Agreed on the most important point: A win over Montreal, following the win over Orlando will be huge for reasons we've both covered.Columbus is the only team in the east that has to play 4 western teams and play us twice. With good results in those games we can catch them. Every game against a team ahead of us in the standings who we can catch mtl, ne, col is a huge game just like the orl game was.
We were such a dramatically better team with pirlo and mix on the fieldinstead of ballouchy and calle. That quality is going to carry through the season. Nate silver has an nba model in which having good players healthy and available to play has a huge impact on likelihood to win and make playoffs. Something like that would work well for mls. Likelihood of winning with pirlo mix lampard iraola and a ngelino on the field is more significant than past perfornance without those players
. Huge game against montreal this weekend.
As for the Nate Silver reference, I'd like to see someone try to build a model that incorporates changes to team strength on the fly. It's beyond my ambition.
I also think it's harder to predict soccer than other sports even when you have static team composition. I think soccer scores relatively low on 2 scales: (1) how likely is the team that is generically better overall to win any given game, and (2) how likely is the team that outperforms in a given game likely to win.
They don't go hand in hand. For example, baseball ranks low on #1 but high on #2. The better teams teams tend to win on average fewer than 60% of games but a team that dominates any given game, usually by pitching, wins a lot.
Soccer is hurt on #1 by the possibility of ties which cuts down on wins and losses, and on #2 by the somewhat random nature of goals going in. Dominating teams (game by game) win more than they lose or tie, but not as much as other sports I believe.*
FWIW, in my view a team that "parks the bus" and wins does not necessarily do so against the run of play. If you employ that strategy and end up flailing about yet win that's luck. But if you manage to control and set the tempo of the game then you outplayed your opponent that day.
In any event, I recommend checking out the site Midas Mulligan found above. I'm not sure exactly what info the site owner relies on or whether he incorporates roster changes on the fly, but he is clearly running multiple full season simulations and aggregating the results.