When and How NYCFC Blew the Early Easy Part of its Schedule

For me the expected easy part of the schedule where I thought we should have built up points was the first 9 games. Six at Home, only 3 Away, and the 3 Away were Chicago, Philly and Columbus.  Philly and Columbus traded places in terms of how strong they are this year so that’s a wash. The home opponents are less important because good MLS teams should be able to beat everyone at home. Chicago and Houston in 10th place each have winning records at home. We have the worst Home record in the league. As it happens our 6 opponents for those early home games included only 3 teams currently in the playoffs, and they are at positions 5 (TOR) 6 (NER) and 6 (VAN). At the end of those 9 games we had 10 points and we should have had 17-22 out of 27.