Holy Cow! Statistics!?! Dave, you're killing me. Put down the abacus and slowly step away. Yes, United is better this year without a doubt, but that's no reason to cast aspersions on any other United team from the past (I understand dave is not really doing that, but some people are in this thread, and in his heart, I know Dave is too!!) MLS is too fickle a league and there's too many variables from year to year to compare any two teams reliably. Bud has a point, although he's obscuring it with indignation. The point is that it's OK to celebrate this team without denigrating teams of the past. They were what they were, and who knows how much they were important in laying the groundwork for this present teams success. PS: Didn't the Metros win 5 in OT last year and we lost 5? Doesn't that throw your calculations off?
I only started following DC in 2002 so didn't experience the glory days of the late 90's and Etch at his peak. And even though "good live soccer is better than great televised soccer", the ugly style the team played in 02 and 03 was often difficult to watch. Yes, last year's team seems better defensively on paper, it was because we passed the ball around on our half of the field until the other team fell asleep. Then we might try a pass forward and occasionally score. Some have pointed to August as when the team started to gel. For me, the very first game this year was the turning point. Novak deserves tremendous credit for basically taking the same personnel we had last year and completely revamping and improving its play. He deserves coach of the year.
I think I've made my feelings on last year's team well-known over the past two years. That said, I wasn't denigrating last year's team at all. For me to do that I would have rehashed all the problems I had with last year's team, and I felt that would be counter-productive because it would devolve into smaller arguments that have been discussed ad nauseum here. But this thread is a comparison of the differences between 2003 and 2004, so some acknowledgement of our problems last year are necessary. True, but we did retain much of the roster for the first time in a long time. And who knows how much they were impeded by obstacles that are now no longer in the way? Now that's denigration. I'd have to break out my abacus for that, but I thought the Metros had three OT wins (7/5 against DCU, 7/19 v. DAL, and 9/20 against CLB). There were some stoppage time goals (Magee's equalizer against us on 9/28 was in the 95th minute), but I'm specifically referring to overtime. The Metros also had one OT loss (6/28 to CHI). But it doesn't affect my calculations because there was still enough of a difference between the first and last place teams (30 points). With only 12 games were won/lost in overtime leaguewide so it wouldn't have had too much effect on the top or bottom of the standings, just in the middle, where 9 points separated 3rd from 9th place.