2018 - Running With the Numbers and the Quest for Everything
- Thread starter mgarbowski
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Well that was a hell of a week. 9 points in 7 days (though 3 of those points are reflected in the prior update).
Red Bulls and Dallas won their games. But Atlanta, LAFC and Portland all dropped 2 points, the first two at home. Dallas and NYC now top the league with 2.0 PPG. Atlanta continues the odd trick of performing slightly worse at Home than Away.
The gap between the top 3 in the East and the rest is growing. In the West, 4th place SKC is slipping and is now nearly halfway between 3rd place Portland and the Galaxy in 5th. It is very likely that a team in the East will get more than 60 points and not get a bye. There is a decent chance of that happening in the West.
Three wins in a row makes for pretty lines:
The current trend has the team finishing with a point total in the high 60s. It's necessary to remember, however, that they have now played 2 more Home than Away games. That is the most imbalanced in favor of Home they have been or will be all season. It is also the most imbalance from now to the end. After getting even with the next 2 Away, the schedule never goes more than +/-1 the rest of the way. Still, remember that of the remaining 16 games, just 7 are Home and 9 Away when reviewing this:
Here is the East line graph:
Villa has started 10 of NYCFC's 20 games to date. He did not play in 7 and came in as a sub in 3. The club record when he starts is 5-3-2, 1.70. When he does not start the record is 7-1-2, 2.30. Of the non-starts, the record is 5-1-1, 2.29 when he does not play at all.
His starts are evenly split 5 Home 5 Away. His non-starts are 6 Home 4 Away. This does give an advantage to the non-start record, but even if you add one win to the record when he starts and delete one win from games he does not start, to compensate for the schedule disparity, then the record without him is still better, by 2.22 PPG with to 1.82 PPG without.
I do not think this proves that the team is better without Villa. You need to adjust for opponent quality, who else was injured, and your own eye test. But, I am fairly certain this demonstrates the team can succeed very well without him, which is not something anyone is likely to have believed until very recently.
ETA: The East line graph is corrected per Gotham Gator's correction a few posts down.
Red Bulls and Dallas won their games. But Atlanta, LAFC and Portland all dropped 2 points, the first two at home. Dallas and NYC now top the league with 2.0 PPG. Atlanta continues the odd trick of performing slightly worse at Home than Away.
The gap between the top 3 in the East and the rest is growing. In the West, 4th place SKC is slipping and is now nearly halfway between 3rd place Portland and the Galaxy in 5th. It is very likely that a team in the East will get more than 60 points and not get a bye. There is a decent chance of that happening in the West.
Three wins in a row makes for pretty lines:
The current trend has the team finishing with a point total in the high 60s. It's necessary to remember, however, that they have now played 2 more Home than Away games. That is the most imbalanced in favor of Home they have been or will be all season. It is also the most imbalance from now to the end. After getting even with the next 2 Away, the schedule never goes more than +/-1 the rest of the way. Still, remember that of the remaining 16 games, just 7 are Home and 9 Away when reviewing this:
Here is the East line graph:
Villa has started 10 of NYCFC's 20 games to date. He did not play in 7 and came in as a sub in 3. The club record when he starts is 5-3-2, 1.70. When he does not start the record is 7-1-2, 2.30. Of the non-starts, the record is 5-1-1, 2.29 when he does not play at all.
His starts are evenly split 5 Home 5 Away. His non-starts are 6 Home 4 Away. This does give an advantage to the non-start record, but even if you add one win to the record when he starts and delete one win from games he does not start, to compensate for the schedule disparity, then the record without him is still better, by 2.22 PPG with to 1.82 PPG without.
I do not think this proves that the team is better without Villa. You need to adjust for opponent quality, who else was injured, and your own eye test. But, I am fairly certain this demonstrates the team can succeed very well without him, which is not something anyone is likely to have believed until very recently.
ETA: The East line graph is corrected per Gotham Gator's correction a few posts down.
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Sorry- what I meant to say was, only Dallas and RB can pass us by winning all their games-in-hand
My eye test has told me all year that we are a better team without him.
But I still don’t even believe my own eyes sometimes. More along the lines of I acknowledge what I see, then grab for the security blanket.
But security for what? We have never won jack shit with Villa, so I’m obviously being irrational to not believe my eyes.
Had we had this squad and this coach two years ago when Villa was an absolute monster, we would have been challenging for supporter shield point-by-point, if not taking it by a landslide.
Probably? Maybe? I guess? It’s not a hypothetical I see value in waxing expository about at this point.
I mean, we’d have a roster worth twice what anyone else had, too. Not a valid thought experiment.
It would be interesting to see how Dome would have deployed Pirlo. Or Mix. Or if he could have found the spark for Nemec. But not Grabavoy - even Dome isn’t genius enough to figure that riddle, probably only Pep, and he’d likely point at the bench.
Those individual players or problem things, sure. Interesting questions.
But an overarching season results question is impossible to discuss meaningfully due to the countless variables and shifts in the very fundamentals of the league and all its rosters.
My eye test has been divided, but now leaning perhaps to better without. We have definitely moved and circulated the ball better without him. I have not had the confidence in our other finishers, however. They are all much less consistent. Even IST went on a bit of a slow stretch just before his injury. It wasn't terrible -- one goal in
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Did Isi’s slow stretch correspond to Villa being on the field?
Not rhetorical. I don’t recall.
I can’t believe that any numbers would disprove my feeling that Isi is a better finisher than Villa so far this year. But they may. (This is a different point, but sort of related.)
2 with, 2 without, 1 as a sub. Basically a perfect mix
Hmm. Was it when the whole team was playing poorly because our manager was one foot out the door?
Looking at FiveThirtyEight, we are favored to win all but 3 of our 14 remaining matches. Those 3 are at Seattle (34%W - 39%L - 27% T), at Toronto (34%W - 43%L - 23%T), and at Columbus (33%W - 41%L - 27%T). Yeah, those don't always round to a flat 100% but that's just their website.
One note, at Philadelphia it's 38%W - 37%L - 25%T.
5 matches we have greater than 60% probability to win. (vs. Vancouver, vs. New England, vs. D.C., vs. Chicago, vs. Philadelphia). Obviously these are all at home. Our only remaining home match is vs. New Jersey (49%W - 27%L - 24% T).
One note, at Philadelphia it's 38%W - 37%L - 25%T.
5 matches we have greater than 60% probability to win. (vs. Vancouver, vs. New England, vs. D.C., vs. Chicago, vs. Philadelphia). Obviously these are all at home. Our only remaining home match is vs. New Jersey (49%W - 27%L - 24% T).
First a correction -- 1 goal in 4 games, so less distressing than the 5 originally mentioned. And to answer your latest query, 2 games in the old regime, 2 in the new.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your statistics but I think there's a huge confounding factor when you add the new coach into things. I think at this point Domè's had five matches but Villa's only been in one of them (I think). That's 25% of our matches this season thanks to this three game week but that's certainly going to skew the Villa stats. What I'd like to see is what our record is when Villa scores vs when he doesn't score, but also when he scores with passing support vs when he has to do it all by himself (i.e., when there are assists on his goals). Were 80% of his first season goals unassisted because we weren't as good a team and he had to do it all based on his own quality (while also being three years younger, I might add) vs now when we're a better team and he can count on getting better service when he's waiting in the box? And maybe there's also a "we can relax now" factor when Villa plays. When he's not there the rest of the team knows they have to step up, so maybe we're better. Don't know if there's a way to analyze this numerically though. Maybe Audi factor numbers for the rest of the team when Villa plays vs when he doesn't?
Again, not really quite disagreeing but definitely don't think it's as simple as our record with Villa vs our record without him.
It's like the Mets with Jacob deGrom. He's one of the best pitchers in baseball and has a ridiculously low ERA but also has a terrible record because he's stuck on the Mets. His record is 5-4 this year so far, so not really a great pitcher, eh? Except that his ERA is 1.68, tops in the majors. The next on the list has an ERA of 2.23. The rest of the top 10 after deGrom has a combined record of 84-37 so to have deGrom stuck on a team that can't score any runs for him is just awful.
Anyway, my point in all of this is that I'm wondering if there's a way to measure Villa's contribution to the team beyond simply the team's record when he plays.
We just won 3 games without Berget or Villa and can now make a pretty good statistical argument based on a limited sample size that we are a better team with Tommy Mac, Wallace or Maxi as our central striker.
That argument is ridiculous. We have enough quality and depth to get results without somebody on the field who is good at the position, but no way are we are a better team without either Berget or Villa playing.
The biggest question about NYCFC before the season started was how the team would cope when Villa slowed down/was injured. The answer is quite really well.
That argument is ridiculous. We have enough quality and depth to get results without somebody on the field who is good at the position, but no way are we are a better team without either Berget or Villa playing.
The biggest question about NYCFC before the season started was how the team would cope when Villa slowed down/was injured. The answer is quite really well.
I don't think the Dome thing is a factor separate from the H/A issue which I already discussed and adjusted for. The team gets 2.82 PPG at Home and 1.00 Away. Dome is 4-0-0 at Home and 0-1-0 Away. If you adjust or both H/A and PV/Dome, you're adjusting for the same thing twice I think.
But as I initially wrote, I do agree the W/L is not the whole story: opponents, the rest of the lineup, and other factors you mentioned are relevant. I also explicitly did not claim that the W/L record proves the team is better without Villa.
But, some things you mention, like whether the team relaxes when he starts and steps up when he's out -- those do not disprove the theorem either. They just maybe show it isn't Villa's fault. The team can be better without him without him being to blame.
Finally, circling back to Dome and H/A, this reminds me to mention that I think people make a mistake when they say the club is better under Dome because we won 3 in a row after a long period of uneven results. I think we're better because of the eye test. But in terms of results, all Dome has done is not lose a home game. PV was just as good at that.
And in terms of players, Dome has clearly done a lot more communication and plans for developement than PV. I think most people aren't only happy about the results- but also happy about the way he's handling the team. (I know, at least, I am.)
This is the key, key point that everyone overlooks when they get their jimmies rustled over someone questioning whether or not we are better without Villa.
To anyone who thinks it’s blasphemous to even have the conversation, look at Argentina in this World Cup if you want a case study in good and great players waiting around for their supernova to do something. Look at Liverpool before and after Coutinho. The issue with having elite (or contextually elite) players is that it’s natural that everyone else wants to give them the ball and stay out of the way.
Argentina should be at least a semifinal team without Messi. With probably the best player in history, they were extremely lucky to make it out of their group.
I want us to get the same out of everyone else when Villa plays as when he doesn’t. But I don’t think we’ve seen that happen very often. Maybe this run will help bring along that cultural shift away from over-relying on him.
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