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.

This is too easy

It's simple with one team in MLS action this week, so I 've got no excuse not to throw the numbers out there. We got last week right, which brings the model up to 58 matches picked correctly out of 121 for a correct pick rate of 47.9%.  MLS teams are winning at a rate of 51.2%, so it's still better to just pick the home team, but we've closed the gap a little. Also never bet on Chivas at home for some reason. I guess the HDC isn't really their home so they don't want to win there or something?

At any rate, your single game pick for this week is...

Vancouver beats Houston by two goals.

7-0-0

Just finishing up packing for Portland and about to go get my haircut, but I figured I'd drop some spreadsheet player ratings for the Vancouver game quick.

 

Player	Rating
Vancouver Whitecaps
Joe Cannon	4.7
Jay Demerit	4.3
Lee Young-Pyo	5.2
Martin Bonjour	3.4
Jordan Harvey	4.7
Davide Chiumiento	5.2
Gershon Koffie	5.2
John Thorrington	5.2
Sebastien le Toux	7.4
Camilo Da Silva Sanvezzo	3.8
Eric Hassli	3.8
Long Tan	4.3
Atiba Harris	4.7
Omar Salgao	4.7
Sporting KC
Jimmy Nielsen	5.6
Aurelien Collin	7.4
Matt Besler	5.6
Chance Myers	6.1
Seth Sinovic	5.2
Lawrence Olum	4.3
Graham Zusi	4.7
Roger Espinzoa	5.6
Bobby Convey	4.3
Paolo Nagamura	4.7
Jacob Peterson	4.3
Kei Kamara	7.0
CJ Sapong	4.7
Teal Bunbry	4.3

 

And, once more, the Man of the Match is the Frenchman, Mr. Collin. I've honestly got to wonder if he's on the French national team radar at this point... lights out defending and tied for most goals for the team. As people are saying over on BS, pay the man.

Draw something.

Oh man, you're not going to like this at all...

Parsing the WPL numbers over lunch and was a bit surprised at just how much disagreement there is over this weeks games. So much so I even considered tweaking the formula, before realizing that even in the next notch down there would still be more than half of the matches predicted for draws. As such, I left it as is, and anticipate a wild week of come from behind draws and some crazy frantic actions. However, there is one result people seem to agree on, which for me was just as surprising...

What was it? Read on.

Here we go.

DC and Montreal draw.
Vancouver and Kansas City draw.
Toronto and Chicago draw.
Columbus and Houston draw.
Colorado and LA draw.
Vancouver and Dallas draw.
Portland and Kansas City draw.
Chivas and Phildelphia draw.
San Jose beats Salt Lake City by 1 goal.
DC and New York draw.

I don't know what the record for draws in a week is, but I can tell you the next few days will be interesting.

Anyway, I'm off to Portland tomorrow for just my second away game ever, so I'm super excited. Much more to come next week, and here's to hoping for a win tonight.

In all honesty, I'm okay with draws here. Playing road games on short rest will always be tough and if we can grind it out and just not lose we've got a week off next week. Also, after this week, SKC will be two thirds of their way finished playing "tougher" Western teams. While I don't much buy that the Western conference is superior, it does mean less travel to the West coast, which I think is a bit of a good thing.

Anyway, 2 points from two games this week would be okay. 3 would be better. 4 better still and 6 would be amasin'.