2024 Midseason Review

Hard to believe, but we're midway through the season here in early June.  That Leagues Cup really forces the games to be front-loaded.  AS a midseason review I thought comparing some numbers from this season to our two outlier seasons in the past 3 years would be appropriate.  We had out best ever year in 2021, and our worst ever year in 2023, so those are our comparison points.

Points at midseason/total points:

2024: 22/??

2023: 13/27

2021: 31/61

Goals for:

2024: 29/??

2023: 14/26

2021: 25/51

Goals against:

2024: 31/??

2023: 25/54

2021: 17/35

It took a double-check but yes, our defense this year is worse than last years,  On the flip side, our offense is better than 2021.  In fact our offense has already scored more goals than it did all of last year.  You'll notice that in 2021 and 2023 our first and second halves are pretty consistent, no more than 1 point difference or 2 goal difference except our defense got a bit worse in the second half last year.

Given that I think its a reasonable assumption to double our numbers to get a rough idea of where we can expect to end up.  That would be 44 points, 58 goals for, and 62 against.  That is essentially identical to our 2019 season where we ended on 42 points, 58 goals for, and 63 against.  That's the season that started with a 10 game losing streak and the firing of Anthony Hudson, with Conor Casey serving as interim coach the majority of the season.  We missed the playoffs on the final day.

I feel like that's the likely result this year.  Since 9th placed began to mean something more than "not last place" (which was 2017) and disregarding the COVID season for obvious reasons, the point total for the 9th placed team averaged 41.33 points.  But that average is dragged down by those first couple of seasons when there were less teams overall.  The last 3 years the average has stabilized right at 44 points.  So if things stay as they are we're going to be riding that playoff line all the way until the final weekend.

That also feels like a fair reflection of the team we've seen in 2024.  At times we've been able to stand with the best teams in the league.  We beat Western Conference leading FSL in their house and we forced Messi and friends to come off the bench for Eastern Conference leading Miami to rescue a point at their place.  But we also lost at home to last-placed San Jose and struggled to draw a 10-man Seattle in Seattle.  We are better, in general, than the bad teams of MLS but that's really it.

Getting down to individual play we've had a couple of standout players in Bassett and Bombito (and arguably Larraz), a couple of big-money guys that took a while to round into form but are now leading the team in Navarro and Mihailovic, a mushy middle of guys doing well enough but not amazing, and a couple of guys that aren't living up to expectations in Vines, Cabral, and particularly Steffen.  As pointed out by Matt Doyle this week Steffen is having the worst shot-stopping season by a keeper in American Soccer Analysis's database (which goes back to 2013).  By 44%.  He should have stopped 8 more goals than he has, which would move our defense to better than last season.  That has to be solved, quickly.

If we don't make a couple of major changes in the upcoming window (finding a real defensive presence in midfield, sorting out Steffen or benching him,, and buying Navarro or getting another striker) I think its going to be an up and down season that will live or die on how healthy we can stay.