City Blues By The Numbers

The metaphors were in alignment as NYCFC went to Colorado, almost immediately went down a goal, then spent about 75 minutes fighting an uphill battle to reach higher and attain peak goals, or something like that. In the end 3 points is 3 points no matter the altitude.

I think it is time to start thinking about playoff seeding.

A simple extrapolation says the 1st seed in the East will probably be in the 55-60 range.  I figure somebody among Philadelphia, Atlanta and NYC will go on a run and get 60 points. Maybe even the Red Bulls or DC has a super hot streak.   Sneaking a peak at the West tells us that, LAFC aside, the next best of the West (among the Galaxy, Seattle, Minnesota and San Jose), will probably be very close to that 60-point mark in one direction or another.  So if NYC can reach 60 points it probably has a very strong chance of winning the East, and should it reach the finals, will be possibly, maybe ahead of any team coming out of that conference if they’re not wearing black and gold.  So how do you get to 60 points?

It’s not on the table specifically, but 9-5-1 does it exactly with 28 points and 1.87 PPG.  That seems very attainable given NYC’s current form, but let’s also look at the schedule, starting with 4 daunting road games:

Let’s be reasonably conservative, and figure NYC gets 4 points in those 4 difficult Away games just as a reference. Then they need 24 points in the other 11, of which 8 are at Home and 3 are Away.  So, win all 8 Home games. Or 7 Home and 1 of the Away; or 7 at Home and draw 3 of the remaining 4.  You can play around with it a lot, but if you’re interested in this sort of thing I think there are few enough games for you to start looking at the remaining schedule and think about how to build to whatever point total you’re interested in.  For me, the other games of concern are (1) New England Away. The Revs have 4 Home losses, but the most recent was in April and NYC has never done well in New England. The most concerning Home games for me are the Red Bulls, San Jose and Atlanta. None of those teams have great Away records this year, but all are tough outs. Beyond them, NYC has a habit of drawing against Toronto at Home, and has only beaten the Revs once since that First Historic Home Opener, in 5 subsequent visits.

I’m not trying to be pessimistic, but just noting that there is not much room for error if NYC is going to have home games beyond the first or second round of the playoffs. Here’s the current state of the East and how we got here:

And the everyone-at-19-games standings:

Finally the year-over-year graphs. 2019 is ahead of 2016, but still lags 2017 and 2018, both of which featured late season slides.  The 2018 slump began after 21 games. In fact, if this team does not win the next 2 it will fall further behind the 2018 version, at which point it will have an easy target to overcome.  The 2017 version only faltered after 25 games.

Move on up, and keep on wishing
Remember your dream, is your only scheme
So keep on pushing

Corner-gate, throw-in-gate, call it what you want. It happened and the result is that NYCFC lost 3 games in 8 days (2 in league play).  Players were missing, the schedule was tough, there was fatigue. But you take the games as they come.  Before NYCFC lost to Portland while missing half the starting lineup, NYCFC beat Seattle in a similar state.

Here is where things stand.

Here is how things stood on that mythical day when every East team played exactly 18 games:

With 2 straight losses, NYC drops into a tie for third, three full points behind Philadelphia. The good news is that looking ahead/behind Philly earned/will get just 4 points in the next 4 games, DC got/will get 2 in the next 3, and Atlanta 1 in the next 2 that happened/will happen.  Re Philly, it is worth pointing out that they just finished (in actual real time) a tough 5-game stretch with only 1 home game, earning just 5 points out of 15. This brought their H/A split to even after 22 games. Looking forward their schedule is kind of average, but one should not expect their current slump to continue as bad as it has been.

NYCFC’s future schedule is, on average easier, but splits into 3 phases. First, the Pigeons face 2 Away games against teams earning 2.0 PPG at home or better in the next 5 games for an average opponents H/A PPG of 1.42. Then comes a 7 game stretch of which 5 are at home, with a opposing PPG of 0.98. Then the finish sees 3 of the final 4 Away, with 2 hosts getting 1.9 PPG or better, and an average of 1.55.  That middle stretch roughly coincides with NYC’s second half slumps in 2017 and 2018, so they are set up to avoid repeating that in 2019.

More immediately, by PPG, Colorado is one of the team’s 3 easiest remaining Away games.

Additional future info in the “how do we get where” table.

Finally, Zeppelin took the post title but Katy Perry gets the last word on Alan Kelly:

“You change your mind like a girl changes clothes
* * *
You’re hot then you’re cold
You’re yes then you’re no
You’re in then you’re out
You’re up then you’re down
You’re wrong when it’s right”

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.

Sift through my soul to see what’s lost and found

With this week’s game against Philadelphia, NYCFC has now played every Eastern Conference team that was in the league as of 2015 at least 10 times in MLS regular season play. This shows NYCFC’s Points Per Game against each of those teams, excluding playoffs, US Open Cup, or anything else except MLS regular season.

Here are some more factlets with respect to NYCFC against those teams:

NYCFC’s Best Home Record against – Philadelphia 2.60 (next CHI 2.33)
Best Away – Montreal 2.60 (TFC 1.40)
Worst Home – New England 1.33 (MTL 1.5)
Worst Away – RB 0.67 (NER 0.80)

Odd that Montreal has the second best record at Yankee Stadium while having the worst record against NYCFC overall. The gap between NYCFC’s best Away record and second best is massive. I knew NYCFC had trouble against New England but wow.  A few more items of note with respect to this set of teams and MLS season play:

NYCFC has never lost at home against CHI, DC, PHI, TFC
NYCFC has at least one Away win against all of these teams (expanding the field NYC has yet to win at COL, FCD, LAFC, MNU, RSL & has yet to play at CIN)
NYCFC has never lost Away in Montreal (also COL, LAFC, SJ & again CIN)

Empty my pockets that were weighing me down 

Sort the MLS tables by different variables and NYCFC is all over the place, but mostly somewhere good.  The biggest factors are the games played and losses.  NYCFC is:

Last in Games Played
Tenth in Total Points
Second in Points Per Game
Fourteenth(!) in Total Wins
First for Fewest Losses
Second for Win minus Loss differential at +5. LAFC is +9
First (Tied) for Draws (with DC, SKC and Chicago one back)

Of course Games Played is a factor but NYCFC’s total amount of tied games no longer seems so ridiculous. Part of the league is is catching up.

Look at this pretty PPG table:

The Union’s traveling supporters were singing “We’re top of the table” Saturday night, which they are entitled to do. But part of that is a factor of games played. This chart helps show where teams are at similar schedule states:

To help further, I made a mini-table showing each team’s points as of Game 15 where NYCFC sits now:

Ties are sorted alphabetically but Atlanta had more wins at 15 than NYCFC so this is fair anyway.

I can hear a howling wind
That sweeps away the pain that’s been 

2016 and 2015 are — tentatively — no longer looking like appropriate comps for 2019.

Gonna walk away from trouble with my head held high

The top half of the potential outcomes chart is looking more attainable:

Tears don’t care who cries them

I posted about this (on Twitter and the NYCFC Forums but apparently not here) at the beginning of June after 33 games because I lacked the patience to wait 3-4 weeks for Torrent to coach his 34th game. But now we have a full season under Domé and his record is 14-8-12 for 54 points and 1.59 PPG.  Patrick Vieira’s first full season record, which corresponded exactly with the 2016 season, was 15-10-9 for 54 points and 1.59 PPG.  I don’t draw any huge conclusions from this except to note that it seemed awfully unlikely at the end of 2018 and even several games into this one. Torrent is helped considerably by his 5-1-0 start before he started tinkering much. Vieira took over a bad team and made it good. Torrent took over a strong team and after his excellent start earned just 21 points in 19 games before turning it around. But Vieira also took over between seasons while Domé had to adjust on the fly. Who knows, maybe his rough stretch will be like Tiger Woods early in his career. He had won his first major when he decided to hire a new swing coach and completely revamp his swing. He won nothing for a couple of years (roughly) but then the changes took hold and he won 7 Majors from 1999 to 2002.  I’m not predicting that much hardware for NYCFC but some success seems possible, at least.

I skipped the Week 15 update, even though NYCFC had a game. Apart from that it was a week of few games, followed by a week off for the entire league, then followed again by a limited schedule week in which the only active Eastern Conference teams are behind NYCFC on the table.  Squeezed in there were 2 US Open Cup Rounds, representing NYCFC’s 1st and 2nd USOC wins ever, but those don’t really play into the weekly updates, so there still is not much to say. So even now I’m going to forego the commentary and just put up the charts and graphs.

“We all see what we want to see. Coffey looks and he sees Russians. He sees hate and fear. You have to look with better eyes than that.”

Twice as many Draws as Wins.
Haven’t lost since March

Only 1 Home Win.
Took 11 of the most recent 15 possible Away points.

Draws with Orlando, Columbus and Chicago, each below the playoff line.
Wins over DC, the Galaxy, and Montreal, each over the playoff line.

In the last few games Domé has reverted to mindless tinkering.
In the last few games Domé has shown some intelligent and bold tactical flexibility.

We’re really relying too much on low-percentage wonder goals.
Players are stepping up and creating something out of nothing when the team needs it.

It has been a frustrating 10 months to be a NYCFC fan. After Domé Torrent took over and won 5 of his first 6 games as coach, the club went into a tailspin, winning just 3 of the next 19 regular season games across 2 years. Then when things seemed to start to turn around, with a W-W-T-W-W sequence, the club goes and draws twice against struggling Chicago and Columbus.

But the tepid upswing has to be measured against a schedule that gave NYCFC 6 Away games in its next 9 just as it started to play better. In a league where teams collectively are currently earning 0.63 more points per game at Home than Away, you cannot expect to compile Away points too consistently. As it is, NYCFC is the only team with a better road PPG than at home, largely due to this scheduling quirk.

If you expect certainty to come soon, there’s even more frustration on the horizon. The next 4 games are at Home, so one would expect that to answer some questions.  If NYC piles up some wins, all is well. If not, abandon hope. Right?   Except NYCFC will be probably missing the following players on international duty for some or all of those games: Johnson, Callens, Chanot, Ofori, Matarrita, and Parks. Plus Matarrita’s backup Ben Sweat was hurt Saturday and his status is uncertain. On top of that, the schedule is not at all evenly spaced, with a game this week, followed by a 3-week layoff (excluding a US Open Cup against USL side NC FC), and then 3 games in 8 days, so there will be both rust and fatigue, with limited rotation options due to the missing players.  All of that means any stumbles by the team come with a pre-packaged excuse. On the other side, a win over Seattle during this stretch would likely come while they are without key contributors Lodeiro and Ruidiaz, so if you want to dismiss some NYCFC success you have that as fodder. And a win in the US Open Cup can be dismissed as against a lower league opponent.

It took a while to sort out but the competition this year is coming into focus and seems to be spread out: Atlanta, DC, Red Bulls, and Philadelphia, with no single, or even pair of teams standing out.  Can Toronto climb into this group with a healthy Jozy?

How many more draws is it reasonable to project at this point. The record is 18 by a bad Chicago Fire side in 2014. They also had 8 after just 13 games.

I’m not too concerned at being below the blue line right now because of the schedule. NYCFC has a chance to compile points and improve it’s PPG against easier games starting now.  Whether it does, well, …

For the record, I look at NYCFC and expect the same thing I did at the start of the season. I think the team will finish with 52-29 points, probably have a first round Home playoff game, but not advance beyond that round. Even if they play Away in the 4-5 game they have a decent chance of winning that. But absent a major acquisition in the summer window they are a longshot to win the East, and even moreso, the MLS Cup. It’s possible, but very unlikely.  In the end, they seem to be the same level team we have seen starting in 2016.

“–  At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.
—  I think I understand Lou.”

In 2017-18, MLS teams averaged 7.7 draws per season. NYCFC now has 7 in its first 12 games in 2019.  Ties are statistically weird. They seem to follow no patterns. In 2017 Montreal had 6 draws in the first 14 games and none the rest of the year. in 2016 New England had 7 in the first 10 games and 2 in the last 24 games. Teams with high draw counts sit pretty evenly on both sides of the playoff line. They are certainly not a bar to success: the 2017 MLS Cup featured Toronto with 9 draws against Seattle with 11. The 2015 Rapids finished last with 10 draws and the 2016 Rapids finished second with 13 draws.

The conventional, and largely correct, wisdom, is that a draw at home is 2 points lost while a draw on the road is a point won.  So perhaps the most disheartening fact about NYC’s draws to date is that NYC has 4 home ties and 3 away.  So why did the Week 13 draw against Chicago seem so disappointing?  Part of it is the sheer number of draws to date, combined with a sense that NYC should be better than its record (whether due to the coach or other factors), and the sense that NYCFC had seemed to turn a corner, and drawing with an opponent many think is inferior seems to be a step backwards.  But it’s also true that winning on the road is tough in MLS and NYCFC came into this game with a 3-game winning streak in Away games. Breaking that with a listless draw beats the alternative.

Another concern is that NYCFC has only 16 goals in 12 games, which is not good, but I see reason for cautious optimism. First, NYC scored 4 goals in the first 5 games. Since then, starting with Minnesota, it’s been 12 in 7 games, of which 5 were road games. The Minnesota game is pretty much the hinge for a lot of things in the NYCFC season. NYC was shutout 3 times in the first 5 games, and nonce since. Also, goals are down league-wide. Individual teams are averaging a bit over 1.4 GpG. NYC is below that for the season at 1.33, but hitting 1.71 starting with Minnesota. On the other hand, the team scored just 1 goal in 3 of the last 5 games, and it’s extra disappointing that even after things improved they only scored 1 in each of the 2 home games in that stretch. And no matter what happens in Columbus it is hard to be fully optimistic about the season until and if NYC starts scoring more and regularly winning at Yankee Stadium. 7-10 points in 4 straight Away games is very good to exceptional, but you have to stockpile points at Home.

Despite the draw, and a slight decrease in NYCFC’s PPG, it again improved its position relative to a large number of East conference rivals, largely because the East went 0-6-1 against the West this week. In the last 2 weeks the East has 1 win, 11 losses, and 2 draws against the West. NYCFC played none of those games. 10 of them were played in the West, but that’s a lot of good results for NYC. Nine more interconference games on tap next week with some more favorable matchups for the East.  Meanwhile, NYCFC has a lot of interconference games remaining. So far the team is 1-0-2 against the West (1H2A) with draws against LAFC and Minnesota, and the LAG win. In the remaining games we are home to Seattle, Portland, SKC, Houston and San Jose; Away to Colorado, RSL, Vancouver and Dallas.

Here is the table of examples of what NYC needs to do to reach various point values.

Barring another 7-goal loss debacle, NYC’s goal differential in 2019 should be significantly higher than 2016, which still seems the best analogue.

If you look at every team’s point total through the 12 games NYCFC has played, NYC (19) is behind DC and Philadelphia at 23, Atlanta and Montreal at 20.  But those team have managed very little with the games they have played beyond 12:

Atlanta 0 points in 1 game
DC 2 points in 3 games
Montreal 1 point in 3 games
Philadelphia 1 point in 2 games

The opportunity is there.

There were 16 games in MLS this week which meant lots of teams played twice, but NYCFC had the week off.  It turned into a case of move forward by standing still.  Midweek, the only East conference team to win was Atlanta, who won their fifth straight by shutout, setting a new record. All other Eastern teams either lost or split points (Toronto and DC).  Then came the weekend and the trend continued, as East teams drew or lost with two exceptions:

• The Red Bulls beat Atlanta while down to 10 men for most of the game, as result which was probably for the best, given the location and current position and trends for both teams (setting aside the always preferred draw); and
• Orlando handily beat Cincinnati, which is not ideal but not particularly troublesome either.

At the top of the Table, Toronto and DC both got just 1 point out of 6, Philadelphia and Montreal both 1 of 3 at home, and Atlanta did the best with a middling 3 of 6. The only teams to improve their PPG were below the playoff line last week on the PPG table (and the Revolution only improved by earning 1 point because their PPG is so low).

NYCFC did not move in position yet its PPG relative to almost everyone else improved. Also, NYC now has played fewer games than everyone in the conference, which is a mixed blessing but definitely an opportunity.

NYCFC now controls its own place in the final season standings, which simply means they can guarantee they finish first if they somehow win all their remaining games.  That’s highly unlikely, but also was not true last week or most of the year.  The point is that NYCFC received a lot of help this week and now the team has to take advantage of it.

“Don’t waste your time, sitting still.”