Toronto FC has somehow maintained incredibly high expectations from year to year despite never reaching these expectations in club history.

Expectations were sky high yet again at start of this season with the arrival of Jozy Altidore and Sebastian Giovinco. A few poor results during a long road trip while BMO Field was being renovated had supporters worried, but since then TFC has put up some impressive performances.

Toronto is averaging 1.58 points per game (before this weekend), the second highest in the Eastern Conference and Sebastian Giovinco has been named MLS player of the week for the second week running. Things are looking good and expectations among supporters are beginning to skyrocket yet again.

Soccer Central podcast: SPORTSNET.CA’s Soccer Central podcast, hosted by John Molinaro and James Sharman, takes an in-depth look at the beautiful game and offers timely and thoughtful analysis on the sport’s biggest issues. To listen and subscribe to the podcast, CLICK HERE.

So how good is Toronto? Probably somewhere in the middle of where expectations are now and where they were a few weeks ago when some were calling for coach Greg Vanney to be fired.

Promising signs

To say that people have been excited about Giovnico would be an understatement. In his first 12 games in MLS the Italian has been electric, as the good news is this doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.

Giovinco is averaging 0.6 goals per 90 minutes from 5.1 shots per 90 minutes, both astonishingly high numbers for an attacking midfielder. Even compared to other out and out forwards in MLS, Giovinco’s numbers have been a cut above the rest this season.

One way of comparing attacking players is using a metric called Weighted Chances Created Plus which looks at a player’s attacking contribution in terms of both scoring and setting up opportunities for teammates. The average forward in any league will have a WCCP of 100. Giovinco this year leads MLS forwards with a WWCP score of 209, which means he contributes 109 percent more to Toronto’s attack than the average forward in MLS.

Giovinco is just part of a Toronto attack that has been one of the strongest in the league to this point in the season.

MLS is a league in which it is notoriously difficult to win on the road and Toronto has had to play nine of their opening 12 games away from BMO Field, making their attacking record all the more impressive.

Toronto leads MLS in away goals scored per game with 1.6 and is also averaging 11.9 shots per game away from home, the fifth highest total in the league.

Another good way to quantify a team’s attack is by looking at their Expected Goals.

Each shot has a certain probability or chance of being scored based on its distance from the goal, its angle to the goal, whether it was taken with the head or the foot, the speed of the attack and several other factors. If a shot has a 30 percent chance of being score—based on these factors—it is said to be worth 0.3 EG. So a team’s EG in a game is calculated by adding up the EG values of each shot it takes.

Toronto FC has been averaging 1.33 Expected Goals per game (using the American Soccer Analysis model), the fifth highest in the league behind only Seattle, New England, New York Red Bulls and Chicago.

Toronto’s strength is clearly its dangerous attack, led by the best attacker in the league thus far.

Causes for concern

Toronto FC has a Total Shots Ratio of 0.485. A team’s TSR is the ratio of shots a team takes per game relative to the total number of shots they both take and concede. Given that Toronto’s TSR is below 0.5 it means on average they are conceding more shots than they are taking.

For a team being talked about among the elite in MLS this is certainly a warning sign. Toronto will find it increasingly difficult to keep up the pace with the top teams in the league if they are consistently being out shot by their opponents. A team’s TSR is one of the best indicators of future performance and Toronto FC’s is mediocre at best.

The problem—as it has often been for TFC—is at the back. The Reds have a record of 1.15 Expected Goals Against per game this year, the 10th best in MLS, placing them firmly in the middle of the pack.

Looking at the defensive and offensive numbers together Toronto has averaged a goal difference of +0.25 per game, but only an EGD of +0.18 per game. Given these numbers it would make sense for Toronto FC to start regressing. Their numbers look like those of a playoff team, but not one of the elite teams in MLS.

One major advantage that Toronto FC has is that earlier in the year they hired Devin Pleuler as Manager of Analytics, putting the club at the forefront of the analytics movement in MLS. Surely that means Toronto will be more than aware of these trends and won’t panic if their results start to decline a little over the coming months.

Toronto is a club that has been quick to pull the trigger in the past on managers, players and even front office staff. Looking at the club right now there are a lot of things to be positive about, and even the negatives shouldn’t be enough to seriously worry TFC supporters, merely enough to temper their typically volatile expectations.

Expected Goal numbers courtesy of americansocceranalysis.com. Opta data courtesy of whoscored.co.

Sam Gregory is soccer analytics writer based in Montreal. Follow him on Twitter