The 2024 regular season is complete. It was the team's tenth season. Here is a look at how the 2024 NYC team compares among all 10 versions of the club, with special attention to how it compares to the 2023 team.
Blue means 2024 improvement over 2023.
Red means 2024 worse than 2023.
Gold means the best in club history.
Purple means the worst in club history.
The table is arranged in columns that are grouped by category.
2020 figures are prorated from 23 to 34 games.
All numbers are from ASA, which means Own Goals are ignored, and minutes played are higher than official because ASA tracks added time.
2024 vs 2023
2024 got better on offense but worse on defense compared to 2023. It also had roughly neutral luck rather than terrible fortune.
Offense. 2023 was the worst offensive NYCFC club ever so it was not hard to improve in 2024. But this was still a below average NYCFC team, not surprising when 5 transfer fee forwards - Bakrar, Fernandez, Jovan, Ojeda, and Talles - scored just 10 goals combined.
The team scored within 1 goal of is xG output, with Bakrar -3.76 more than offset by Martinez +6.72.
Defense. Oof. 2024 was the worst NYCFC defense since 2016. The fall was abrupt. The year over year increases in Shots Allowed, Goals Allowed, and xG Allowed were the biggest in team history. For all of 2023's flaws, it ranked 3rd in each of those categories. I'm relinking the video of Nick explaining that he sold out team defense to generate offense.
It "worked" in that the offense improved and defense got worse. But it really has little to do with the team's improved results. Yes, the Goal Differential improved by 9, but the expected Goal Differential actually got a bit worse. The improvement comes down to (1) Martinez finishing at an absurdly good rate, which brought the team finishing rate up to average, and (2) Freese stopping more potential goals than Barraza did. Coaching, strategy and play style had little to no effect. I also think the defensive failures involve more than just more aggressive pressing, but I don't have a coherent theory on that to share.
Speaking of Freese, through May over 1659 minutes he was the best keeper in MLS measured by Goals Allowed minus xG Faced (-4.68). Since May, he was just fourth best at -1.44 over 1761 minutes. That still good, but his level dropped.
Speaking of Martinez, his G-xG of +0.39 per game is the 4th highest in ASA MLS records back to 2013, for players with at least 1,500 minutes. The number of players who have more than one season in the top 50 all time for MLS in that regard is one: Robbie Keane, who did it twice. Nobody else made the list more than once. If Martinez somehow maintains this level in 2025, expect him to be a major transfer target. If not, he will still be a decent scorer, but not at the same pace. For example Duncan McGuire of Orlando had a +0.46 G-xG last year. This year +0.14. His xG per game went up from 0.35 to 0.38, but his goals per game decreased from 0.81 to 0.52.
Actual Minus Expected
This is where 2024 NYCFC pulled ahead of 2023 NYCFC, and it's really not reflective of quality, except for the Martinez/Bakrar and Freese/Barazza differences.
Points minus xPts reflects more than just finishing, save rates, and GD-xGD. It also depends on your record in 1 and 0 goal differential games, which is heavily randomized, and goal distribution (eg do you "waste" many goals in 5-0 wins). 2024 earned 1.38 PPG in 21 0/1 GD games, compared to 1.21 PPG in 24 such games in 2023. Outside of a handful of horrifically bad teams, the PPG in such games always will be lower than overall because it includes all the 1 point ties. It also is worth noting that the 2023 team figures for G-xG, GD-xGD, and Pts - xPts before Bakrar arrived are -0.98, -52.6, and -6.24. Basically, almost all of the finishing deficit came after Bakrar, but that is far from true for the GD and Points deficits. 2023 was a truly snakebitten squad. If you think that demonstrates why 2023 was poor quality, or if you ever are tempted to believe that a failure to get results as good as underlying numbers is a sign of a bad or poorly coached team, you need to deal with 2021 having the worst Points minus xPoints in NYCFC history. Bad luck is bad luck. 2023 was not a good team, but it was better than it seemed and not far off from 2024 in pure quality.
2024 NYCFC League Ranking
While 2024 ranks mostly in the bottom third among other NYCFC teams, it is generally slightly above median or at median in 2024 MLS. That's because NYC has been much better than league average for most of its existence.
Ten Year Notes
2021 was easily NYCFC's best defensive team and best team overall. The xPoints deficit prevented a lot of people from realizing that.
2019 was NYCFC's most fortunate team, with 9-10 points more than its play warranted, plus team bests for GD-xGD and GA-xGA. GA-xGA is generally the stat in that section most caused by quality, because GA does not capture goalkeeper play. But 2019 was Sean Johnson's 4th best year (of 6) for GA-xG. The team best GA-xGA number could also be blocks but also most probably IMO just poor shooting by NYCFC opponents. I thiunk even the GA-xGA number is mostly good fortune.
2016 has by far the best over-performance on G-xG, roughly half generated by balls bouncing randomly off assorted Frank Lampard body parts and into goal.
NYCFC has scored ~20 more goals than xG all time, and exceeded xG 7 of 10 years. Cumulative GD-xGD is +23.8. NYCFC has almost 5 more Points than xPoints all time, which is not a lot but still positive. Any time you are tempted to complain that NYCFC always wins xG while not getting results you are wrong. This has not been a consistently unlucky franchise.
