2007 MLS Thread

[O Fen�meno]

Went to the Revolution vs. Toronto game tonight.
After being spoiled with the GOLTV and FSC package i felt like I was watching a high school team play vs the Revs.
In the first half Toronto was horrendous on defense and could not clear very simple balls. They also had a lot of mistakes like kicking it out while in the defensive third and giving easy throwins to the Revs.

After going to the Gold cup games at Gillette stadium the crowd was much more reserved and with more kids there. I have to say the gold cup was an electric atmosphere with all the Guatemalan and Salvadoran fans yelling. Overall the crow d at MLS seemed like alot of parents bringing kids there to have something to do rather than "true" fans of the sport.

[TheRover]

Houston @ Dallas on in a few minutes.

[mmbt0ne]

Man, I wanted to write about the game on Thursday, but when I turned on ESPN2 they were showing some [censored] ESPNews [censored] instead of the game that was scheduled.

I don't know what that was all about, but I was pissed.

[mmbt0ne]

Bump for tomorrow because MLS Direct Kick will be free all day

http://theoffsiderules.blogspot.com/...t-kick-is.html

Feel free to watch any of the following games:

KC v DC - 1 pm EST (Should be very good, even w/o Olsen and Johnson)
Dallas v Chivas - 6:30 pm EST (Chivas has given up 1 goal at home. All year. And it was against LAG, which isn't really a road team anyway.)
Colorado v Columbus - 9:30 pm EST ([censored] this game, I'd rather eat glass)
Salt Lake v Toronto - 10 pm EST (MLS fans, watch real fans in Toronto. And then root for the American team)
LA v Chicago - 10:30 pm EST (Will def be worth watching if Donovan and Pavon and Blanco all play)

Also, I was bored at work the past couple days and did some analysis on attendance trends and team strength. Will post later tonight.

[mmbt0ne]

Ok, so I was surprised to have a little time free now:

Attendance

Overall average through 13 weeks and 85 games is 14,987.

Graph of attendance by week


This graph shows three things: actual attendance, expected attendance given the home teams, and the difference between the two. I'd like to factor in the away teams potential draw to this too, but I haven't figured out how I want to do it yet. Probably just multiply by the percentage difference from below.

Attendance by day


Saturdays carry the league. Too many games on weeknights and midday Sunday really hurt the overall numbers.

Attendance numbers by team


Average home and away draws for each team in the league. Also included is the % over the expected home draw for each away team. Not surprising that LA and Chivas are the two most popular away teams considering LA's Beckham effect has already started and Chivas is basically the Yankees of the Mexican league. BTW, the reason Chivas' home attendance numbers suck is because they are so close to real Chivas.

Team Strength

Just some basic scatter plots. Bottom right quadrant = Good Offense/Good Defense.

Average goals scored are 1.66 for home and 1.03 for away teams. Using these numbers, I decide that "Good/Bad" line is clearly 1.35.




Ok, but if a team plays more home games than away games, they'll look stronger than they really are. Noted, and corrected. I found expected goals scored/allowed vs. actual, got a percentage, and multiplied it by 1.35 to keep the same scale.



You can see DC United really move back here.


But what about opponents? Fine. Factoring in home/away and opponents faced, and where you faced them, and what their averages scored/allowed are you get this.



Toronto is the big winner given all this information. And WTF just happened with LA? I have no idea what's going on with that team.

[ThaSaltCracka]

that was intense.

[diggles]

really intense...a little bit of clarification?

[mmbt0ne]

On which part?

Basics: X-axis is the number of goals scored. Y-axis is number of goals allowed.

2nd graph: Instead of using straight goals allowed and scored I added in the home/away factor. Home teams average scoring 1.66 goals per game (before this last week, obv number need to be adjusted now) while away teams only scored 1.03. Thus, if a team (like FC Dallas) played a lot of away games, they were punished in the original formula.

For this one, I found the expected number of goals for the team by doing x=(1.66 * home games)+(1.03 * away games). Then, I took the number of goals they scored (y), and divided y by x to get a ratio of how close they team was to expected value. I multiplied that ratio by 1.35 only to keep the same scale on the 2nd graph rather than just do it where 1.0 was the value for each axis.

For the 3rd graph: Similar to the 2nd graph, only now I included expected value given the opponent and where the game was played. For instance, Chivas USA has given up 1 goal at home all season. Playing at Chivas is much more difficult than playing at Chicago, so you shouldn't be punished for that.

[ThaSaltCracka]

Tone, props on the charts, they were just intense.

Why the [censored] is the west GP's so out of wack? LAG with only 12 played so far?

[mmbt0ne]

LA is low because they planned out the schedule around Beckham. That's also why they've played 9 of those 12 games at home (@ Chivas is still played in the Home Depot Center). MLS knows where their meal ticket is, and they're going to capitalize as much as possible.

Also, on another money note, the last estimations I've been seeing have Adu getting sold for definitely more than $5 and possibly $10M and Altidore possibly fetching > $5M if he keeps his game up through the rest of the season.

Finally, FCD is playing Atlanta Silverbacks right now in the Open Cup. Go Silverbacks!!!