Regular Season Final Stats & Rank

Great stats on the corners and fouls suffered.  The offsides is annoying, but shows they really want it.  Can’t really complain about top 10 stats in nearly every category.  Kinda shocked we aren’t higher since our final point total compared to everyone else, but doesn’t matter in the end.

The two things that killed us were the lack of Shots on Goal, 15th. And then being 2nd in winning Corner Kicks and converting so few of them. If we can rectify that next year, we’ll easily be top 3 in goals and probably have a lot more wins to boot.

Also:

1st in fewest goals allowed (29, tied with Houston)
1st in red cards (8, tied with Houston, New York and Salt Lake)

We would’ve been first in goals and the best team in the league if we did even an average job off our free kicks, PK’s and corners.

Fouls suffered makes sense.
How do we rank in Goal Differential?

Like others have said, the high number of corner kicks without converting them is what has been most frustrating for me.  I wonder what our conversion percentage is relative to other teams?

And I don’t care if he’s the DP and makes the big bucks, next year we have to have someone – anyone – with better service than Ljungberg sending in the corners (and free kicks).   Obviously, he can’t compete in the air inside the penalty area, but I’d rather see Ljungberg on the perimeter, looking for the rebound shot.  Sadly, I expect this is a blind spot for Sigi and we continue to see Ljungberg taking the vast majority of our set pieces.

And the 15th in shots on goal.  My major gripe all year long.  We need to stop trying to finesse the ball into the net so damn much.  Sometimes, you just need to uncork a shot.  Good things often happen when you shoot.

And a last improvement for next year that’s not directly addressed in these stats…reduce the number of cards.  Both red and yellow.   We had to sit a lot of our players for reds and yellow card accumulation due to truly poor judgment on our players’ part.  We’ve been much better the latter part of the season, but that needs to change so we can get better match results.