City Blues By The Numbers

You are here: Home / 2019 Weekly Updates / Only The Lonely Can Play – NYCFC Weekly Update MLS Week 18 July 9, 2019

Only The Lonely Can Play – NYCFC Weekly Update MLS Week 18 July 9, 2019

July 9, 2019 by Mark Leave a Comment

This town, is coming like a ghost town.

Where did everybody go?

Portland has played 3 games at Yankee Stadium. Portland has won all 3.  They won all 3 games by a score of 1-0. But there is something else those games have in common.

  • April 19, 2015.  Villa was injured and did not play. Same for Mix.
  • September 9, 2017. Villa was injured after Spanish national team duty and did not play.
  • July 7, 2019. Six starters: Heber, Mitrita, Tajouri-Shradi, Sands, Callens, and Johnson (plus a few potential subs) were unavailable for either injury or international duty.

It is a wonder that NYCFC controlled play for most of the game and almost got a result.  It was a shame to end the unbeaten streak with a loss under such circumstances, with more than half of a starting 11 unavailable, including almost the entire front line, and the remaining players reeling in the middle of a 5-games-in-16-days- stretch, but that is how things go.

It should surprise nobody that the 12 game unbeaten streak was the longest in club history. The previous best straddled the last game of 2017 and the first 7 of 2018 for 8 games unbeaten.The longest single season streak was the same first games of 2018.

Brad Stuver just played 6 games in the USOC and league play, most of them without Callens, Sands and Matarrita in the back on defense, and gave up 6 goals. I might have gladly taken 7 or even 8 in advance.

Losses with half your lineup missing still count, and the home loss to Portland put just a bit of a kink into what had been NYCFC’s steady ascent up the tables the last 2 months. Fortunately, just about everyone at the top of the PPG table in the East also dropped points this week.

Philadelphia has retaken the lead on the make-believe table where we compare every team at the number of games NYCFC has played to date:

The good news is the Union (and others) did not grab all the points beyond Game 17 so NYCFC has room to recover and surpass with its games in hand.

The “how to reach” table still looks pretty good:

NYCFC is halfway through its season and I reassessed the comparables for the line charts, choosing to use all of 2016, 2017 and 2018.

The team is just behind the 2017 and 2018 version at the 17-game mark. If it can avoid the extended second half slump of those version it can certainly be the best NYCFC ever.

The remaining schedule might be an advantage, even with one more road game than home remaining.  Here are the Home/Away adjusted opponents PPG for the remaining schedules for the top 7 East Conference teams:

Red Bulls 1.51
Philadelphia 1.47
Atlanta 1.47
DC 1.45
Toronto 1.27
NYCFC 1.27
Montreal 1.19

For more detail I counted how many games each of those teams has against an opponent with a H/A adjusted PPG of 1.80 or higher with the following results: RB 3, PHI 5, ATL 4, DC 5, TFC 2, NYCFC 5, MTL 2.  That shows NYC has as many or more somewhat arbitrarily tough games remaining as anyone,* despite an average toughness that looks quite easy.  As an example, the Red Bulls remaining opponents PPG is so high largely because they still have to play both LAFC (2.78 PPG at home) and Seattle (2.56 PPG at home).  But no matter how hard those games are the Red Bulls can at worst suffer 2 losses in them, and they only have 1 other game against a team at 1.80 or higher (Portland 2.0 Home). NYCFC has 5 such games, which is arguably tougher overall even though none of them should be as tough (RB 1.90, RSL 2.25, ATL 2.10, Dallas 2.0, PHI 1.91).

* I picked 1.80 because it generated what seemed to be the right number of results. 1.90 and 2.0 left everyone with hardly any difficult games and 1.70 or lower too many.

Filed Under: 2019 Weekly Updates

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

About Page and My Other Blogs

About and the Rules

Privacy

My Photo Blog

My Dad’s Autograph Collection and Sketches

Other NYCFC Sites

NYCFC Forums

The Outfield

Categories

  • 2015 Weekly Updates
  • 2016 NYCFC Assorted
  • 2016 Weekly Updates NYCFC
  • 2017 Weekly Updates NYCFC
  • 2018 Weekly Updates
  • 2019 Interconference Play
  • 2019 Weekly Updates
  • Interconference 2018
  • Interconference Play 2016
  • Interconference Play 2017
  • Methodologies
  • MLS Assorted
  • NYCFC Misc

Archives

  • September 2022
  • May 2022
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • January 2019
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • August 2015

Recent Posts

  • Goal Differential Minus xGoal Differential – Spoiler: It’s About Cushing
  • NYCFC May 30, 2022 – Odds’n’Ends, Shapes and Contrasts
  • NYCFC 2020 In Review By The Numbers
  • The Best of Times, The Worst of Times
  • NYCFC 2020 – 15 Games In – 8 To Go

Recent Comments

  • JC on NYCFC May 30, 2022 – Odds’n’Ends, Shapes and Contrasts
  • visit this link on Boys Keep Swinging — NYCFC Weekly Update MLS Week 26 September 2, 2019
  • Mark on If Every MLS Team Were A Ride At Disney World
  • Michael B Parker on If Every MLS Team Were A Ride At Disney World
  • If Every MLS Team Were A Ride At Disney World on In My Beginning Is My End – NYCFC Weekly Update October 7, 2019 MLS Week 31

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright and Disclaimers

Copyright (c) Mark Garbowski 2015-2019. All rights reserved.

I have no ads or commercial interests in connection with this blog so I need no disclaimers.

Copyright © 2023 · Agency Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in