Firehouse has really good subs

Lots of fun last night. Actually probably going to be the last regular season game I attend, but now that we've clinched a playoff spot, won't be my last of the season. Well, I guess technically it's possible they'd play and lose an away play-in game, but I'm liking our odds going forward...

Anyway, looking through BigSoccer and it seems like the big talking point is... the refs. I've gotta say I didn't think the ref had that terrible of the game. I mean he surely asn't good, but he was missing calls and making questionable decisions for both teams pretty evenly, though I'll concede SJC was probably on the benefitting side a bit more than Chicago, but that's true for any game. I guess the big blown call to me was the second yellow to Segares, but his first yellow was his own dumb fault... Chicago fans also feel they should have had two corners that weren't called due to missed dflections. While I agree to a point, I don't know that they were incredibly clear for the ref to call and he didn't get help from his linesman, plus I read somehwere that Kansas City hasn't conceded a goal on a corner in 55 games, which is insane, so it may not have helped anyway.

Kamara and Zusi both had masterful games and the defense got it done again, without Collin for a second straight week. I believe the team when they say it's not an injury, but man sometimes PVs personnell choices seem weird. No subs used either. Who knows? It's working, so I won't knock it.

Speaking of... knocking it... here's some player ratings.

Chicago Fire
Sean Johnson	4.8
Austin Berry	4.5
Jalil Anibaba	4.8
Gonzalo Segares	3.4
Arne Fridrich	3.9
Patrick Nyarko	4.8
Logan Pause	4.8
Alvaro fernandez	4.8
Dan Paladini	4.2
Alex	4.5
Chris Rolfe	4.5
Dominic Oduru	4.2
Sherjill MacDonald	4.5
Guillermo Franco	4.2
Team Average	4.4
Sporting Kansas City
Jimmy Nielsen	5.6
Seth Sinovic	5.9
Matt Besler	6.2
Chance Myers	6.2
Lawrence Olum	5.9
Roger Espinoza	5.0
Graham Zusi	8.4
Julio Cesar	5.3
Paolo Nagamura	4.5
Kei Kamara	5.9
CJ Sapong	5.3
Team Average	5.8

Man of the match unsurprinsgly to Zusi for his brace and excellent performance. Excellent work by the back line and Mr. Nielsen as well.

And now, some photos. I'm loving my new phone :D

A little late...

I started looking at the calender to see if it was time to do the September player of the month and realized I had skipped August... Stupid lousy work.

Considering that it's not that hard to do, and that I don't have to do player of the month until the week after next, here's what we missed in August.

Again, I'd note that a "poor" looking rating likely reflects player playing time and not actual performance. The system I use rewards playing time as well as good performance. "True" ratings will come at the end of the year, when I have numbers for the entire league to compare to.

For those we don't remember, in August, Zusi had a goal and two assists in four games. Not too shaby, all things considered.



Kansas City makes an Impact/tired joke

So on the one hand, after being in New York, I sort of wish I could have gone on to the Montreal game, but after watching it on TV I'm sort of glad I didn't. I mean I can always get some sort of enjoyment out of watching a match, but that was maybe the second dullest game I've seen this year.

That doesn't mean we can't hand out ratings though!

Check 'em.

Once again SKC keeps a clean sheet and once again Mr. Besler wins man of the match. I've got to think he's really earning himself more of a look for future USMNT matches, he's having such an amazing season.

The time is 9:55 AM

You know, I'm just gonna copy-paste this over from Big Soccer today. Because I'm lazy. It's kind of a theme.

So first an apology. I actually thought I was doing great by finishing these up this morning, but then IR ealied there was a mistake in my last ratings. Had the wrong cell selected for one match for almost every team. So the good news is that since it was applied uniformly to every team it didn't make a huge difference upon correction, but there were a few correction. RSL down one instead of down two, columbus down one instead of no chance, chivas down two instead of down one and philadelphia no change instead of up one.

I'm not gonna repost those ratings (unless some one really wants them), but the corrected values are incorporated into this weeks ratings, which should be "accurate", whatever "accurate power rating" means...

Also this is gonna start getting easier to manage as the season winds down so I'm gonna start compiling some stats for teams. If any one has any requests for info they'd like to see, let me know and I'll see what I can grab.

Anyway, at Week 28 not a lot of surprises. New York starting to look like they're rated too high (though their fans seem to be their harshest critics, I still think they're a very solid team), DC starting to look like maybe they belong in the top five after all, and no surprises in the bottom. LA probably has time to climb a bit higher as well, but ratings are starting to level out across the board.

First off, the ratings.

 

Flavor of the week numbers are unsurprising, Chicago and LA playing dominantly as of late along with San Jose.

And, last and least, the season long graph. I may need to truncate this in coming weeks, but we'll see... I sort of like the big version myself, to be honest, but it is getting pretty unwiedly to look at.

Yo're Not in Kansas Anymore

So that was something new and interesting...

First, apologies for not updating this more. Well, not apologies really, work has just been kicking my ass as of late. I've sort of stopped doing weekly predictions since that was the least interesting stat stuff, and because picking the home team is just the safe bet in MLS anyway. But I do want to keep up with power rankings and player ratings.

So I guess maybe first things first. Let's do some player ratings for last night.

 

New York Red Bulls
Bill Gaudette	4.75
Markus Holgersson	4.75
Heath Pearce	4.75
Conor Lade	4.26
Wilman Conde	4.75
Dax McCarty	4.26
Joel Lindpere	4.50
Tim Cahill	4.50
Teemu Taino	4.50
Kenny Cooper	4.26
Sebastian le Toux	4.26
Thierry Henry	4.50
Team Average	4.50
Sporting Kansas City
Jimmy Nilesen	6.24
Aurelien Collin	5.99
Matt Besler	6.98
Seth Sinovic	5.74
Chance Myers	5.50
Lawrence Olum	4.26
Oriol Rosell	4.26
Graham Zusi	5.50
Roger Espinoza	5.25
Julio Cesar	5.25
Paolo Nagamura	5.00
Kei Kamara	5.74
CJ Sapong	5.99
Jacob Peterson	4.26
Team Average	5.42

Not that surprisngly, Mesler get's man of the match, for a solid job on defense and his involvement in the first goal. So congrats to Mr. Matt, well earned and an excellent three points.

I actually think the wins more or less puts us in the playoffs for sure. I don't think it's mathematically certain just yet, but 8 points up on Houston and 9 points up on Columbus means we can skuff two matches while they win and still lead them going into the last few weeks... Of course the shiled is what we want, and Portland helped us out there, but man is San Jose good at scoring goals when they need to.

As far as the trip goes, I had a blast. Only bummed we didn't get to hang out with More New York fans while we were there, everyone I talked to was super nice and welcoming, but for some reason they didn't want us mingling with them pre-game... Go figure.

Poor crowd of course, and I mean, yeah, midweek game, stadium location isn't ideal, Yankees were playing, Bruce Springsteen was in town, blah blah blah. Kansas City fans can't really talk about attendance I guess, except Red Bull Arena is really really nice and the team is actually really really good, despite what the fans keep saying (I really think they expect titles and anything less is failure, which is one way to look at it, I guess... kind of a Yankees mindset that rubs me wrong, but whatever).

I thought the match was well played. Both teams looked good while attacking but New York didn't really have an answer to SKC's high pressure, and their set piece defending was just god awful. Flat footed stuff by everyone.

And then there was this..

Come on New York, you're better than that...

Also there allegedly was an Henry head butt? I didn't see it, but there was definitely a scuffle towards the end of the game... Gonna go look at highlights for it. I used to have a lot of respect for him as a plyaer, one of the best in the last decade, but after what he did to Roger a bit ago it's been fading...

Anway, I don't have much to say. Great to see us grab a huge three points, wish I could have stayed on for the Montreal leg.

Here's some photos if that's your thing. I just got a new phone with a great camera so I've been having some fun...

I didn't stay there!

I'm a man of few words.

Any questions?

Here's the numbers, in image form. Other than DC being a bit high I think it's pretty good...

Flavor of the week looks pretty good too...



Annnnd the handy dandy SHFR graph



Not much more to say.

I'm in New York right now, gonna be at the match tomorrow and it's sure to be huge.

I don't want to say much about it except I will venture that if we win tomorrow's game, we make the playoffs no matter what. Not saying we win the Shield or even the East with 3 points, but I don't think we can be overcome for the 5th and final spot if we beat New York away.

I'd love to not see another away loss in person... I do think we may get crushed though.

It's baaa-aaack

So apologies for being sort of dormant on this. I've been traveling loads for work and, most importantly, was in Las Vegas last week.

I did luck out a little bit with the international break maning I only needed to iterate one round of games though. I'll do the next set after this weeks games.

I don't think there wree any real surprises or shocks, but it's also a bit hard to think back that far... Here we go though, with images again instead of text, so click anything for ease-of-veiwing.

The handy at a glance chart of SHFR trends...

And of course the flavor of the week chart, showing the same rating system applied to only the last five games.