- NYCFC started the season with an unbeaten 5-0-2 run of 7 games for 2.43 PPG. Since then, they are just 9-7-4 in the most recent 20 games, for 1.55 PPG, which would be just 52.7 points if done over a full season. A playoff team, but worse than last year. Still, the first 7 games count, and you should not discount them just because of timing. Remove any club’s best 7-game stretch from the season and they look much worse.
- NYCFC started the season with an unbeaten 5-0-2 run of 7 games for 2.43 PPG. Then the Patrick Vieira to Arsenal rumors started. Since then, the team’s PPG is 0.88 lower than it was before Patrick became distracted. The club never really recovered.
- NYCFC started the season with 1.91 PG through 11 games, of which only 4 were at home. It was a brutal schedule to begin, and NYCFC managed 2 Away wins, plus impressive road draws against Atlanta and LAFC (with a clinker in Harrison mixed in). Still, they were poised to start a run through the easiest part of their schedule when the Vieira to Nice rumors started on May 15. Since then they earned just 1.69 PPG despite playing 2 more Home than Away games.
- Patrick Vieira had the club playing well through the first 15 games before he left. The team PPG was at 1.87, and his last game, though only a draw, was perhaps the best game the team played all year, thoroughly dominating Atlanta in Yankee Stadium in all areas except finishing. Since then the team has tread water under new coach Dome Torrent, earning a respectable if mundane 1.67 PPG.
- NYCFC dominates at home, benefiting from an extreme home field advantage due to the uniquely small field. Conversely, they flounder away, where they concede 3.85 times as many goals per game as they do at home [0.54 GA/g Home, 2.07 GA/g Away].
- NYCFC started extremely well, but then settled into a pattern of winning at home while struggling on the road, until a series of ridiculous travel games, injuries, and red cards, cursed them to a streak of 5 points in 6 games, and facing 2 upcoming games with further players unavailable due to international call-ups. For the first time they are lower than they were after the same number of games in 2017, and also are at risk of finishing below their point total from the year before, which has never happened to date. The circumstances are a combination of bad luck, possibly poor training methods, and poor roster construction over-reliant on injury-prone players and mid-range national team roster fillers more than any issues regarding the coaching staff or player performance.
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