Little things that jumps out of the '03 stats while waiting for the season to start: DC retired 11 goals from it’s poor offense of ’03. Nobody in the league has less returning goals on the roster. Adu certainly could be the savior in short order. Today, more telling are the quotes regarding his play, "He's getting muscled, but gets better every practice". Early days and fair enough, but that sounds like it could be a backhanded compliment of sorts. So the Black and White supporters don't get on my tail about being biased... (Of course I am, but whatever): KC has a large bit of the same problem now, with 72 points worth of offense either traded or on the shelf through long-term injury. Yikes! Taylor, and Detter better be good Even more worrysome is that Wollf is not currently part of the injury list. KC was the #1 road draw in MLS. Their road attendance was tops by over 2200/game. Yes, they were the 7/4 guest in Denver, but they also had to play in Dallas twice. Still, 2200 a game over everyone else is something. This is even more surprising as KC still has some undeserved residue of the bunker rep circa 2000. I guess people are paying attention. With Dallas’ move back to the Cotton Bowl for the full ’04 season, their attendance should help to boost MLS’ overall average. Just under 15k last year. 2.89 goals/game in ’03 was the second lowest all-time. Some would say this is a sign of a good competitive league. Me? I like goals. Not much chance of a high-scoring league this season as the goal-tending should improve slightly overall and many of the name scorers are retired or abroad. Are you sure you want to pay $70 on top of the higher-priced cable/satellite package for the Direct Kick package?!? Hmmm. Contributing to this was a MLS 75.04% GK-Save percentage. 75.7% was the all-time peak in ’02. 72.5% was the low in ’98. With the changes of adding Cannon and everyone else a year better; and the departing name offensive guys; league GK-save average should be better unfortunately. 1-0 games and countless OTs, yippee. Cue the threads of MLS doom... 70 goals combined in the 30 LA games. Ugh! dc had similar numbers. Good thing they are on TV all the time in ’04. KC and NE were on the other end of the scale. I’m sure Mark Cuban and HDNet were appreciative. dc led MLS in Fouls Committed and Cautions. Dallas was the worst in Fouls Suffered, SOG, and Offsides. Coincidence that dc was good defensively and Dallas was 13 games under par? Probably not. NE put more shots on net than anyone else in the league. They also led MLS in scoring. Nobody earned more Corner Kicks than dc. Etch took 97. Poor offensively. Hmm, there’s something to work on. Etch departing? Yeah, it was time. Was Hudson’s failure tied to this somehow? Just a thought. Chicago owned MLS best record in 1-goal games. Supporter’s Shield Winner. The off bit about this is that CHI only played 7 games decided by 1, far and away a league low. All the change in my pocket to anyone who can humorously tie this to Dave being the shortest coach... The two Cup Finalists had the two best 1-goal game records. Largest home field advantage? Denver. Undefeated in last 12 at home…MLS high and still going. MLS Champ SJ were the road warriors, they put up a best 7 straight unbeaten on the road. DJ Countess thwarted 4 penalty kicks in ’03. Good thing, with that he still only saved 66% of shots faced. That’s about 9% below MLS’ 75% average. DJ's not a poor GK exactly. Although I did hear that Webster's is trying to think of a way to add "D" and "J" to the proper spelling of the word "rebound".
I would argue that the Wizards being the best-drawing road team in the league is another example of lies, d#$n lies and statistics. The two reason that Kansas City drew so well on the road are they were the Fourth of July opponent in a traditional big-draw event, and they never played a road game in Arrowhead Stadium to drag their away attendance numbers down. For a good analogy, please check out American football statistics. The winningest teams have statistically mediocre pass defenses despite superior run defenses. That's because they're winning at the end most games, so the other team is throwing and not running.
Right. That 15,573 average will bring down any attendance figure. If you still need to believe that KC is a team that hardly ever scores goals and has attendance numbers, fine by me. Whatever helps you sleep, I guess.