BS Rankings

Took a minute to see what happened if I averaged all the rankings folks over on BigSoccer are generating (2 Elo rankings and 2 numeric systems in total), and I've got to say, it looks pretty good. Let's just call em BS Rankings. I may try to do this weekly.

Teams ranked first by mean rank, then by median rank if tied, and if still tied, ranked by standard deviation of ranks, lowest to highest. Click to embiggen.

I actually think the combined rankings look better than any of the individual ones. I was impressed. The craziest thing to me is the team tiering. i.e. RSL is clear #1, Seattle is clear #2 , LA and MIFC are interchangable, Colorado, SKC, RBNY and Portland are all interchangable, Dallas, Chicago, San Jose, New England and Philadelphia are all basically interchangable, then there's Houston, then Vancouver, then Columbus and Chivas are interchangable, then Toronto and DC.

Power's back on!

Alllllright! Great to be back in action with MLS, not to mention we still have all sorts of Euro action going on, and more Open Cup games right around the corner. I really should have asked for Direct Kick for Father's Day...

But anyway, I was a bit proactive this week and actually got everything setup ahead of time. I thought I was in good plug and chug shape until I noticed an error in the spreadsheet and apparently totally whiffed on a week of rankings. I've doubled checked everything and it seems like it's back in working order. Or at least it seemed to track right... Of course it's all subjective anyway, so who really cares? Well, I care. So that's 1. And 1 in 7 billion isn't awful...

Let's look at the tables, shall we?

Weeks 13, 14 and 15
Team	Rank	Weekly Δ	Rating	Weekly Δ
Salt Lake City	1	NC	5.643	0.357
Kansas City	2	3	7.071	0.236
New York	3	-1	7.143	-0.451
San Jose	4	-1	7.286	-0.593
DC	5	+1	7.571	0.429
Seattle	6	-2	8.214	-0.984
Vancouver	7	NC	8.929	0.456
Colorado	8	NC	10.071	-0.302
Houston	9	+1	10.214	0.324
Chicago	10	-1	10.429	0.110
Columbus	11	NC	10.857	0.220
Chivas	12	NC	13.286	-0.286
New England	13	+1	13.357	0.181
Portland	14	-1	13.571	-0.187
LA	15	+1	13.643	0.280
Montreal	16	+1	13.643	0.511
Dallas	17	-2	14.286	-0.440
Philadelphia	18	NC	14.571	-0.341
Toronto	19	NC	19.000	0.077

A few things jumped out to me as weird until I looked at it a bit more. The big one was Chicago winning but still dropping a rank. The win seemingly didn't do that much to their relative standings, but I imagine it will add up next week as a loss drops off and is replaced by the win. The other strange thing is how Toronto actually gained some ranking points despite losing. They actually aren't having the worst run of form in the league right now. That honor belongs to Seattle, who drop two slots and almost a full rating point. Except them to be even lower in a week or two unless they really win big.

Some teams are still a bit high and some probably a bit low, but I expect there to be some real movement next week among teams ranked 2-5 and 12-16. There's some real tightness in the league right now among teams competing for the shield and teams trying to get back into the playoff hunt, which should make for an exciting second half of the season.

Congrats to RSL, who, at this point, are pretty clearly the class of MLS. Here's to hoping SKC can catch and mug them though...



Oops, I did it again...

I'm making a concious effort to not start my posts with the word "So," but it's been hard. I really need to expand my vocabulary.

Speaking of which, it's once again time to consult the not-so-oracular spreadsheet and get some power ratings spat out. SLC fans will be pleased to see that they're finally in the top spot, and I say well earned. There was a fair amount of movement this week actually. Toronto's win really helped them out and sort of flattened out the curve, so to speak. Up until now the system has basically just calculated ratings for 18 teams and then stuck Tortono on the bottom, but this week they actually won a game. Good for them. Can't wait to beat em in the next game.

Kansas City climbs up to second, which is a bit surprsing really, but I would point out that their 2.08 points per game average is the best in the league right now, so maybe not that surprising at all.

At any rate, here's the full table.

Team	Rank	Weekly Δ	Rating	Weekly Δ
Salt Lake City	1	+1	6.071	+0.262
Kansas City	2	+3	7.143	+0.107
San Jose	3	-2	7.357	-1.440
DC	4	+2	7.714	+0.869
New York	5	-1	7.714	-0.964
Seattle	6	-3	8.071	-1.655
Colorado	7	+1	9.500	+0.500
Vancouver	8	-1	9.714	-0.548
Houston	9	+1	9.929	+1.155
Chicago	10	-1	10.357	-0.107
Columbus	11	0	10.357	+1.393
Chivas	12	0	13.286	-0.119
Dallas	13	0	13.643	-0.310
LA	14	0	13.643	-0.310
Portland	15	+1	13.714	-0.048
New England	16	-1	14.000	-0.583
Philadelphia	17	+2	14.071	-0.238
Montreal	18	-1	14.214	-0.381
Toronto	19	0	17.929	+1.988

And let's put up RSLs crest here too, so it looks pretty.

Post RSL player ratings

Once more we turn our sites towards player rankings. Let's see what the magical spreadsheet tells us today.

I suppose first and foremost, I should say congrats to Mr. Collin for his second straight Man of the Match performance. Lock down defense and a great header for the game winning goal. Really can't argue with that.

Here's how the rest of the ratings broke down.

Player	Rating
Sporting Kansas City
Jimmy Nielsen	5.7
Aurelien Colin	8.4
Matt Besler	6.0
Seth Sinovic	6.0
Chance Myers	6.0
Michael Harrington	4.2
Graham Zusi	6.9
Bobby Convey	5.1
Roger Espinzoa	5.1
Julio Cesar	4.2
Jacob Peterson	4.2
Paulo Nagamura	3.9
Kei Kamara	4.8
CJ Sapong	4.5
Real Salt Lake
Nick Rimando	5.1
Jamison Olave	4.8
Tony Beltran	4.8
Chris Wingert	4.5
Nat Borchers	4.5
Kyle Beckerman	4.5
Luis Gil	4.5
Will Johnson	4.5
Johnathan Steele	3.9
Sebastian Velasquez	4.5
Fabian Espindola	4.5
Alvaro Saborio	4.5
Paulo Aruajo jr.	4.2

And of course the highlights. Annoying that they still use the away announcers...

Highlights - SKC 1 - RSL 0

The joys of over thinking things

Gamedaygamedaygamedaygamedaygameday!

This is actually going to be the first game of the season I miss though... in-laws just bought a house so we're gonna go out to a fancypants dinner to celebrate. Hopefully someplace with a couple of TVs...

At any rate, I've posted this thought before in several places, but I'll consolidate it for a game day post.

I think this is a very winnable game for SKC. I feel like RSL is going to need to be the team that really evaluates a game plan and changes things up. Their pretty passing game may well get disrupted by KCs high pressure. That said, on the flip side, I think RSL will be able to exploit KCs backs getting forward in the attack (as I noted earlier in the week, Sinovic and Myers both play further up the field as defencive backs than Julio Cesar does as a midfielder...) better than other teams have been able to. LA almost (and arguably should have) scored twice as a result of that, and RSL is much, much better than SKC. Going down a goal early will really hurt out chances, so communication between cesar, Besler, Collin and Nielsen will be really important.

I also think we're going to see ejections this game. Nothing's really been said of it, but I wouldn't be surprised if both teams still feel some bad blood from last season (long story involving pre-season and Espinzoa). An early red card may ruin this one for some one. But the Espinoza-Beckerman duel is going to be a thing to behold I think. There's going to be lots of great individual match-ups, actually.

Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and call it 2-1 to SKC. People on BigSoccer seem to not know what to make of it, but almost everyone looked to give Kansas City a slight edge.

Let's see what others are saing.

Real Salt Lake brings toughest test to KC in young season

Real Salt Lake ready for showdown with Sporting Kansas City