It's most definitely not in our hands. Montreal wins both and charlotte win their remaining and we're out. but yeah, if we win both we're most likely in.
General MLS Discussion
- Thread starter Shwafta
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It's as close as it can be.
If Montreal or Charlotte drop any points, it's enough. Montreal is home to Portland and at Columbus and Charlotte is at Chicago, and then home/away with Miami
Based on how montreal are playing I can see them dropping points. But I can also see us dropping points.
That's basically what I meant. Put another way, we need to win both remaining games. Lose or draw either one and our chances drop to somewhere down around slim to none. So in that sense, it's in our hands.
Which is good. Let's see what this reconstituted squad has under the hood. I missed a big chunk of the summer, but from what I've seen since resurfacing in September, our gaffer and the front office have purposefully remade the roster to emphasize youth and attitude. If they got it right, we'll know soon enough.
I think maybe it's taken a little while but maybe we've finally adjusted to losing both Maxi and Chanot and now we're a whole team again. Possibly.
It's a new look, and I think I see what they're going for. Julián Fernández was a great acquisition, and I think Alonso Martínez may solve a lot of issues too. If we find a way to hang on to Perea and keep the rest of the current roster essentially intact, we'll be in a pretty good position for next season -- stout defensively, dangerous on the attack.
The last couple performances especially were really encouraging. There's a lot to build on no matter how the next couple weeks play out.
We all want to believe the team has turned it around but I think optimism based on the last couple of games is a bit overblown. Toronto is the worst team in the conference and Miami without Messi is equally bad. Good teams or teams rounding into form win that Miami game. Alonso Martinez has made 2 appearances and played a total of 12' so I don't think we know what we have in him at all. We have seen enough of Fernandez to be optimistic but is he an upgrade over Gabby? We have been a mid to bottom-of-the-table team all season and we essentially made the following roster changes:
Swapped Gabby and Thiago for Fernandez and Martinez
Swapped Chanot for Risa
Added Bakrar
Added Perea but on loan so who knows if we can keep him
Added Maxi but who knows when or if he will play again given the injury
From a talent standpoint are any of these moves substantial enough upgrades to drastically alter the trajectory of the team? Bakrar is the biggest addition as we can actually play with a real striker now. Risa has looked really solid and Perea has been great but who knows if he will stay. The front office still has a solid chunk of offseason work to do if we want to be more than mid-table again next season.
Probably going to be an unpopular opinion but I don’t think we were all that talent-challenged at any point this season. Even with all of our failures we are something like 5 goals away from a very comfortable upper table slot. I view all of these shortfalls, which mostly manifested through draws, as failures of mentality(dropping late equalizers) and or management (e.g. Magno at #9).
I’ve been saying all season that our only significant weakness is up top (Bakrar was a big step in the right direction but not enough) and that our poor results are attributable poor penetration into the opposing box. I think with another striker and better options at CAM (I.e. upgrade Ledezma and either healthy or replaced Maxi, this is a top 5 team in the East).
Also, Talles's regression was shocking. He had 10 goals and 10 assists last year. He should have gotten better, not worse. Not all of that regression is due to him playing the No. 9. He shoulders a lot of blame for this season. The team was counting on him and he didn't play well enough. We played into a ton of bad luck (finishing, bad refereeing decisions, etc) ... we were not far away from being comfortably in the playoff race.
Absolute agony scenario:
Win Away tomorrow, draw at Home on decision day, have all but one of the necessary 4 other results go our way.
Yes, but there was some trade-off in terms of quality at the time Fernandez, Maxi, Bakrar, etc. arrived because we also lost Gaby Pereira who had been far and away our best player, and one of the best in the league at his position. I don't have the numbers in my head but from an emotional POV I felt Gaby was the only player preventing our season from imploding sooner, and he was the only one matching or exceeding his xG. Also, I think part of our disappointment is stylistic, in that our team had always played with a classic 10 in Maxi and was suddenly lacking ideas in attack. Because the team maintained defensive solidity despite Barraza we could imagine we were close to matching the few teams in MLS that are dynamic and truly talented, but we were really 1 or 2 levels behind. So, yeah, I agree that we have never looked embarrassing in multiple positions, but mostly we have looked meh this season, even at the best times.
Exceeding xG isn't necessarily a good thing when your xG/game isn't all that high. Yeah, it can be great for getting a result out of a game that perhaps the team didn't quite "deserve".
Underperformance or overperformance of xG typically does not hold and assuming GP would continue to overperform his xG for the rest of the year wouldn't be the best assumption to make.
ETA: NYCFC's xG per game before GP left was 1.04 and after, it is 1.62. Now I am definitely not saying that losing GP is why it has increased. I think it's mostly due to a true #9 in Bakrar, a CB in Risa who opens up additional buildup options with his long passing, the (brief) arrival of Maxi, Talles picking up his quality lately, etc.
All I'm trying to say, is that the team is clearly playing better lately than where they were the first half+ of the year.
Me discussing 2023 NYCFC:
Everything this year, especially before Leagues Cup and Bakrar but even since to some extent, is downstream of not scoring, which is downstream of not generating xG, which is downstream of not shooting.
SoupInNYC covered some of this brieflyNYCFC 2022 before Taty left 15.05 shots per game 1.86 G/Gm and 1.88 xG/Gm
NYCFC 2023 before Leagues Cup 11.50 SH/Gm 1.00G G/Gm and 1.04 xG/Gm
Shots down 24%, goals down 46% and xG down 45%.
NYCFC 2023 Since Leagues Cup 13.88 SH/Gm 1.13 G/Gm and 1.62 xG/Gm
Shots up 17%, Goals up 12% xG up 56%
None of those are where they were or should be but Bakrar made a big difference in all but goals, especially considering we also subtracted the teams biggest 1st half scorer. Unfortunately, finishing compared to xG went down, though 8 game samples for finishing are meaningless.
Why so many late equalizers this year? it's not mentality or tiredness. Take a 2-0 lead and concede late and that's 3 points. We scored 2 or more goals in just 9 games. That means a single goal conceded turns a draw into a loss or a win into a draw. We have 8 clean sheets. That's league average (8.4). The problem is not that we can't keep a lead or a clean sheet: the problem is we often have no lead and when we do it is almost never more than 1 goal.
We are tied for 6th in goals conceded. We conceded more than 1 goal only 9 times. But even when we concede just 1 we only score enough for a win 28% of the time.
We just don't score, in significant part because we don't generate xG, in significant part because we don't take enough shots.
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Talles shots per game
2022 2.16
2023 2.12
This bothers me more than his drop of goals scored. He didn't step into the role at all after Taty left.
2022 2.16
2023 2.12
This bothers me more than his drop of goals scored. He didn't step into the role at all after Taty left.
He was a massive disappointment this season. The question is what do you do in the offseason? Do you hope this coaching staff can unlock him; that this year was an outlier? Or do you move on from him and go find someone else for that young DP position? That seems like it's going to be our biggest question of the offseason. I think I'm giving him another year, but I can be convinced otherwise.
I feel like his recent performances (although small sample size) show what he is capable of when playing with a legit threat at striker. Give those guys a full offseason together and I don't see why we can't expect Talles to take a leap next season
I totally agree. When Gaby was here we were playing worse than now. We were a plodding, boring, disorganized and very unfinished team that seemed to rarely create more than have chances, and not even that many of those. My point was that Gaby, more than anyone else in our roster, seemed to be able to turn half chances into goals. He was the offensive MVP of that first half of the season by a mile.
We have a decent sample size if you lump in the games where Magno played next to Taty. 8 of Magno's 10 goals in last season came while Taty was still on the roster. This makes Cushing's "we don't play two strikers" comment about playing Magno with Bakrar even more perplexing as all of Magno's success with the club has come as a LW playing next to a striker with very active movement.
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