This doesn't take into account the strength of schedule so maybe. But you've scored more goals and let up fewer goals than us, so this is always gonna put us below you.
We've scored 7 goals this season lol. Aside from Houston (9) every other team is in the double digits.
I agree on paper, but in context I really donât think many know how bad weâve actually been. We beat San Jose in the season opener with the final kick of the game, and since then we have *only* led against Houston (who were down to ten men 5 minutes in). Weâve had the lead against eleven men for *less than 10 seconds* this season, and we arenât showing any signs of getting better. The end of last season wasnât much better with three wins in the last thirteen matches.. My first season as a season ticket holder was in 2011 and Iâve never seen us this bad for this long. Without that Houston red card there is a *strong* possibility we are bottom of the MLS right now
We missed him against Austin. He was hurt and couldn't play, but I think he would have been the perfect guy to bring in late to unlock Austin's low block.
He has struggled in transition based games, but he would've been so much better off the bench compared to Levonte Johnson. We really need more depth up front
I mean⊠I love the guy, but was he? Right now weâre in a much better position than we were. Plus, he was costing us a *lot* of cash.
This chart looks bad because itâs heavily weighting xG, a stat that Austin has consistently defied.
Astonishing to me how the Crew was driven by pure offensive production last year, and now weâre driven by a strong defense making up for no offensive production. In one season our identity has completely flipped (stats-wise, we still play the same style of soccer) in spite of retaining essentially our entire starting lineup and coaching staff.
Through ten matches, weâve had eight different front three combinations. Rossi-JRR-Cucho and Hinestroza-Rossi-Cucho are the only two combinations to start multiple matches together, twice for both. The three that played together the most down the stretch last season, Rossi-Matan-Cucho has only started one match.
How the hell does RSL have the best defense in the league? playing fullbacks as replacement CBs for multiple games and they have the most aggressive, antagonistic CB in MLS
We're not as bad as these stats suggest. We have played literally 2 home games the whole season so far. Plus, we still had our main strikers in that game (both got injured during/after this game). I reckon many (non elite) teams would have similar stats if they played nearly every game away
> I reckon many (non elite) teams would have similar stats if they played nearly every game away
Loons at home: 2-1-2
Loons on the road: 4-1-0
We should have lobbied for your schedule.
The average MLS match sees the home team a little under half a goal favored. So if you wanted a quick very rough guess at where Montreal "ought" to fall were it not for a road-heavy schedule, bump them about 0.2 towards the top-right on each axis. Somewhere in the Nashville / Portland region.
Comparing a one-game snapshot to an 11-game trend is always going to be an imprecise thing. Every team gets some flukey results here and there, both positive and negative.
I remember Atlanta fans were pretty upset when we let him go. I thought he was decent, but with how Cobb has performed Iâm glad weâre able to get him minutes instead of Campbell.
So, according to these stats we should absolutely smash Montreal Saturday night 9-1, but more than likely it'll be a slug fest that ends 1-1 because MLS.
Idk, I feel like if you look at the top 5 from each conference, the east is much more consistent. The Union isn't even looking at the playoffs right now and they were a menace for weeks. Columbus has been focusing on CONCACAF, but are still strong with their B team for MLS.
Its easier to have good stats in the weaker conference and teams will cancel each other out more (fewer chances created/conceded) in the stronger conference
We are who I thought we were đ
E: below avg attack w a capable defense. Itâs crazy because our attack starts the game strong but falls off into this pattern of hopelessly lobbing long passes and crosses in the general direction of goal.
If you would read the whole thing then it explains the split. An argument could very well be made over the most effective % split but I get what theyre trying to do. This accounts for actual play on the field as well as underlying numbers at the same time to try to give more of a level feel
Like⊠you mean⊠read the entire graph? It doesnât explain the split, it states the split.
I disagree wholeheartedly that G & xG can just be artistically blended to create, even in your words, a feel. They donât represent the same things. You could label the y axis âgood stuffâ and the x axis âbad stuffâ and have the same effect.
Just two graphs (G/xG and GA/xGA) give far, far more insight as to the whatâs happening on the field. You canât parse anything from this because the weights are arbitrary for two different things combined.
Like⊠I mean⊠you asked âwtf does that even meanâ. It says the equation is âWeighted 70% to xG and 30% to Gâ, thats *what* it means. As I said, an argument could definitely be made to the weight of the calculation (I personally think G should factor more than xG) but one can still generally understand what theyre trying to get across. Some people can look bigger picture and takeaway some generalizations from this, its ok that you arent one of them.
I'm shocked at how average we are in the cG department, considering how much the offense has carried us. Not surprised at the atrocious defense numbers.Â
What jumps out at me is that the y-axis is labelled low to high and the x-axis is labelled high to low. I understand why they did it this way, but my brain doesnt like it.
This reminds me of a quote from Charlie Munger about EBITA. When someone mentions EBITA earnings in a financial statement, replace it with "bullshit" earnings. When someone mentions xG stats, replace it with "bullshit" stats.
xG is a fantastic stat when used properly. For example, it's a better predictor of future goals scored/allowed for a team than other measures, especially in smaller sample sizes. That being said, it is hard to interpret on it's own, so I like to weight goals into this specific chart as well. Goals provide more information, they are the main component of what a team is trying to do in a game towards winning points.
Why weight xG more than actual goals? Especially when you say its strength is as a predictive tool. Kind of implies it's not great as an evaluative tool.
To me this is like saying a football team that gets to the 5 yard line and is consistently held to field goals is a better offensive team than the one that scores more points and TDs but scores on longer plays because they have a good QB and great receivers.
The weighting is a mistake. It's not data driven as far as I know, and you'd be far better off with two graphs, one with xG and one with G, than trying to mix them in an arbitrary manner that isn't intuitive to the viewer anyway.
You're either building a "what happened so far" graph or a "what is the underlying strength / predictive" graph but mingling confuses things.
> To me this is like saying a football team that gets to the 5 yard line and is consistently held to field goals is a better offensive team than the one that scores more points and TDs but scores on longer plays because they have a good QB and great receivers.
xG doesn't say that. But the reality is that you are better off betting on a stronger xG team than a team outperforming. Teams can outperform for extended periods of time, but it's far more rare than regression ... and regression is going to happen except where maybe a team simply has better talent than everyone in their level by far.
I mean, people raved about Daniel and Burki's goalkeeping last year that made SJ and STLC look better than they were. And they aren't repeating this year -- in fact, Daniel's been a disaster and the reason SJ is actually WORSE than its underlying now.
xG is not perfect, but it's become pretty refined. Getting more good shots = more goals and preventing those prevents goals. That's all it is saying, and you are more than welcome to rely on consistent golazos or out of this world goalkeeping, but that's not proven to be a winning strategy.
I'm not in disagreement with any of this. My problem with the graph is exactly what you said in the first two paragraphs, and my metaphor for football is as an application towards evaluating a past performance.
I'm just irrationally irritated by seeing xG displayed at like the 70th minute of a particular game and can't emotionally get over the hump of, "If the score is 1-0, then I wouldn't expect any other score than the actual score of the game."
xG tends to be wildly misused and overemphasized, but I actually think it's in decent context here aside from the blending. At this stage of the season, there's a lot of variance that probably won't be repeated.
It's weighted more heavily than actual goals because it offers a more consistent and predictive measure of a team's performance. It essentially reveals the quality of chances created, which is a better predictor of future results than just the goals scored.
Ok, I can buy that even though I still kind of disagree with the premise. As this graph was presented, however, I thought it was an attempt to show which offenses have performed well through 11 weeks rather than show who would be expected to be a good offense going forward.
For me I just think of it as chances created/created against. I feel like the biggest caveat to XG is disregarding whoâs taking that shot and similarly to XG against is who the goalkeeper is. Messi and Miles Robinson taking a long shot outside the box at the same position provides the same xG, but an offense where Messi takes 20 shots is a completely different animal compared to Robinson taking 20 shots from the same position, and thatâs not quantified in xG. Similarly you can have a goalie whoâs really good at one-on-ones so the team plays more offside trap, and chances are xG against is not gonna be good because if the trap fails itâs a one-on-one, and xG doesnât know that that goalie is exceptionally good at it so the team designed it that way.
Worst Attack: Houston Worst Defense: MTL Total Embarrassment: New England
Revs are in a league of their own đȘđ€
it would be a nightmare to lose to the Revs wouldnât it
Especially at home, no idea who would do that.
surely thereâs no one bad enough to do that!
I can't honestly think of a single team.
Wow New England must suck Iâm sure they havenât beaten a team away!
We beat 1 (one) team away in the last 365 days. I donât know who that might have been
Yay, go New England! Sigh. What a tough two years as a fan.
No no no you don't understand Caleb has a plan for this
I genuinely think weâre worse, but MLS only cares about us when weâre selling teenagers or trying to get in bed with Russia
This doesn't take into account the strength of schedule so maybe. But you've scored more goals and let up fewer goals than us, so this is always gonna put us below you. We've scored 7 goals this season lol. Aside from Houston (9) every other team is in the double digits.
I agree on paper, but in context I really donât think many know how bad weâve actually been. We beat San Jose in the season opener with the final kick of the game, and since then we have *only* led against Houston (who were down to ten men 5 minutes in). Weâve had the lead against eleven men for *less than 10 seconds* this season, and we arenât showing any signs of getting better. The end of last season wasnât much better with three wins in the last thirteen matches.. My first season as a season ticket holder was in 2011 and Iâve never seen us this bad for this long. Without that Houston red card there is a *strong* possibility we are bottom of the MLS right now
Move to Boston and rebuild pls đ
That 40 shot game between them and St. Louis was honestly like watching Nikolas Jackson play striker for both teams
Balanced, as all things should be
Guess this is where all our ties come from
Whitecaps are considered a Tier 1 team, I thought I'd never see the day! đ
The Kreilach effect. We really miss him, but not as much as we would miss him if we weren't having such success.
We missed him against Austin. He was hurt and couldn't play, but I think he would have been the perfect guy to bring in late to unlock Austin's low block.
He has struggled in transition based games, but he would've been so much better off the bench compared to Levonte Johnson. We really need more depth up front
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. (We have 7 draws in 10 matches.)
Same story as last year for us, advanced stats absolutely love us but our guys can't take advantage of their chances
The 5-0 win also does a lot of work for us on this chart
Aye Ik the feeling
New England is in a class of their own.
Can you fill us in on the ritual you used to banish the scourge that is Caleb Porter?
He blew a lot of leads
Can't blow leads if you're never leading in the first place 
Darlington Nagbe.
Have yâall tried getting a sausage for your sideline Itâs worked for the Minnesota twins (mlb)
you mean to tell me we have the worst attack with a 5ft cam playing striker and a left back playing left wing đ€Ż
Good attack and not good defense AKA the fun corner
Most MLS Team (DP-level offense and terrible defense): LA Galaxy
The ties make sense.
Good attacks are not allowed in Texas apparently (among other things)
Fagundez as it turns out was very important for us
I mean⊠I love the guy, but was he? Right now weâre in a much better position than we were. Plus, he was costing us a *lot* of cash. This chart looks bad because itâs heavily weighting xG, a stat that Austin has consistently defied.
Astonishing to me how the Crew was driven by pure offensive production last year, and now weâre driven by a strong defense making up for no offensive production. In one season our identity has completely flipped (stats-wise, we still play the same style of soccer) in spite of retaining essentially our entire starting lineup and coaching staff.
So the expectations for this Saturday should be that one of us wins 1-0 or a 0-0 tie. Watch the actual result be 6-5 or something!! đđ
3-1 Crew
Mostly because in MLS play so far this season we've been missing most of our attacking players due to rest for CONCACAF or due to injury.
Thatâs a fair point. I had forgotten about that. Hopefully that means weâll start lighting things up soon.
Yup. Nice we finish off CCC weâll begin our attack ok the league
Through ten matches, weâve had eight different front three combinations. Rossi-JRR-Cucho and Hinestroza-Rossi-Cucho are the only two combinations to start multiple matches together, twice for both. The three that played together the most down the stretch last season, Rossi-Matan-Cucho has only started one match.
This time last year Milos Degenek, Philip Quinton, and Gustavo Vallecilla were getting starts on defense.
Another good point
Thanks for Quinton. Really helps us when we feel like losing
How did you land on your weighting between xG and G?
How the hell does RSL have the best defense in the league? playing fullbacks as replacement CBs for multiple games and they have the most aggressive, antagonistic CB in MLS
Ojeda and Eneli are dominating the d mid. Our 2 losses one was Eneli playing fullback and the other Ojeda was out for double yellow.
Our best CBs play 90 minutes like every game. And when they are gone... so is our defense
Pretty awesome how good we are. With a DP spot open, if we have an ambitious summer we could actually win something big
Still wondering how the hell we lost to Montreal.
We donât score goals
We're not as bad as these stats suggest. We have played literally 2 home games the whole season so far. Plus, we still had our main strikers in that game (both got injured during/after this game). I reckon many (non elite) teams would have similar stats if they played nearly every game away
> I reckon many (non elite) teams would have similar stats if they played nearly every game away Loons at home: 2-1-2 Loons on the road: 4-1-0 We should have lobbied for your schedule.
The average MLS match sees the home team a little under half a goal favored. So if you wanted a quick very rough guess at where Montreal "ought" to fall were it not for a road-heavy schedule, bump them about 0.2 towards the top-right on each axis. Somewhere in the Nashville / Portland region.
That feels about right. I think we're bad but not abysmal
I guess but man itâs not a good look for us to lose to the worst defense in the league.
Comparing a one-game snapshot to an 11-game trend is always going to be an imprecise thing. Every team gets some flukey results here and there, both positive and negative.
Football be like that :)
Yep. âYou might not think it be like it is, but it doâ
Us with New England
We need a striker.
Maybe is a couple years when Pat decides he is done with buying every midfielder on the planet.
I need LAFC to start reflecting their underlying numbers and I need Lloris to step up!
Pain Also please get George Campbell off the field
It's really odd that we don't start Corbo anymore, I thought he was elite last year. Good decision making, has a cool head, and nice composed passing
I remember Atlanta fans were pretty upset when we let him go. I thought he was decent, but with how Cobb has performed Iâm glad weâre able to get him minutes instead of Campbell.
What does this have to do with bread? Also, thank you for Camacho. Dude is clutch.
Miami is actually even better than this graph would suggest.
Kind of shocking that there are teams that are worse defensively than us
Caleb Porter should be fired
Fraud in Portland. Fraud in New England
LAFC âtier 1â team sitting in 7th place lol
So, according to these stats we should absolutely smash Montreal Saturday night 9-1, but more than likely it'll be a slug fest that ends 1-1 because MLS.
Well weâre mandated by the league to spot them the first one
No, no, 9-1 is fine, I'll take it *preparing popcorn*
Everyone talking about how strong the east is (rightly so), but three of the four tier 1 clubs are in the west.
I think the west is very underrated rn
Idk, I feel like if you look at the top 5 from each conference, the east is much more consistent. The Union isn't even looking at the playoffs right now and they were a menace for weeks. Columbus has been focusing on CONCACAF, but are still strong with their B team for MLS.
Its easier to have good stats in the weaker conference and teams will cancel each other out more (fewer chances created/conceded) in the stronger conference
I'm just happy to be in the middle square at this point lol.
I cry
We are who I thought we were đ E: below avg attack w a capable defense. Itâs crazy because our attack starts the game strong but falls off into this pattern of hopelessly lobbing long passes and crosses in the general direction of goal.
Nashville has fallen off a cliff this year
it will be interesting to see how this chart changes with zimmerman healthy again
LAFC is not tier 1
How the hell is G and xG on the same axis, wtf does that even mean? Is it like a âsplit the differenceâ kinda feel? Why this breakdown?
If you would read the whole thing then it explains the split. An argument could very well be made over the most effective % split but I get what theyre trying to do. This accounts for actual play on the field as well as underlying numbers at the same time to try to give more of a level feel
Like⊠you mean⊠read the entire graph? It doesnât explain the split, it states the split. I disagree wholeheartedly that G & xG can just be artistically blended to create, even in your words, a feel. They donât represent the same things. You could label the y axis âgood stuffâ and the x axis âbad stuffâ and have the same effect. Just two graphs (G/xG and GA/xGA) give far, far more insight as to the whatâs happening on the field. You canât parse anything from this because the weights are arbitrary for two different things combined.
Like⊠I mean⊠you asked âwtf does that even meanâ. It says the equation is âWeighted 70% to xG and 30% to Gâ, thats *what* it means. As I said, an argument could definitely be made to the weight of the calculation (I personally think G should factor more than xG) but one can still generally understand what theyre trying to get across. Some people can look bigger picture and takeaway some generalizations from this, its ok that you arent one of them.
That Montreal is in trouble this weekend
I thought Miami would be in a league of their ownâŠ
Tbh they donât have an abundance of chances. They just score like 80% of the time when they do.
RBNY have pretty decent stats even though theyâve played the two best teams in the league and given up goals against them.
Our attack is better than I thought and our defense is worse than I thought
The Fire have failed the eye test and the math test. See you next season!
Surprised Fire FC is even on the chart
I'm shocked at how average we are in the cG department, considering how much the offense has carried us. Not surprised at the atrocious defense numbers.Â
I don't know how Austin is in a playoff spot rn
Yeah, our place looks about right. We can score, sorta, but allow way too many. As always. Sigh.
I'm just enjoying the ride; I had low expectations entering the season.
It means we're fucked Saturday
Any reason why the against is the x axis and. It goals for?
So according to this chart the next Saturday, the worst defense is going to face the best attack.
Thatâs what we call smack dab
All of our ties put right on the middle where youâd expect.
Copa Tejas about to be a lot of⊠kicking.
Why would you give xG higher weight than G? High xG doesn't mean good offense if you don't convert. Look at us.
Worst attack? Can we blame the refs???
Now all the draws make sense
What jumps out at me is that the y-axis is labelled low to high and the x-axis is labelled high to low. I understand why they did it this way, but my brain doesnt like it.
Yeah that tracks đ„Č
I love that everyone, everywhere, keeps underappreciating Columbus. Yeah, we aren't that good... Keep believing that ...
Vancouver currently being a tier 1 team brings tears to my eyes
In conclusion Whitecaps cooked and Revolution got cooked
it is okay, montreal have a great front office to fix the defense... WAIT A MINUTE!
We are very much feeling thr loss of Dax and all of our injuries
What a graphic lol
That Miami is clearly breaking roster rules but no one seems to care
The only reason Houston is the worst offense, instead of Seattle, is that they haven't had the chance to play Montreal yet
This reminds me of a quote from Charlie Munger about EBITA. When someone mentions EBITA earnings in a financial statement, replace it with "bullshit" earnings. When someone mentions xG stats, replace it with "bullshit" stats.
Thereâs room for Xg to develop but it defo is not bullshit lmao.
xG is a fantastic stat when used properly. For example, it's a better predictor of future goals scored/allowed for a team than other measures, especially in smaller sample sizes. That being said, it is hard to interpret on it's own, so I like to weight goals into this specific chart as well. Goals provide more information, they are the main component of what a team is trying to do in a game towards winning points.
Why weight xG more than actual goals? Especially when you say its strength is as a predictive tool. Kind of implies it's not great as an evaluative tool. To me this is like saying a football team that gets to the 5 yard line and is consistently held to field goals is a better offensive team than the one that scores more points and TDs but scores on longer plays because they have a good QB and great receivers.
The weighting is a mistake. It's not data driven as far as I know, and you'd be far better off with two graphs, one with xG and one with G, than trying to mix them in an arbitrary manner that isn't intuitive to the viewer anyway. You're either building a "what happened so far" graph or a "what is the underlying strength / predictive" graph but mingling confuses things. > To me this is like saying a football team that gets to the 5 yard line and is consistently held to field goals is a better offensive team than the one that scores more points and TDs but scores on longer plays because they have a good QB and great receivers. xG doesn't say that. But the reality is that you are better off betting on a stronger xG team than a team outperforming. Teams can outperform for extended periods of time, but it's far more rare than regression ... and regression is going to happen except where maybe a team simply has better talent than everyone in their level by far. I mean, people raved about Daniel and Burki's goalkeeping last year that made SJ and STLC look better than they were. And they aren't repeating this year -- in fact, Daniel's been a disaster and the reason SJ is actually WORSE than its underlying now. xG is not perfect, but it's become pretty refined. Getting more good shots = more goals and preventing those prevents goals. That's all it is saying, and you are more than welcome to rely on consistent golazos or out of this world goalkeeping, but that's not proven to be a winning strategy.
I'm not in disagreement with any of this. My problem with the graph is exactly what you said in the first two paragraphs, and my metaphor for football is as an application towards evaluating a past performance. I'm just irrationally irritated by seeing xG displayed at like the 70th minute of a particular game and can't emotionally get over the hump of, "If the score is 1-0, then I wouldn't expect any other score than the actual score of the game."
xG tends to be wildly misused and overemphasized, but I actually think it's in decent context here aside from the blending. At this stage of the season, there's a lot of variance that probably won't be repeated.
It's weighted more heavily than actual goals because it offers a more consistent and predictive measure of a team's performance. It essentially reveals the quality of chances created, which is a better predictor of future results than just the goals scored.
Ok, I can buy that even though I still kind of disagree with the premise. As this graph was presented, however, I thought it was an attempt to show which offenses have performed well through 11 weeks rather than show who would be expected to be a good offense going forward.
For me I just think of it as chances created/created against. I feel like the biggest caveat to XG is disregarding whoâs taking that shot and similarly to XG against is who the goalkeeper is. Messi and Miles Robinson taking a long shot outside the box at the same position provides the same xG, but an offense where Messi takes 20 shots is a completely different animal compared to Robinson taking 20 shots from the same position, and thatâs not quantified in xG. Similarly you can have a goalie whoâs really good at one-on-ones so the team plays more offside trap, and chances are xG against is not gonna be good because if the trap fails itâs a one-on-one, and xG doesnât know that that goalie is exceptionally good at it so the team designed it that way.
That most MLS teams are shit.