Welcome to Setting the Table, where each week we take some time to focus on the best chance creators in MLS from the last weekend. If you want to see the best chances that were wasted, check out Lowered Expectations. Here we focus on chances that ended with the ball in the back of the net.
Read MoreWelcome to Lowered Expectations, the week nine edition! Each week, we go about posting chalkboards and GIFs of the weekend’s best open-play shot attempts that did not quite live up to expectations (and rarely do we update this paragraph). We look at each one and not only evaluate the results, but also the process that led to them.
Read MorexN is our weekly look at what you can expect to read, write, and discuss about Major League Soccer this week. We take a look at each prospective narrative and rate it based on its strength and whether or not it has any actual merit.
The good news is that aside from this sentence, I’m not going write a single word about video review this week. Nay, much more compelling narratives are swirling about, mostly regarding fanbases posturing at each other in a miasma of insecurity or self loathing. We have Orlando claiming to be the real deal. Atlanta continuing to make light work of their opponents, and Seattle fans in their annual early season bout of despair. Needless to say, it’s a good time to be writing about narratives.
Read MoreExpected goals (xG), love ‘em, or hate ‘em, are increasingly being accepted across the soccer world, with misguided notable exceptions. While there are multiple xG models in the soccer analytics world, the concept basically boils down to quantifying the likelihood of a shot being scored based upon where and how the shot was taken. xG quantifies what you may understand intuitively, a shot taken close to goal is more likely to be scored than a shot taken 30 yards away. There are many ways to misinterpret expected goals, one of the most common is that xG tells you exactly how many goals a team will score in a game. Obviously, this cannot be the case, as the sum of xG values of shots in a game is rarely a round number. A team cannot score 1.62 goals in a game, but it can score 1 or 2. xG gives the most likely outcome for goals scored in a game. But since goals come in discrete units of 1, and no more than 1 goal can be scored per shot, calculating the probability of goals scored in a game gets a bit complex. The number and quantity of shots that go into a team’s overall xG for a game matter, it’s not just the sum of xG.
Read MoreWelcome to Setting the Table, where each week we take some time to focus on the best chance creators in MLS from the last weekend. If you want to see the best chances that were wasted, check out Lowered Expectations. This is were we focus on chances that ended with the ball in the back of the net.
#5 Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Ola Kamara, L.A. Galaxy, 59th minute, 0.411 expected goals
Passes in sequence: 5
Welcome to Lowered Expectations, the week nine edition! Each week, we go about posting chalkboards and GIFs of the weekend’s best open-play shot attempts that did not quite live up to expectations (and rarely do we update this paragraph). We look at each one and not only evaluate the results, but also the process that led to them.
#5 - Mac Steeves, Houston Dynamo, 91st minute, 0.463 expected goals
Assisted by: Andrew Wenger
Passes in sequence: 2
xN is our weekly look at what you can expect to read, write, and discuss about Major League Soccer this week. We take a look at each prospective narrative and rate it based on its strength and whether or not it has any actual merit.
VAR giveth and VAR taketh away. Despite having a brand new soccer specific stadium to show off, the emergence of a free kick challenger to Giovinco’s throne, and David Villa’s 400th (and 401st) career goal, surprise surprise, everybody is going to be talking about video review again this week. There’s no sense putting this off any longer than necessary. Let’s just get right into it with a comment I received a number of times following last week’s entry:
No, Ian, VAR is actually terrible
Narrative Strength: Evergreen
Narrative Accuracy: B-
Early Wednesday morning, or late Tuesday evening (depending on your time zone I guess), the New England Revolution announced they had sent Lee Nguyen to LAFC for $950k of allocation money. Had the Revolution not been so stubborn about trading Nguyen in the first place, who requested a trade way back in November and then again in December, the Revs likely could've hauled in more for Nguyen’s services. That aside, the folks here at ASA are glad that Lee is free to do his beautiful soccer things.
LAFC picking Nguyen up is a bit of a head scratcher for some, given it’s not entirely clear where Lee will fit under Bob Bradley’s scheme, but here’s how I see him fitting in.
Read MoreMLS is two months into it's eight month regular season and tactical identities are beginning to emerge. Some identities are obvious, but others are surprising. The PScore is an attempt to analyze aggressiveness both with and without the ball, and you can read about how it was developed and see the 2015-2017 results here. On offense, the goal is to examine whether a team is playing directly or indirectly and trying to possess the ball. Indirect teams attempt shorter passes that are more horizontal and more likely to be on the ground, for example. Direct teams do exactly the opposite. On defense, the goal is to look at defensive pressure being place on the opponent in the attacking half. We look at the passes allowed per defensive action to assess that pressure. A higher number means low pressure and a lower number means a team is pressing more frequently.
Read MoreIn recent weeks we’ve come to know and love Harrison Crow’s Lowered Expectations series, where he takes a look at the best open play shot attempts that did not end in goals. This new series, Setting the Table, will look at the highest quality chances created, focusing on those that did end in goals. Each week, we’ll share the top five assisted goals and break down how they happened.
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