Look Who's Ahead Of Us Now 2.0

Second Stat of last year

POINTS:

55 - D.C. United
53 - Chivas USA
52 - Houston
50 - New England
44 - FC Dallas
43 - New York
40 - Chicago
40 - Kansas City
37 - Columbus
35 - Colorado
34 - Los Angeles
27 - Real Salt Lake
25 - Toronto FC




We sucked! Thats all there was to it

 

How dare you inject any reality into our irrational pre-season optimism!

 

Maybe we should borrow a page from Cubs fans and bring a sign to the opening match saying "There's always next year".

 

Thats funny. You have optimism for RSL.

 

So.... are you saying our points were half-full or half-empty?

 

yeah, but if we do the addition before doubling the points, we only have to add one.

 

That's a great idea. We were also thinking about making the "Off-Fence" sign from those miller light commercials.

 

Ouch! This one's quite painful to look at, especially since I think we made a dramatic improvement in this over the last 1/3 rd of the season didn't we?

 

The solution to that problem is just to not shoot so much!

 

I don't remember a "dramatic" improvement. I seem to remember a slight improvement highlighted by a couple wins over Colorado. RSL only won 6 games last year so how much of an improvement could've been made?

 

How many of the shots were really intended to be forward passes that were part of our feared "long ball" strategy that happened to go over the end-line? We many never know...

 

strategy RSL

 

Here's a list to compare with the shots per goal list above. Percentage of total shots on goal. It doesn't match up quite as well as the final point standings.


Team Shots SOG Percentage
Toronto: 277 152 54.9%
D.C.: 361 190 52.6%
Chicago: 312 156 50.0%
Chivas: 354 175 49.4%
New England 398 193 48.5%
Columbus: 380 178 46.8%
New York 396 178 44.9%
Dallas: 350 154 44.0%
Houston: 335 145 43.3%
Kansas City 420 181 43.1%
Salt Lake 345 148 42.9%
L.A.: 315 127 40.3%
Colorado: 280 103 36.8%

I grabbed these numbers from the various teams' MLS websites, and only a few of them (RSL, Toronto, and maybe one other) include stats from players who were traded away, so it's hard to say how accurate it is.

 

So the sense of late game collapses wasn't a myth. Backed up with data.
Nice work.

 

Cool stat......thanks.

Here's something interesting: The "average" percentage of goals scored after the 75th minute should be 16.7% (90 divided into 15)......meaning 10 of 13 teams gave up more goals (percentagewise) in the final 15 minutes than in the rest of the game. I suspect that's due to sitting on leads causing opponents to score late.

And anyone remember how, in 2006, the problem was we always got scored on in the first 15 minutes of the game? This makes it look like last year we solved that problem.....and created another one.

 

The only problem is it is all relative. If you allow less percentage of goals in the first 15 and allow less percentage of goals in the last 15 minutes, well that means you will get a higher percentage of goals in the middle 60 minutes. All percentages have to add up to 100 in the end. So, technically you will always create another problem. So, I think this stat is a little hard to disect.

 

So what you are saying is that we can't reduce the percentages for each portion of the game? DANG!