Closing Shop

Keep reaching for the plug, you'll pull it eventually.

I'm closing down this blog. It's nothing more complicated or dramatic than wanting to do other things with the time I put into this. Looking at the back nine of the 2021 Major League Soccer season didn't help. Holy fucking fixture congestion. All that content looks like a one-on-one against Joey Chesnutt.

It's been fun. This blog will always hold a special place in my heart for keeping me sane through (the first part of) the pandemic. Maybe I'll revive it during the next global catastrophe. Hear we're about to have a couple...

MLS Weakly, Week 16: An Update, with Blindspots Acknowledged and Defended

A comment on the methodology

The bastards squeezed me again (three days, Garber?!), so this Week 16 Major League Soccer Weakly will, 1) go up earlier than I like, and 2) I’ll have to do (yet another) combined Week 17 & 18 Weakly after Sunday’s games wrap up.

In other news…yeah, auditioning a new format. It uses last week’s Super Standings post as a point of (very loose) point of reference, but, due to time constraints, I’ll be keeping the format simple, bordering on stupid, yet with some hope it’ll offer some good information - particularly as one week progresses to the next and this trend or that either gets confirmed or crumbles - of which this week has some solid candidates. I think that’s all the explanation it needs, so, moving on…

I didn’t give every match the Silver Service Review (e.g., sitting through the MLS-in-15 video plus diving into the stats) due to, again, time restraints. Happily, every game of some interest played before midnight Saturday, which allowed for some borrowed time on the other side, and I sat through the full 90 of both teams I cover, the Portland Timbers (who died against the Los Angeles Galaxy) and FC Cincinnati (who continued a distressing streak of futility against half of DC United). For the record, those games are (and a link to the Match Center thing is embedded in each score):

Los Angeles FC 2-2 Minnesota United FC
New York City FC 4-1 Columbus Crew SC
Orlando City SC 3-2 Atlanta United FC
Seattle Sounders 0-1 San Jose Earthquakes
Red Bull New York 2-3 New England Revolution
Sporting Kansas City 1-2 FC Dallas

I’ll put what I saw from those Silver Service Reviews into the “This Week” section of each entry below - which entries include every team in the league - but I based everything else on patterns - most of which seem to be holding up nicely, thanks. The second part of each is titled “Trends/Questions,” which is where I’ll note either theories or questions about each team based on the same stuff that informed the Super Standings - e.g., form, strength of schedule, and meaningful trends (e.g., said team struggles to score (e.g., FC Cincinnati), or struggles to avoid avalanches (e.g., the Portland Timbers; the fact they fit those categories so well is my only solace after a weekend of shit spectator sports viewing). With that, here are some notes and theories about where all the teams in MLS are after Week 16, and where they might go from there.