Archives for July 2016

• We started the season with 7 points in 8 games. That’s 0.88 PPG and a cume of 1.05 PPG in 42 games with last season. Since then we are at 1.93 PPG over 15 games.
• We also started the season with 18 points in the first 15 games for 1.20 PPG and 1.12 over 49 games cume with last year. Since then we won 18 points in 8 games for 2.25 PPG.
• In 2014, New England had a 1.15 PPG over its first 20 games which featured both a 5-game winning streak and an 8-game losing streak. They finished with 2.29 PPG over the last 14 and 55 points overall.
• Last year when we were in a truly hopeless situation people sometimes pointed to the 2014 Revs as a reason to hope, but at our best we were barely as good as them at their worst. This year we kind of look like them if you take your glasses off and squint a little.
• We have a 3-game Home winning streak.
• We had 6 Draws in the first 14 games, and none in the last 9.
• We are 4-2-0 against the West 2.0 PPG.
• We are 6-5-6 against the East 1.41 PPG.
• So if we were in the West we’d be in 1st Place of that tough conference, just like we’re in the middle of the East table…. Oh wait, it doesn’t work that way.
• We are 4-3-5 at Home 1.41 PPG.
• We are 6-4-1 on the Road 1.73 PPG.
• Our Goal Differential against the entire league excluding NJRB is +8.
• Our GD against the West is +5. The rest of the East against the West is -18.
• Last week there were 4 teams capable of catching us with the help of just one NYCFC loss or less. Toronto kept pace, but Philly lost, and Montreal and NJRB drew. So we now have a minimally bigger cushion, but spots 1 through 5 in the table are really quite tight and the team cannot afford to start dropping points. Plus the Impact and Red Bull draws were on the road and both were earned with goals after the 85-minute mark. This was not a bad week of East Conference results but it was not as good as it nearly was, or should have been.
• Right now we sit top of the East with projected 53 points. The last time the East winner had that few points was SKC in 2011 with 51 (the first year they played 34 games). The next lowest East winners since then had 59 points.

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• My what-we-need-to-do chart doesn’t even go up to 59, but figure we need to win 7 or 8 of the remaining 11.

Think on this: we could get to 50 points with a losing record here on out.

• We followed our 3-game win streak by getting 5 points in the next 5 games.
• We just finished a 4-game home stand where we managed 4 points, and for which most of us expected 6-9 points. This made worse an already bad home record.
• The combined Away record of our 4 opponents for that home stand before it started was 3 Wins 14 Losses and 5 Ties.
• We have 3 Home losses and 2 of them gave our opponent their only Away win of the season so far.

Yet we stand in 3rd place, only two points out of first (although with games in hand).

In the PPG standings we have slipped to 5th place. I think we were as high as third in the PPG standings at some point but I don’t have a record of it. We were definitely in 4th place 2 games ago.
The PPG line is up to 43. When I started the thread it was at 38. We have a ~1.5 PPG cushion. When I started the thread we were in 6th and defined the playoff line so that’s an improvement but it would be nice to have more.
So, worse than we hoped, but better than some alternatives, including last year.

How we get to various point totals over the remaining 18 games:

If we keep ties to a minimum, we just need to go 2 games over .500 and we should be in good shape. But as ties go up so must the number of wins over losses

What’s Next
7 of our next 9 games are on the road. Between now and August 13 we will have a very good idea if our very solid road record is something real we can count on, or a flash in the pan. After that stretch we finish with 5 at home and 4 away.
What we are up against are 7 teams whose collective Home Record is 28-12-12 for 1.85 PPG. Put another way, opposing teams who have visited the 7 teams we are about to visit have managed only 0.92 PPG against them.
That doesn’t mean we’re destined to do that. We underachieved at home. We now have to overachieve on the road. But not by much if we take care of business at home starting now.
Let’s say we win both home games in this stretch against the Red Bulls and Colorado.
2-0-0 | 6 Pts | 3.0 PPG
Then we can go just
2-4-1 | 7 Pts | 1.0 PPG on the road
for a combined
4-4-1 | 13 Pts | 1.44 PPG in the 9-game stretch.
Then we would have 34 points with 9 to play and can see a clear path to the playoffs. But if we drop points against RB or Colorado, at home, the road games become more crucial.