KC Current
This is the Sporting KC We Thought We Were Getting
For the Glory KC breaks down the Sporting KC versus Portland Timbers match and also a little on the continued struggles of the KC Current.
For the Glory KC is back with the 36th episode of the show!
On this week’s episode, Sporting Kansas City demolish the Portland Timbers, so we celebrate and break down our favorite moments from the match. We talk about all four beautiful goals (the type of goals this team should have been scoring all year), Sporting KC’s inability to defend the long throw, the rough schedule coming up and all the injuries the team is dealing with.
The Kansas City Current were back in action and unfortunately, they lost again. They’ve now played nine of their 22 league games and have a big hole to dig out of. The defense remains a problem, but we look at what else could be the problem.
Here is a quick rundown of topics (and approximate start times):
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- Sporting KC demolish the Portland Timbers: 2:32
- Lots of SKC injury: 26:08
- The KC Current Lose Again: 32:52
- Digital Crawl: 44:03
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The temporary intro/outro music is by Kristian Leo and is from the song “Ride it Like You Mean It.”
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Having played 15 games and still having an English week this week is leaving SKC behind the 8 ball still. Vermes was saying if they can get into the pack by the League’s Cup, they’re in good shape. But getting into the pack while having played 1-2 more games than the teams you’re chasing isn’t going to be enough.
This is the flip side of the, “would you rather have games in hand or points on the board,” debate. If you’re the team being chased, games in hand is fantastic. Because you have the points already. I’m not convinced 1.5pts/game the rest of the way is going to be enough to sneak in even.
I’ve watched so many teams bottle games in hand. If SKC keeps up the pace they set in may, they’ll make the playoffs easily.
But that’s a big if.
The problem is right now, they already have the lead. Any points from games in hand only extends that lead.
And since those are mostly in-conference games, not everyone can bottle.
I had never really looked at our schedule compared to everyone else’s but man MLS has really stacked the deck against SKC haven’t they? Only team to 25 games played before League’s Cup. That being said if we average 1.5 ppg until then we’d be at 30 points. Even if every team in front of SKC managed to keep the pace they have now (which would be impossible if SKC managed 1.5 ppg because of how often they play those teams) SKC would be tied for 4th in points and 5th in ppg. I think that’s enough to avoid the play in round.
30pts+13=43. That’s borderline on whether it’s even enough. It might sneak into a play-in. But I suspect 40 misses. Even with 9 teams.
On any math, the team has used up virtually all its margin for error this season already.
I just did some math about this and I have the following for you: having 3 home games to make up is worth more expected points than an entire game in hand would be. Based on last year, across the league teams got 1.71 ppg at home and 1.04 ppg away. SKC having played 6 home games and 9 road games essentially have 2.00 expected points worth of home games to make up with 3 games. The overall league average for a game is 1.38 ppg, therefore the game in hand that Austin and Salt Lake have is actually less valuable than the 3 additional home games SKC have.
And its a bit early for table watching anyway.
When you’re looking up at almost the entire table, you have to watch it. Because come June, we have decisions to make about player futures.
I wish Vermes would stop treating the 1st month (or 2) of the year as additional preseason. It’s an MLS 1.0 mentality that doesn’t work anymore.
How did he treat it as a preseason? Do you think he’s doing anything different now than he did when the season started? I mean obviously we’ve got different players but the style and sub patterns are the same. Vermes only plays one way.*
*I don’t actually believe this long term. We mostly migrated away from the cross and hope style that worked in the Sapong or Kamara days. We mostly migrated away from the extreme high press. Etc. But these shifts are geologic in time scale, not changes we’d see from month to month.
Every single preseason we come back with a Casualty report for an injury list. The team is never ready for opening day. Not just this year. Any year. It’s the same thing Arena used to do at the Galaxy. But in the old MLS days you could get away with it.
In MLS as it is now, you can’t make the playoffs in April. But you can sure put yourself in position to miss them.
I would also add that every season starts with a couple kids in starting roles who slowly rotate out and never start again. It might be that they’re not good enough, which speaks to Shawn’s pre-season analogy, or that they are covering for injured players, which does too. Soccer is a year-round sport now. 10 years ago some of your players were working 2nd jobs in the off-season eating McDonald’s every day. That doesn’t happen anymore. Suicide training camps to get back in shape after a 2-month layoff are unnecessary.
I feel like the title of this article is off. This is the SKC we got. It’s the one we have. Injuries or whatever aside, this team has literally not changed in composition since the start of the season except for the Dany Rosero and Steven Afrifa signings. Im no Scientologist, but neither have been so brilliant that their individual performances have flipped the script for the team. I’m not criticizing the title per se and I understand the sentiment. I think it’s important to remember when we’re on here or out there despairing about the season: this is the team we’ve had all along. Most of this and almost all of last has been very bad, there is no way around that but they do look significantly better with their best players on the field.
I took the title to mean that the recent results and overall play – even with the poor play that has occurred in the last 5 or 6 games – have been the type of results and play we were expecting to see this year. I can definitely say that the recent play and results are what I fully thought this season was going to be, after the way we wrapped up last season, so I’d say that this is the Sporting I thought we were getting.
With that said, I still want a system overhaul.
Yeah, I definitely meant more along the lines of what kcrews is saying.
I thought it’d be a team crushing the bad teams and hanging with the good teams. Not that shit show we got for 10 games. The talent said they shouldn’t be as bad as they were. Now they are who I thought they were. But is it too late? And will more injuries pull the whole thing down?
Or Pulido getting sold in the summer…