Last year NYC finished the season very poorly, with just 7 points in the final 7 games. So unless the current very poor run continues, the 2018 version is likely to outperform 2017, by a small bit probably.
But another way of looking at it is that NYCFC is basically a good but not very good team over it’s last 34 regular season games, and just mediocre with the exception of the 5-0-1 start of this year. In the last 34 games NYCFC is 15-9-10 for 55 points and 1.62 PPG. Back out the first 6 games of this year, and NYCFC is just 10-9-9 for 39 points over 28 games, and a weak 1.39 PPG.
As I’ve said multiple times lately, it is unfair to exclude any team’s best run of 5-8 games from it’s record, but I also think this demonstrates that following this team has been has been very disappointing, compared to expectations, for an entire year now, alleviated by just 6 good weeks in March-April this year. There was another nice run driven mostly by playing 6 of 7 at home, fully offset by the times when we played mostly Away. Really the only time this team has looked like it could be excellent in the last 12 months — both home and away — was a month and one-half at the start of this year. EVen including those best 6 games, 55 points is basically “best of the rest” after you exclude the top 2-3 teams each year. It is also a team that has not shown meaningful improvement since its 54-point 2016 campaign.
Throw in the playoff loss and USOC failure, and, this does not look anything like an elite team. It’s a good team, but not elite. NYCFC fans reasonably expected an elite team in 2018 and it has not happened.
Leave a Reply