Downing the Rapids

Back at it then, I finally sat down and cobbled together some player ratings for the Colorado game. This was the first game my wife and I were able to get to without the kids so it was a blast. We also happened to get free Budweiser beer garden passes which...... is so not worth $20. I mean, sure, endless beer is good, but it's not great beer, and the food selection wasn't exactly awesome. But, still, free is free, and it was kind of our five year anniversary, so, yay!

Managed to grab a few pictures as well, so let's just dump those and then get on with ratings, shall we?

Really good results, we needed all the points at home we can get. One thing that I sort of noticed though was that, while we've gotten good att maintaining possession and passing the ball around from side to side amongst our defenders with midfielders probing somewhat, our forwards seem pretty stagnant at the top of the 18 yard box. I'd like to see them getting more active, with the wide players switching sides with the ball to draw defenders out, or at least make them think a little, and hopefully getting Claudio open to work some magic in the middle. We'll see if that can happen.

Anyway, ratings. Yes. Here we go.

Colorado Radpids	Rating
Clint Irwin	4.6
Chris Klute	4.6
Drew Moor	4.1
Nathan Sturgis	4.1
Mavell Wynne	4.1
Dillon Powers	5.1
Hendry Thomas	4.6
Shane Oneil	5.6
Deshorn Brown	4.1
Atiba Harris	4.1
Edson Buddle	6.5
Vincente Sanchez	4.6
Martin Rivero	4.1
Team Average	4.6
Sporting Kansas City	Rating
Jimmy Nielsen	5.6
Matt Besler	5.1
Chance Myers	4.6
Aurelien Collin	6.1
Seth Sinovic	4.6
Graham Zusi	7.5
Oriol Rosell	4.6
Paolo Nagamura	4.6
Benny Feilhaber	7.5
Soony Saad	4.6
Dom Dwyer	6.1
Kei Kamara	4.1
CJ Sapong	5.6
Teal Bunbury	4.1
Team Average	5.4

So a bit of a toss up between Zusi's game winner or Benny's awesome blast for Man of the Match. I'm gonna have to go with Benny on this one. He's stepped it up a bit in the second half of the season, and his goal really openeed the game up and forced Colorado to come out. All in all a much better performance from SKC and 3 sorely needed point from home.

We're baaa-aaack

Huh. Long hiatus. There's actually an explanation for that one, and it doesn't involve a new kid. Not really. My work had been languishing on IE7, and I generally try to knock out entries around my lunch break. Google seemed to have updated their Blogger interface and it no longer worked for the Enterprise IE7 I was on, so I kept on posting to Big Soccer, but let this blog languish. I'm gonna try to pick it up again in the near future.

Anyway, like I said, I've been mostly keeping up with Power Rankings. Player ratings, less so. Power Rankings have been crazy though. The league has been so tight and there's been so many twists and turns that the new mashup system I started using has been a little wild. I may have mentioned it before, but I think I'm going to weight recent results less next season, simply because there's so much variability, though on the flip side, a few unpredictable weeks have the league sort of turned around anyway, so who knows?

I did change the format somewhat to a more "explanatory" (is that a word) table, showing the season rank and the rank over the last 5, the average of which is the ultimate rank. I also added a snapshot column, showing their most recent form and a Form column, showing whether they're trending up relative to their current ranking position or down. So here's the table for Week 28. Click to embiggen.

Bottom five teams can all probably be written off at this point of the season and Vancouver needs to turn things around to avoid joining them, but other than that, the league is wide open right now. It's going to be a great finish to the season methinks.

Better late than never

Now that I'm in the zone I've gotten around to throwing down some player ratings for the Colorado Open Cup game. I did take a chance to review the highlights and discovered that the full match is still up on youtube. Right here, for those interested in a rewatch.

But, since I mostly use stats to calculate ratings, I didn't put that much thought into it. Here's how the ratings came out.

Colorado Rapids
Matt Pickens	4.7
Scott Palguta	4.4
Tyrone Marshall	4.7
Kosuke Kimura	4.7
Hunter Freeman	4.0
Martin Rivero	4.7
Jeff Larentowicz	4.7
Jaime Castrillon	5.1
Ross LaBauex	4.0
Tony Cascio	4.4
Kamani Hill	4.7
Edu	5.1
Wells Thompson	4.7
Andre Akpan	4.4
Sporting Kansas City
Jimmy Nielsen	6.1
Chance Myers	6.1
Aurelien Collin	5.8
Matt Besler	6.1
Seth Sinovic	6.1
Julio Cesar	4.7
Lawrence Olum	4.4
Jacob Peterson	5.1
Peterson Joseph	5.1
Graham Zusi	4.7
Teal Bunbury	6.5
Soony Saad	4.4
CJ Sapong	5.8

And so, with that, the man of the match against Colorado was SKCs own Teal Bunbury. I thought he had a really good game and I hope this means he's found his form. We could really use a target man with the scoring touch while Kei is out on international duty, or while Kei is still with the team, for that matter. I think the defence has looked good all season, but scoring more than once and scoring during the run of play is what I want to see more of if we're going to make a real claim for the MLS Cup.

Paint it teal...

Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'll always take a road point. That one feels like a loss though. We were the better team for exactly half the game. The first 22:30 and the last 22:30. No foot on the gas at all in the middle, and I never like to see a team get complacent. 2-0 is the most dangerous lead and blah blah blah.

Anyway, the resurgence of Teal, at least in the first half, was good to see. Hopefull he can score in bunches from here on out. Now then, let's take a look at some player ratings.

Colorado Rapids
Matt Pickens	3.9
Drew Moor	4.6
Koskue Kimura	6.5
Hunter Freeman	4.6
Tyrone Marshall	6.5
The Ginja Ninja	5.4
Martin Rivero	5.8
Jaime Castrillon	4.6
Wells Thompson	4.6
Conor Casey	6.1
Tony Cascio	4.6
Edu	4.3
Kamani Hill	4.3
Luis Zapata	4.3
Sporting Kansas City
Jimmy Nielsen	5.0
Aurelien Collin	5.4
Matt Besler	4.6
Chance Myers	4.3
Seth Sinovic	6.1
Graham Zusi	5.0
Paolo Nagamura	4.6
Bobby Convey	3.9
Julio Cesar	5.0
Kei Kamara	4.6
Teal Bunbury	8.4
Jacob Peterson	4.3
Peterson Joseph	4.3
Lawerence Olum	4.3

No real surprise that the man of the match was Teal Bunbury. Hard to argue with two goals, especially that first one in eighty seconds or so. Great to get a point. Now back home to face a real test against San Jose.

Oh, right, profile picture. Here's your facetime Teal. You earned it.