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2016 MLS Interconference Play – Round 31 Week 30

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Everything in the Interconference Play posts is presented from an East Conference point of view. E.G., a Home game means the East team is Home.

Interconference play is done for the year.

This week four games, 2 home and 2 away.
East Record 3-1-0

Season To Date
East Record 32-38-30
At Home 24-9-17 (50 games)
On Road 8-29-13 (50 games)
Goal Differential -7
East Points 126
West Points 144

Despite perceptions, the West is not much better than the East.

Over 100 games, the West outscored the East by 7 goals.  That’s less than one extra goal per team and 0.07 goals per game..

Over 100 games, the West won 6 more games than the East.  That’s less than one extra win per team.

The West is better, but not by much. Those 6 wins count as 18 points, which seems to expand their influence, but it is still only 6 wins. I’ll update this again when the season ends but as of when I write this the West has played 8 fewer ties than the East.  That gives the West an additional 8 points in its standings that do not reflect actual superiority.  How much better is the West? 6 wins spread among 10 teams in 100 games.  That’s the amount the West is better.  Last year the West won 11 more games than the East.

Some final notes:

  • Both conferences won fewer IC games due to the additional ties they played with each other. For the same reason, together the West and the East gained fewer points from interconference play than last year in the same number of games , but the East still improved its PPG by closing the gap against the West.  Last year the West won 1.57 PPG in IC games; this year they earned 1.44 PPG. Last year the East won 1.24 PPG in IC play. This year the East earned 1.26.
  • NYCFC was 6-2-2 for 2.0 PPG against the West.  The East excluding NYCFC was only 26-36-28 for 1.18 PPG.  Last year NYCFC was 2-6-2 against the West for 0.80 PPG. Arguably the entire improvement of the East against the West this year is attributable to NYCFC.
  • As of all games through Sunday August 7, the West had 10 more wins than the East with 81 IC games played. Since then the East went 9-5-5 in the final 19 IC games for 1.68 PPG.

2016 MLS Interconference Play – Round 29 Week 28

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Everything in the Interconference Play posts is presented from an East Conference point of view. E.G., a Home game means the East team is Home.

This week two games, 1 home and 1 away.
East Record 0-1-1

Season To Date
East Record 29-37-30
At Home 22-9-17 (48 games)
On Road 7-28-13 (48 games)
Goal Differential -12
East Points 117
West Points 141

It seems the biggest difference between the East and West in head-to-head play is that the West wins twice as many home games as it draws (28-13), while the East wins a few more home games than it draws (22-17).  The West loses less at home as well, but only by 2 games (9/7).  The real difference makes is that the West gets 3 points playing the East at home and the East gets only 1 point at home too many times.

There are only 4 interconference games remaining this season.

2016 MLS Interconference Play – Round 28 Week 27

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Everything in the Interconference Play posts is presented from an East Conference point of view. E.G., a Home game means the East team is Home.

This week two games, 1 home and 1 away.
East Record 0-2-0

Season To Date
East Record 29-36-29
At Home 22-9-16 (47 games)
On Road 7-27-13 (47 games)
Goal Differential -11
East Points 116
West Points 137

Ugh.  After ending an 11-game unbeaten streak last week, the East is 0-3-0.
There are only 6 interconference games remaining this season, and NYCFC is in 2 of them: Dallas at Home and Houston Away. Over 94 games the West now has 7 more wins. I would love to get that down to 5 to minimize the sniping about how bad the East is. A 5 win differential over 100 games spread across 10 teams on each side does not signify top to bottom dominance. In the other direction, I want even more to keep the differential below 10 for the same reason. The Red Bulls and Toronto have no interconference games remaining so I have no difficulty rooting for the East the rest of the way. Philadelphia and Montreal both have one game left but I think NYC can sustain their lead even if they win those games.

2016 MLS Interconference Play – Round 27 Week 26

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This week three games, 1 home and 2 away.
East Record 2-1-0

Season To Date
East Record 29-34-29
At Home 22-8-16 (46 games)
On Road 7-26-13 (46 games)
Goal Differential -6
East Points 116
West Points 131

The Galaxy win over the Crew last night broke an 11-game undefeated streak by the East.
There are only 8 interconference games remaining this season, and NYCFC is in 2 of them: Dallas at Home and Houston Away. Over 92 games the West has 5 more wins, which is not nothing, but also signifies something much less than complete dominance to date.

2016 MLS Interconference Play – Rounds 25-26 – Week 25

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This week four games, 3 home and 1 away.
East Record 2-0-2

Season To Date
East Record 27-33-29
At Home 21-8-16 (45 games)
On Road 6-25-13 (44 games)
Goal Differential -8
East Points 110
West Points 128

East has not lost for 9 straight games, but only have 4 wins against 5 ties in that run.
At the moment, the East is doing better than it did last year relative to the West. The East PPG is 1.24 which is the same the East had at the end of 2015, but the West PPG is down from 1.57 to 1.44.

2016 MLS East/West InterConference Play Round 6 Week 7

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All records, etc are from the standpoint of the Eastern Conference.
All Records are in standard MLS format W-L-T.

  1. Round 6 – Week 7
    Three games all held at West stadiums
    East Record 0-3-0

    Season To Date
    East Record 4-12-5
    At Home 3-2-3
    On Road 1-10-2
    Goal Differential -11
    East Points 17
    West Points 41

    It’s getting ugly for the East in road interconference games. Only 1 win and 2 ties in 13 tries. That’s 5 out of a possible 39 points, while the West nabbed 31 points in those games.
    This terrible performance by the rest of the East is basically why NYCFC is sitting in the last playoff spot, — barely by the second tie-breaker — with a 1.0 PPG. The bad news is that 29% of the interconference games held in the west that don’t involve NYC have already been played compared to 19% of the total league schedule so we have been getting an outsized benefit from this anomaly. NYC will have to win a few games out West to really take advantage of it.

 

MLS East/West InterConference Play 2016 Week 1

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  1. Recently I was disappointed not to be able to find any information on the record of the two conferences in head-to-head matchups last year. I decided to just do it myself this year. Each 10 teams in the East play each 10 in the West once which works out to 100 games and that’s not too hard if you tally as it goes.
    Since we’re focused on the East, all records, etc will be from the standpoint of that conference.

    All Records are in standard MLS format W-L-T.

    Week 1 – 6 Games
    East Record 1-3-2
    At Home 0-0-1
    On Road 1-3-1
    Goal Differential -5
    East Points 5
    West Points 11

    One week. Small sample size. Significant imbalance home/away. I wouldn’t read much into this yet.
    Next week 0 interconference games. On average there should be 3 each week.