2022 Audi MLS Cup Playoffs

mgarbowski said:
Damn but the Union fans are this weird combination of arrogant, battered, superior and resentful. I mean, I get it's Philly, but it's really another level right now. If we do get past Montreal we better damn win in Chester. If not, Sons of Ben will be making TIFOs about the 2021-2022 Union-NYCFC sequence for decades. Which will be pathetic and funny in its own way, but it will really suck for the next 2-3 years.
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I think LAFC will take the prize either way, so doesn't matter... but we'll see what happens!
 
413Blue said:
Remember, Andre Blake has been in MLS his entire career, meaning he is at the level where you're good enough to have a solid MLS career, but not good enough to go abroad to a better league. I believe it was 2019(?) playoffs where Philly got knocked out in a game where Blake was horrendous.

He's good, but he's not invincible.

But let's beat Montreal first!


Edit: in 2019 Philly actually beat RBNJ 4-3 despite a very poor game from Blake.
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He very recently conceded 4 goals to Charlotte.
OTOH he only conceded >1 goal just 3 times all season.

Another interesting item: the Union had fortunate scheduling in that they played Away both at Montreal and at NYCFC while those teams were in CCL, and Philly won both games. The Union edged out Clubfoot by just 2 points and Montreal had more wins. Convert either one of those 2 well-timed Away games to a draw and Montreal wins the East.

The Union's H/A adjusted opponents' PPG for the last 16 games of the season when the Union dominated was just 1.18. And they converted shots at a ridiculous rate over that stretch when their Goals exceeded xG by +14.2. They were -4.4 G-xG during the first 18 games. I don't think they suddenly got better at converting. Apart from chance and luck, I think they played a lot of crappy teams in the second half who gave up against the Shield contender/leader as soon as they fell behind. Credit to the Union for maintaining their energy while up 3-0, 4-0, and more, but it's a lot easier to score when the opponent has no reason to try and probably does not.

To be clear, their defense excelled all year, and their xGD for the year was better than both Montreal and NYC, and second only to LAFC. And the schedule strength for the Union, Clubfoot and NYC all year was effectively identical.
The Union are really and indisputably quite good. But not as good as their second half appears.

Nobody really noticed this, but Montreal achieved 15 of their 20 wins by 1 goal margins and were 15-6 in 1-goal games. For comparison, New England had 18 (out of 22) 1 goal victories last year. It's similarish, and we know how that went. The Union had just 6 1-goal wins out of 19 against 3 1-goal losses, and NYCFC won 7 and lost 8.

We're are properly deemed underdogs against Montreal, and will be again against the Union if we win Sunday. Especially Away for both. But both of those teams had some good fortune this year while NYCC had to deal with the coach and best player leaving midseason and a shit ton of injuries.
 
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Here is something that I haven't seen commented upon, but that I find interesting and significant.

LAFC and Philadelphia tied on points this season with 67. Philadelphia had the much better goal differential at +46 to +28. However, LAFC won the Supporters' Shield based on the odd tiebreaker of having more wins: 21 to 19.

MLS is the only league I know of that has the number of wins as a tiebreaker. Everyone else goes straight to goal differential, which seems a much better tiebreaker to me.* Basically, LAFC got silverware because MLS is an outlier.


____
* - Basically, the points system grants a win 3 points and a tie only 1 point. So, the system already heavily favors wins over ties. For example, two .500 teams have records of 2w, 0d, 2l and 1w, 2d, 1l. The first team has 6 points and the other 5. Why double down on that? Plus, goal differential is a terrific measure of how good a team actually is - arguably better even than points over the season.
 
Gotham Gator said:
Here is something that I haven't seen commented upon, but that I find interesting and significant.

LAFC and Philadelphia tied on points this season with 67. Philadelphia had the much better goal differential at +46 to +28. However, LAFC won the Supporters' Shield based on the odd tiebreaker of having more wins: 21 to 19.

MLS is the only league I know of that has the number of wins as a tiebreaker. Everyone else goes straight to goal differential, which seems a much better tiebreaker to me.* Basically, LAFC got silverware because MLS is an outlier.


____
* - Basically, the points system grants a win 3 points and a tie only 1 point. So, the system already heavily favors wins over ties. For example, two .500 teams have records of 2w, 0d, 2l and 1w, 2d, 1l. The first team has 6 points and the other 5. Why double down on that? Plus, goal differential is a terrific measure of how good a team actually is - arguably better even than points over the season.
Click to expand...

There was some conversation about that in MLS circles near the end of the regular-season on Twitter. The explanation was that GD used to be the first tiebreaker, but there were a ton of draws around the league. Since they've moved to wins being the first tiebreaker, there's been fewer draws. Whether you agree or disagree with that, that's the reason they gave.
 
Gotham Gator said:
Here is something that I haven't seen commented upon, but that I find interesting and significant.

LAFC and Philadelphia tied on points this season with 67. Philadelphia had the much better goal differential at +46 to +28. However, LAFC won the Supporters' Shield based on the odd tiebreaker of having more wins: 21 to 19.

MLS is the only league I know of that has the number of wins as a tiebreaker. Everyone else goes straight to goal differential, which seems a much better tiebreaker to me.* Basically, LAFC got silverware because MLS is an outlier.
____
* - Basically, the points system grants a win 3 points and a tie only 1 point. So, the system already heavily favors wins over ties. For example, two .500 teams have records of 2w, 0d, 2l and 1w, 2d, 1l. The first team has 6 points and the other 5. Why double down on that? Plus, goal differential is a terrific measure of how good a team actually is - arguably better even than points over the season.
Click to expand...
I read somewhere recently that the tiebreaker is an artifact of some other MLS oddity that might no longer exist, but I can't remember what that was. But this article from when they made the change says it was simply to encourage wins over playing for a draw and I think that's probably right.
It's very American.
I support every damn MLS insertion of American culture into soccer.
herm GIF

LAFC had 2 more wins and 6 fewer ties than the Union. Hell yeah.
 
mgarbowski said:
He very recently conceded 4 goals to Charlotte.
OTOH he only conceded >1 goal just 3 times all season.

Another interesting item: the Union had fortunate scheduling in that they played Away both at Montreal and at NYCFC while those teams were in CCL, and Philly won both games. The Union edged out Clubfoot by just 2 points and Montreal had more wins. Convert either one of those 2 well-timed Away games to a draw and Montreal wins the East.

The Union's H/A adjusted opponents' PPG for the last 16 games of the season when the Union dominated was just 1.18. And they converted shots at a ridiculous rate over that stretch when their Goals exceeded xG by +14.2. They were -4.4 G-xG during the first 18 games. I don't think they suddenly got better at converting. Apart from chance and luck, I think they played a lot of crappy teams in the second half who gave up against the Shield contender/leader as soon as they fell behind. Credit to the Union for maintaining their energy while up 3-0, 4-0, and more, but it's a lot easier to score when the opponent has no reason to try and probably does not.

To be clear, their defense excelled all year, and their xGD for the year was better than both Montreal and NYC, and second only to LAFC. And the schedule strength for the Union, Clubfoot and NYC all year was effectively identical.
The Union are really and indisputably quite good. But not as good as their second half appears.

Nobody really noticed this, but Montreal achieved 15 of their 20 wins by 1 goal margins and were 15-6 in 1-goal games. For comparison, New England had 18 (out of 22) 1 goal victories last year. It's similarish, and we know how that went. The Union had just 6 1-goal wins out of 19 against 3 1-goal losses, and NYCFC won 7 and lost 8.

We're are properly deemed underdogs against Montreal, and will be again against the Union if we win Sunday. Especially Away for both. But both of those teams had some good fortune this year while NYCC had to deal with the coach and best player leaving midseason and a shit ton of injuries.
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Interesting stuff.

Philadelphia has been strong defensively all season, but, they didn't score a lot over the first stretch of the season. The Union knocked in 24 goals in their first 19 games, and never more than 2. Then, they broke out in that 7-0 rout of DC United and scored 48 goals in their last 15 games. Their defense was consistently strong - giving up 15 goals in those first 19 games and then another 11 in the last 15.

One result of the low offensive production is that Philly tied a lot of games to start the season. They were 7-9-3* in those first 19 games, and then 12-1-2 to finish the season. Those ties cost them the Supporters' Shield and probably a 70 point season.

Montreal, on the other hand, finished just 2 points behind Philadelphia but 33 goals lower in goal differential (46-13). They were behind both NYCFC and Austin on goal differential (16 each) and barely ahead of Dallas and Nashville (11 each). Montreal's problem was defense. They gave up 50 goals on the season, tying them with New England for 12th. They scored 63 goals, good for 5th.

One thing about teams that score and concede a lot of goals is that they tend to draw less frequently, and indeed Montreal only had 5 draws, tied for 3rd fewest. As you note, Montreal also had an ungodly amount of 1-goal wins. They had great results down the stretch, going 11-3-1 in their last 15. Of the 11 wins, 8 were by 1 goal. Their goal differential over that 15 games was +15 (30 for, 15 against), so very good, and the defense was much improved.


_____
* - format is wins-draws-losses.
 
Did the MLS rule change on tiebreakers lead to fewer draws? Yes, but cause and effect is hard to say.

Average percentage of draws each season in 10 years since the rule change is 24.9%.*
Average before the change was 25.1%, from 2000, when they first allowed draws. Not much different.
But, the last 10 years before the change the average was 27.6% and the previous 5 years before the change it was 28.1%. So it was trending to more draws and you can understand why they might have wanted to stop that.
Also the percentage was 30% or higher in 2004, 2009 and 2011 (34.6%). It only exceeded 30% once since then - 2016 (31.5%). The next highest in the last 10 years is 27.6% in 2014, which is the same as the prior 10 year average and lower than the average in the 5 years before the change. Even though these changes might seem small, I think they're significant. But that's as much guess as proven. It's not inconceivable to me the variances are random.I just don't think they are.
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* This is an average of the annual averages, not the consolidated ten year average, which is different because the number of games played each year changes. But I think this makes sense because what you care about is how many draws happen on an ongoing basis year to year.
 
well damn dallas... put up a fight would you?

feirrera does not look remotely like the #1 u-22 player in the league nor a striker that you'd want on a world up squad.
 
moogoo said:
well damn dallas... put up a fight would you?

feirrera does not look remotely like the #1 u-22 player in the league nor a striker that you'd want on a world up squad.
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To be fair Dallas has been completely out played the entire match and they’ve got some solid mls veterans on that team, but yeah please god don’t let Ferrira be our starting #9 in Qatar
 
twsj91 said:
To be fair Dallas has been completely out played the entire match and they’ve got some solid mls veterans on that team, but yeah please god don’t let Ferrira be our starting #9 in Qatar
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well that's the problem. they're being completely outplayed. they don't look like a team that deserves to be in the playoff conf semis. and ferreira and arriola do not look like international level players.

dallas just looks unorganized and scattered. no real shape in defense or patterns going forward.
 
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