RSL 2025 In-Season News Thread

Better question is if he’ll clean house

 

SJ plays at Vancouver tomorrow. A loss would be really good.

 

I feel like this is a nostalgia pic. What exactly has his role been this year and what has he done to earn the promotion? His track record isn’t really stellar since leaving RSL (fumbling the expansion draft rules with NYCFC kicked off a long run of mediocre results), so is this a lateral move rather than an improvement?

 

Is it a promotion or creation of a new role?

 

Looks like the path to that coveted 9th place spot in the playoffs just got easier for RSL unless San Jose can score 4 goals in the next 10 minutes or so.

 

That Austin v San Jose game determines rsl playoff hopes. I don’t see rsl getting more than 1 point between these last 2 games. I think they’ll get 0.
1 point ensures we finish above San Jose

 

Seattle will be missing the following:

• OUT: Paul Arriola (knee)
• OUT: Reed Baker-Whiting (international duty)
• OUT: Yeimar Gómez Andrade (hamstring)
• OUT: Stuart Hawkins (quad)
• OUT: Ryan Kent (hamstring)
• OUT: Obed Vargas (international duty)
• OUT: Christian Roldan (international duty)
  
• QUESTIONABLE: Alex Roldan (hip)
• OUT: Albert Rusnak (red card suspension)

Their international duty callous will help us. Haven’t heard if Nouhou gets the call? They will also be depleted. However, they are, in fact, a deep team with a great coach.

We’ll be missing Luna, Gozo, and Ojeda, right?
Diogo is 60min fit.
Cruz seems to be about the same.
Olatunji seemed to pull up lame late last night.
¿Is Eneli good to go 90?
Ruiz is definitely 30min max, if any.
Johnny Russell is not allowed to play.

Seattle looks like a loser, but I think we can pull off a win in St. Louis.

 

The Seattle game and the Utah football game overlap
This is stupid

 

https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/phil...-san-diego-make-history-more-from-matchday-38

Anyone see this xGD chart? RSL is 4th worst in the league. I'm not sure what to make of that.

 

It has been removed from the website?


clubs



Is it like this one?

edit: Oof. SKC!

 

Yep, i saw it in a different order and it had RSL 4th from the bottom. Looking at that version, they are tied for 5th worst. So is RSL outperforming? Is that Cabral saving them? They sure aren't scoring much, I can't imagine they have a positive GS-xG.

 

xG is already an incomplete metric. Compounding it with an xGD has too many issues imo to really deduce anything significant

Often the simple metrics are the loudest and best: rsl has scored 36 goals this year. Second worst in the west, for now. That’s flat out not good enough

 

I think the way that graph is using it is actually illustrative.

You are seeing a lot of positive xG when teams are behind.

LAG aside, you are seeing most of the good teams still are positive when in the lead.

Cincinnati seems an outlier in the top. Kinda reinforces Doyle’s opinion that they are struggling to create good chances consistently.

I agree that leaning too heavily into this metric is silly, but it can be helpful & illustrative.

 

I personally find xG to be incredibly informative, but I realize it's not everyone's cup of tea. xG and xGD are quite a bit more predictive of future performance than actual goals and GD, for example.

Anyway, I've been tracking RSL's xG stats all season 'cause I'm nerdy like that. Here's my main takeaway from the season (using Fotmob's xG data):

We've created about 41 xG this season so far. If we had scored all 41 of those, we would be in much better shape in the table, but still not good enough. 41 goals ties us with Portland for 7th worst in the league. But with 5 more goals, I expect we would be firmly in one of the last playoff spots.

More interesting to me is this: most of the reason why we have only scored 36 goals instead of 41 is due to poor shot placement. Fotmob tracks both xG and xGOT, where xGOT measures expected goals given shot placement (e.g. most of Vera's shots have super low xG of like 0.01, but when he places them in the corner of the goal the xGOT will be like 0.8). Our xGOT is 7.4 goals lower than our xG, meaning that we have not scored about 7 goals this season that we should have scored because we are just not placing our shots well. Some of that might just be bad luck, but to me it screams that we were begging for a quality striker all season long, and that's been hurting us bad.

Last thing: Cabral was an animal early in the season, saving lots of shots that the model says we would expect to be goals. That has really tapered off in the last 8-9 games. I still think he's great (last game he was phenomenal!), but the stats indicate he's been closer to an average keeper in the league in the stretch run. Hoping that's just an aberration and last game indicated a return to his usual form.

 

I can see a lot of our poor shot placement coming from being behind and desperate. Those times when you see a lot of shots coming from outside the 18, and probably never should've been taken. I can recall a number of times when we're sitting around 20 shots with like 4-5 on target. Those always scream to me as desperate measures to just try and do something. I can even remember a number of games when there was clearly a more beneficial pass but instead we took the shot.

 

Yes, I'm sure that's happened. But, those shots would have low xG and lot xGOT. The point I'm making is that we have poor shot placement even after accounting for the spot on the field where we are taking the shots.

 

Another stat that hasn't been as glaring this season but is really indicative of RSL, or probably any club really, not being about to create good chances is crosses. Any time that RSL gets 13, 15, 20 crosses off in a game you can guarantee that RSL is having a bad day at the office.

It was a bit different when you had Herrera dropping bombs on Dami's head but RSL hasn't had a presence in the box for ages. They also don't play as desperate or as focused on hopeful balls into the box so it can be a telling stat.

Also, I agree with the Cabral thought. I think that he is an above average keeper for MLS but I think that you could see a bit of fatigue setting in over the long season. Also, it doesn't help that he has been hung out to dry a lot since Leagues Cup. The LAFC games were brutal. You can only bail out a sometimes less than stellar defense in front of you for so long before the dam breaks.

Hopefully everyone has returned to a more confident form in the back.

 

Merging a few of the above posts with a thought: since leagues cup the club has played 8 league games. How those results have gone has, to me, said a lot about the level of this team and any belief that this team is anything better

record in these 8 games: 3 wins, 5 losses, 0 draws
Not great

Those wins were against: 14th, 10th, and 6th in the west

those losses were against: 4th and 10th in the east, 3rd (x2) and 4th in the west

My point: the club has, understandably, felt “good” about the back to back home wins. They’re good. It’s always good to win. Multiple comments have been made that the team was “in” the other games, though. That those other teams just punished mistakes (especially LAFC) way more than others would or did. I think that’s incredibly naive and reflective of a club far too content with being 9th or 10th best in our conference.

no matter how you interpret or massage statistics, you end up in the same place about rsl: they’re a fringe playoff team.

 

Fringe is correct. I did have someone tell me that there are plans in the works to see RSL spend big over the off season but what that means we shall see.

If they want to be more than fringe they will need to invest in more than just fancy suites and stuff.

 

Someone who would have inside knowledge or someone who’s just a random fan?

 

Not sure who is watching US vs Ecuador, but this team looks better with Luna on the pitch.

 

Second half has been very encouraging as a US fan. That the goal came with Luna on the field wasn’t surprising, even if he wasn’t involved in the sequence

 

Note: the 343 that the US are playing would be very fun at rsl. It won’t happen with Pablo. And it needs maybe one or two players to really pull off but it’s very close with the roster now even