MLS Week 10 Plays, Friday and Saturday, May 9th
Fair warning, the first part of the article is some soccer stats 101 type stuff. If you are a soccer veteran and feel comfortable with words like OPTA-stats and key passes, then you can skip ahead to where the heading says “Top Plays.” If you however, are new to soccer, and are trying to get familiar with some of these concepts, read on. I promise I’ll provide as much useful information as possible without boring you.
Statistical Accountability
When I’m doing research for soccer, I rely heavily on the statistics because a lot of times it may appear to the naked eye that a goal scored is just a compilation of a sequence of random events that take place and lead to the striker being in the right place at the right time. Of course, stats in soccer can be accumulated in one of two ways, scoring goals (goals, assists), or providing balls that can lead to goals (crosses). You can also accumulate stats by fouls drawn, but that’s a discussion for another day. For the purposes of this discussion, we will focus on the goal scoring opportunities and how they come about. A closer look at the statistics shows a high level of correlation between goals scored and what is referred to as “a big chance.” The official definition of a “big chance” per OPTA is “A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score usually in a one-on-one scenario or from very close range.” In fact, the correlation between big chances and goals scored is north of 80% for the EPL for the last two seasons. So what should we do in situations when the big chance stat is not provided? What other stats can be held accountable for our goal-scoring predictions? The stat that I love to use, and go to more often than not is touches in the final third, which is basically a count of the number of times the ball touches a player in the final third of play. Why is this important? Think of it as the usage percentage stat in NBA, it tells you how much action one player is getting close to the goal. So for a player getting a large number of touches, that player is in a great spot to succeed.
Now the biggest challenge for MLS is where to locate the data, I can only provide you with so much analysis before you decide you’d rather do your own research. And since here at RotoGrinders we are big believers in teaching you how to fish, rather than just handing you the keys to the buffet, it’s a very big part of my job to show you how I arrive to the conclusions I reach. Where I find most of my data is from whoscored.com, squawka.com and americansocceranalysis.com. While these three sources provide a lot of the raw data I pull, it’s up to us to learn to interpret the majority of it. One piece of data that I’ve found helpful in the early going is touch percentage. Touch% is what you’d expect, it’s the percentage of a team’s touches an individual player has had of the ball. While this isn’t as useful as final third touches, it does provide a glimmer into which players get majority of the touches, and then using general field positioning (which can be found in the chalkboards on mlssoccer.com) you can pinpoint whether a player is getting these touches in the defensive half, or the attacking third.
So in summary, soccer is soccer, and once you find a good research routine you can translate that to any league anywhere in the world, so whether you’re playing on DraftKings or Mondogoal you can you use the same set of research principles to reach positive expected value conclusions. In Daily Fantasy Sports, the trick is always making good decisions, and being armed with the proper tools can lead you to making those decisions. For today’s MLS picks I’ll focus on touch% as my go to stat and use that to break down which matchups seem the most favorable to me.
Friday Top Plays
Before we delve into the top plays for Saturday, there are a couple of games Friday night that I’d like to touch on. With New England visiting Orlando, and San Jose playing in altitude in Colorado these matchups could be very interesting. The biggest favorite on the board are the Colorado Rapids playing at home to the San Jose Earthquakes. Looking at the standings and recent performances, I gravitate Towards New England and Colorado. New England have won their last two away games and are undefeated in their last seven matches overall. While Colorado may have struggled in recent weeks, the Vegas odds put them ahead, that may have more to do with San Jose who haven’t been very good defensively on the road as they’ve allowed eight total goals to all opponents while on the road this season so far.
Here are some of the players that I’ll be targeting for today’s MLS two-game slate:
Goalkeepers: Clint Irwin (Colorado Rapids, $4,800), Bobby Shuttleworth (New England Revolution, $5,100)
Defenders: Chris Tierney (New England Revolution, $5,200), Kevin Alston (New England Revolution, $3,400), Marc Burch (Colorado $2,300), Brek Shea (Orlando, $5,700)
Midfielders: Juan Ramirez (Colorado, $5,600), Martin Perez-Garcia (San Jose, $6,000), Kaka (Orlando, $9,800), Lee Nguyen (New England, $7,900)
Forwards: Chris Wondolowski (San Jose, $9,500), Bryan Rochez (Orlando, $4,300), Juan Agudelo (New England, $7,600), Gabriel Torres (Colorado, $6,400)
Saturday Top Plays
Ok, now we can get to the real stuff. There are six games on tap for Saturday afternoon/night and some of them should be defensive battles, but there are a couple that should be goal fests and should feature lots of playable options. Since we’re already at about 1000 words for this article, I’m going to get right to the picks
Goalkeepers
David Ousted, Vancouver Whitecaps $5,000 – Tied for first in the Western Conference, Vancouver enters this matchup against Philly needing a win desperately, and a matchup with Philadelphia at home might be exactly what they need as they look to get back in command of the Western Conference after falling for a tie with Dallas after collecting just 5 points in their last five matches. Ousted isn’t the most expensive keeper on the slate, but I feel he may be one of the safest if things go according to plan.
Evan Bush, Montreal Impact $4,500 – Montreal hasn’t been a very good team in keeping goals from being scored on them. In their last five games they didn’t manage to keep a single clean sheet, however, the reason Bush is recommended for today’s matchup is because of the opponent, The Portland Timbers. Portland has scored only 1 goal in their last four matches, and if the Impact can keep the good form they had from the CONCACAF Champions League, they can walk away from this matchup with a win. Bush is a pure GPP target for today and if you do target him, expect a potential for goals to be scored on him.
Injury Watch: The highest priced keeper on the board is Bill Hamid and he’s an injury doubt for DC United, make sure he’s in the lineup if you decide to use him.
Other Keepers I Like: Luis Marin (Sporting Kansas City, $3,800), Sean Johnson (Chicago, $4,600), Chris Seitz (FC Dallas, $3,500), Steve Clark (Columbus, $4,900), Stefan Frei (Seattle, $4,900)
Defenders
Sean Franklin, DC United, $4,800 – With DC United as one of the favorite teams on the day, it stands to reason to look for one of their defenders to pair with the goalkeeper (only if Hamid is playing, if not, be careful rostering his backup). Franklin provides a nice bit of potential as he has delivered 13 crosses so far on the season, touches the ball an astounding 13% of the time he is on the pitch, and has delivered a total of 13 key passes in only 768 minutes played this season.
Steven Beitashour, Vancouver $4,000 – Vancouver is a big favorite in this matchup and that implies that they will be going all out in an attack against Philly at home. Moreover, Vancouver has taken a very high shot ratio of 54% of the games shots on average while Philly have a shot ratio of 48%. One more point in favor of Beitashour over his fellow full back Adekugbe is Vancouver’s propensity to spearhead the attack from the left side of the field which gives Beitashour more touches and more opportunity to make something happen.
Other Defenders to Consider: Donny Toia (Montreal, $3,600), Eric Gehrig (Chicago, $3,600), Marcel De Jong (Sporting Kansas City, $3,200), Maurice Edu (Philadelphia, $5,000), Alvas Powell (Portland $4,200), Robbie Rogers (LA Galaxy, $5,300), Moises Hernandez (Dallas, $4,300)
Midfielders
Benny Fielhaber, Sporting Kansas City $7,500 – The league co-leader in assists is in a decent spot this week. Facing DC United won’t be easy, especially with the form they’ve been in. However, with Graham Zusi coming back, and with DC potentially being without Bill Hamid, it puts Fielhaber as an elite option today as SKC look to defeat DC United on the road and move within 1 point of the conference leaders.
Stefan Ishizaki, LA Galaxy $7,300 – While I expect this matchup between LA Galaxy and Dallas to be a net even campaign with Dallas having a slight upper hand being at home, I do think that there will be some goals scored in this match with Ishizaki being one of the prime contributors for the Galaxy. in the midfield.
Other Midfielder Options: Nicolas Mezquida (Vancouver, $4,000, if starting), Fredrico Higuain (Columbus, $7,600), Ethan Finlay (Columbus, $6,800), Chris Rolfe (DC United, $7,400), Graham Zusi (Sporting Kansas City, $6,400), Marco Pappa (Seattle Sounders, $5,800), Jose Villareal (LA Galaxy, $5,400), Ryan Hollingshead (Dallas, $6,000)
Forwards
Octavio Rivero, Vancouver $9,000 – A prolific shot taker, with 5 goals on the season so far on 36 shots taken, Rivero has scored 46% of his teams’ goals so far this season and with the strategy employed by Vancouver I wouldn’t be surprised if that trend continues. Todays matchup against Philadelphia should be ideal to continue this march as the Union have allowed a league high 18 goals in 10 matches this season, with 12 of them coming on the road. And although Rivero hasn’t scored a goal in almost a month, a date with a vulnerable opponent might be all that he needs to get back to his goal scoring ways.
Quincy Amarikwa, Chicago Fire, $5,000 – Amarikwa has taken 16 shots on the season so far and in just 469 minutes he has failed to score a single goal. Here is where the wisdom of a sage old man comes into play. If he keeps shooting the ball, he will eventually score. This is especially true for Amarikwa who leads all players going today in shots taken without a goal scored. Given that he plays the central striker position and will be facing a Salt Lake squad that has allowed 9 goals away from home already this season, I like the chances for Amarikwa to score a goal today.
Other Forwards You Need to Consider: Obefemi Martins (Seattle, $10,200), Kei Kamara (Columbus, $9,800), Fabian Castillo (FC Dallas, $9,200), Alvaro Saborio (Real Salt Lake, $7,000), Jack McInerney (Montreal, $6,600), Fernando Adi (Portland, $7,800), Fernando Aristeguieta (Philadelphia, $6,200), Dominic Dwyer (Kansas City, $8,800)