addition, I think the pairing of Silva and Nedum is just a bad one - a bit of a unique situation where the whole is lesser than the sum of the parts. Both of those factors somewhat play into Doyle's admittedly superficial stat argument.
I agree. At the end of last season I thought that the Nedum/Silva partnership would improve this season as they adjusted to one another. It has, but Silva places a lower ceiling on the tandem than I expected. In his current form Glad raises the Glad/Nedum potential ceiling significantly compared to the other.
I have very much been impressed with turn Glad has taken with his play. Perhaps he’s turned the proverbial corner on his play and we can start to expect more from him moving forward.