6 hours of no power!? Eat the children first.

Actually, no, I didn't lose power in the storm last night, though it sounds like a lot of people in the area did. We'll see how we fare tonight though...

Speaking of faring well, how about those Sounders, eh? Not too shabby.

The two midweek games threw this off a bit. Kansas City actually drops a little bit, despite picking up two road results (well, you can argue the DC one I guess). Mostly RSL's domination helped them up. LA moves up despite losing, again, helped by crushing Philadelphia midweek. Dallas still holding on to the top spot, Chivas droppping like a rock. With three Ps. How's that for not caring about spelling or typos?

Overall rankings look pretty good to me. SKC perhaps a bit low.

Here's the table.

And here's the graph. starting to see some real movement and trends here. Next week should be interesting for some teams.

I did what I swore I wouldn't...

So I told myself this season I was going to stick with the same methodology that I started with. And I thought I really meant it. But then I came up with something better. So I'm changing. I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me. Or something.

While the system had been working pretty well so far, it still didn't seem to capture 'momentum' shifts all that well. However, Itried to compensate that with adding a Flavor of the Week ranking syste. I've ultimatly decided that the 'mashup' system, using both systems and then combining the rankings, was probably the best, and when comparing it to how other sites rank teams, it looks like it's doing a better job.

Remember, these are still purely numerical, data driven rankings, that don't hvae any input from me other than results. I think it's become a very good way to creating "power rankings" that mirror what "experts" are saying and is backed up by results and not just hand waving mumbo jumbo.

Anyway, enough exposition. Let's check the numbers.

I'd note that I also did back calculate "mashup" rankings for each team over the course of the season. This will do away with the need for some of the extraneous info I had been providing earlier. From now on it'll just be teams rankings and movemnet form the last week and a chart showing ranking position over the course of the season.

Numbers. Yes. Here.

Dallas still at the top, New York with a big jump, and both LA teams with big falls (poor Chivas ;/ ).

Here's the graph for the full season. Check out Vancouver. What a crazy poor season they've had... Click to embiggen, I'm trying to go with a .png to see if that makes it prettier.

 Annnnd... that's all I have to say about that. More fun next week. Until then... courage.

Quatro de Sporting... or something

Man do I love eating tacos. Even more so when watching my team crush their opponents so thoroughly. Seriously, I had been wondering when I'd get to see a proper blowout, and here it was. Chivas looked just miserable the entire match and seem to have completely lost whatever mojo they had at the start of the season. I do feel bad for Dan Kennedy though, the auto-red for DOGSO is so harsh in my mind. He made a foul on a player in the box, that should be a yellow if it's a foul that resulted from an actual play on the ball and not something tactical or malicious.

Still, how bout that Bieler, eh? Playing like a gynecologist. Clinical in the box.

Okay, I'm done with that joke now.

Anyway, here's the player ratings for this one.

Any surprise here? Total domination by SKC, Zusi with man of the match, even after leaving the game a little early. Smart sub by PV, it's gonna be a long week, and I really, really want to lay into Seattle on Wednesday.

No Besler in the 18 was a little odd... hopefully just resting and no injury or illness. But a great performance across the board, and hopefully a goal means CJ gets a bit of his confidence and swagger back.

And Bieler is proving he was worth the money. If he keeps scoring like this he'd be arguable one of the better DP signings in the league I'd argue.

GODDAMMIT ITS STILL NOT WORKING

Actually, it's staritng to shake out okay. The teams with only two games played still throwing a little wrench in everything though, hence LA still ranked #1 despite their bummer draw with Chivas. And by bummer draw, I mean hell yes Chivas, you beautiful bastard goats you.

Chivas is totally my #3 MLS team.

Anyway, as I said, numbers are starting to shake out well I think if you take the 5 teams with only two games played with a grain of salt. Here's how the table looks.

We'll see how LA looks after another game or two. Same deal with Seattle. Also, this in no way incorporates CCL performance into it, so don't ask.