It seems to me that not so long ago some among us had been pointing out how the Revs fail to capitalize on set plays consistently. Then they go out and get three goals on three set plays and Kyle Martino is quoted on MLSnet as saying: Have I just been missing it, or is that just blatantly wrong? (BTW, just to whinge a little, how come the article was about Cowlumbus losing instead of the Revs winning I suppose you have to be LA or the Mutts to always get the hype) The other job for a stat guy comes to mind from the thread about what team is most hated in the East. It would seem to be an easy thing to show whether those matches are "chippier" than others. I would be particularly interested in a table that showed fouls committed and cards received in matches between the Revs and Eastern Conference opponents. The logic of some is that some of these teams are more hated than others because they a decidedly more vicious than the Revs. I wonder if the stats bear this out. Since I am too lazy to do this work myself I thank in advance anyone who does and will not be surprised if this thread dies with this as its lone post.
yea, i always thought that we weren't that great on set plays. How many corner kick goals have we had this year?
A quick look through the game reports come up with the following restart goals (only counting ones where the person taking the restart got at least an assist): CK Franchino to Heaps, Chi, 5/17 CK Moore to Twellman, Met, 7/12 FK Franchino to Twellman to Moore, Col, 7/23 PK Cancela, LA, 8/23 FK Moore, Clb, 9/28 CK Moore to Joseph, Clb, 9/28 FK Franchino, Clb, 9/28 CK Cancela to Joseph, Dal, 10/4 So coming into that game against Columbus, we had scored 4 out of 40 goals on restarts - not really bread and butter. To put this in perspective, up to that point, our ability to persuade the opposing team to score on themsleves (2) was equally as threatening as our corner kicks (2) and more so than our free kicks (1) and penalty kicks (1). Since (including) that game, we have scored 4 out of 7 goals from restarts. Being dangerous on restarts is good for playoff and tournament soccer, so I hope it continues. Incidently, if I include restarts mentioned in the buildup (but no assist given to the taker of restart), there are two more: FK Franchino to Twellman(A) to Moore(A) to Noonan, Met, 7/12 FK Joseph to Noonan, Met, 9/13
As for the other question of fouls per opponent, for the 2003 season: Opp---G---TF---FpG---RF---RC---RE---OF---OC---OE Chi----4---146---36.5---74-----7-----2-----72----11-----1 Clb----4---133---33.3---67-----6-----0-----66-----6------0 Dc----3---111---37.0---53-----4-----1-----58------7------1 Met---2----68---34.0---33-----4-----0-----35------1------0 G (Games), TF (Total Fouls), FpG (Fouls per Game), RF (Rev Fouls), RC (Rev Cautions), RE (Rev Ejections), OF (Opponent Fouls), OC (Opponent Cautions), OE (Opponent Ejections) It's all relatively equal. The DC number is skewed by a 52 foul affair in the teams' first meeting. If you look at cautions/ejections as a good barometer of dislike, Chicago seems to be the most intense of the rivalies (on the field)--4.5 Cautions and 0.75 Ejections per game. Compare this to Clb (3.0, 0.0), DC (3.67, 0.67) and Met (3.33, 0.00). I'm not sure we can quantify the effect of when the games are played, but one would assume that a game is more intense (chippier?) at the end of the season as teams fight for playoff spots. Certainly that holds true for the Columbus series-- April (26 TF, 2 C, 0 E), May (23, 0, 0), July (38, 2, 0) and Sept (46, 8, 0)--but not the Chicago series--April (41, 4, 1), May (35, 5, 1), July (37, 5, 1) and Aug (33, 4, 0). I will be interested to look at these numbers again at the end of the season (after the DC game and 2 Metrostar matches). Unfortunately, I don't really want to dig through the past seasons to get this data. Maybe Mr Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau wants to provide historic numbers of fouls between opponents.
Excellent work ftruscot, I knew someone would rise to the challenge, thank you. It seems to me that the stats lean toward completely disproving Kyle Martino's lament and showing that none of the teams is nastier toward NE than NE is toward them and thus the "violence" factor is not a legitimate measure of fan hatred.
I decided to take a look at Mr Martino's team's proficiency at scoring off of restarts. The numbers are very close to the Rev numbers, except the Crew has not scored near the same number of total goals. Crew restart goals (at least assist given to taker of restart): FK Garcia to Buddle, LA, 4/5 PK Cunningham, Col, 5/10 PK McBride, SJ, 5/17 CK Paule to Cunningham to Dunseth, NE, 5/24 FK Paule, Dal, 8/23 CK Paule to Buddle to Martino, NE, 9/28 Indirectly from restarts (restarts mentioned in the buildup but no assist given to the taker of restart) CK ? to Dunseth (A) to Cunningham, SJ, 5/17 CK Garcia to Denton(A) to Buddle, Chi, 9/6 So Mr Martino is talking out of his posterier. Going into the 9/28 game Columbus was scoring 15% (5 of 32) of its goals directly from restarts, and NE was scoring 10% (4 of 40) of its goals in such manner. As of today, Columbus is at 17.14% (6 of 35) and NE at 17.02% (8 of 47). I was surprised that Columbus only has 2 PK goals with all their speed up front. Made me look at mlsnet.com for team totals: http://www.mlsnet.com/statistics/league.html 2 is the fewest PKs taken by any team (SJ, CLB, and NE), 7 is the most taken (DC, Chi, LA).
I should never have opened the mlsnet.com stats page... For those who think the Revs are comprised of thugs: We rank 9th in fouls committed with 416 (KC is 10th with 385, and DC is 1st with 481) We rank 10th in Cautions with 44 (DC is 1st with 60) We have 1 of top 10 in Fouls committed (Joseph at 5th) We have 2 in top 8 in Cautions (Llamosa T-1, Franchino T-4) in a very jammed field (16 players have one fewer caution than Franchino). If any team should carry the "thug" name it's DC, They have led the league in Fouls Committed and Cautions for each of the last 5 seasons (since 1999 season). In 1996 they ranked 7 (FC) and 8 (C), in 1997, 10 and 9, and in 1998, 8 and 5. The quite sudden change from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde coincides with the coaching change from Arena to Rongen (Mr Hudson has happily followed Rongen's path in DC, but while at Miami his squads were not great thugs--2000, 8 (FC) 7 (C); 2001, 10 (FC) 3 (C)) On the other side of the foul... Only Twellman is in the top 10 in Fouls suffered with 57 (10th), but Cancela will join him next week. Cancela has been fouled 56 times in 11 games or once every 17 minutes played. Twellman is fouled every 33 minutes. The most fouled player in the league is Beasley with 89 fouls suffered in 1834 minutes (or once every 21 minutes). Other contenders are Ruiz once every 25 min, Martino once every 21 min, and Mcbride once every 27 min.