Phew, get ready for a long article. This graphic honestly contains so much information in it relative to this season in MLS, which makes sense considering that it relates to points this season. First, there’s FC Cincinnati’s excellent season thus far which has led to the furthest distance between their points and expected points. Basically they’re outperforming, by A LOT. Then you have middling teams like the Revs, Philly, and Nashville all putting together solid seasons. And then there’s St. Louis, where I’m guessing that if you had looked at them near the beginning of the season, they would’ve been probably in Cincinnati territory in terms of outperformance, but they’ve slowly began reverting to the mean (perhaps, an interesting piece to dive into later). Now, let’s look at the underperformers, without Emmanuel Reynoso, who the team was built around, and the Red Bulls firing of Gerhard Struber, it makes sense to see Minnesota and NYRB in the underperformance category. Then, you have the former titans of MLS which have fallen with Toronto and Galaxy, but at least fans can point to the fact that they’ve massively underperformed this season so there’s some upside there? And Colorado just sucks (sorry Rapids fans). Now, looking at the bottom of this chart, you will see Inter Miami and I believe this is a very bad sign for Messi and Miami bandwagon fans. Basically, this is saying that Miami has been very bad this season and based on their performances, they should expect to be really bad. Not very good omens for Messi and company, but he is Messi, so maybe he could turn it around???
