That time of the season is here again – when some players jump out to unsustainable scores and a lot of managers jump and bring them in. We’ll be looking at the midfield movers today as they are the position I’m getting the most questions about. These 9 players in the chart below have the highest scores for midfielders and also are in the top 10 for transfers in (except for Pedro Morales).

Player Score Minutes PP90 2015PP90 Piatti 34 180 17.00 6.66 Wenger 25 180 12.50 3.62 Accam 21 180 10.50 6.78 Fagundez 21 180 10.50 5.28 Diaz 19 180 9.50 7.50 Diskerud 19 180 9.50 4.48 Valeri 18 176 9.20 6.27 P Morales 17 180 8.50 7.23 McNamara 16 166 8.67 5.31

Obviously, most of these guys can’t sustain the level of production they’ve started the season with. Last year, Feilhaber saw the largest jump of any player with just over a 2.0 PP90 bump and a lot of that was down to gaining basically all of the set pieces and PKs. So how do we know which players are fools gold? Basically, just look at the 2015PP90 column.

Piatti, Accam, Diaz, Valeri, Porales all had high PP90 last year (and the year before for the ones around that long) and can be reasonably expected to continue to return good scores (though not quite as good as they have been). Wenger, Fagundez, Diskerud, and McNamara don’t have the same history of production. Fagundez, Diskerud, and McNamara all have good schedules the next couple weeks so I would keep them if you have them. Wenger, on the other hand, has no DGW and some away games to make us want to avoid him as he regresses back to his norm.

Shot Conversion

Alright, I’m gonna keep bagging on Houston (sorry Dynamo fans). Their goal scoring rate is absolutely insane and cannot be trusted. They are converting on 36% of shots, about three times more than last year’s league average. They’re converting on 80% of shots on goal, 2.5 times more than last year’s league average. All this is even more reason to avoid Wenger. Montreal and RSL are in a similar boat of unsustainable conversion rates.

Team Goals Shots SOG Shot conversion SOG conversion CHI 4 27 11 14.8% 36.4% CLB 2 38 11 5.3% 18.2% COL 1 31 13 3.2% 7.7% DAL 2 28 16 7.1% 12.5% DC 1 24 9 4.2% 11.1% HOU 8 22 10 36.4% 80.0% LA 4 22 8 18.2% 50.0% MON 6 25 11 24.0% 54.5% NE 3 31 9 9.7% 33.3% NYC 6 35 17 17.1% 35.3% NYR 0 20 4 0.0% 0.0% ORL 3 27 12 11.1% 25.0% PHI 2 20 6 10.0% 33.3% POR 3 36 10 8.3% 30.0% RSL 4 20 8 20.0% 50.0% SEA 1 15 5 6.7% 20.0% SJ 3 15 7 20.0% 42.9% SKC 3 28 10 10.7% 30.0% TOR 4 22 9 18.2% 44.4% VAN 3 30 14 10.0% 21.4% 2016 MLS 63 516 200 12.2% 31.5% 2015 MLS 937 8316 3035 11.3% 30.9%

Some random observations:

Getting 2 pass completion points has happened 11 times so far. Nuno Coelho is the only player to get it twice. Hines, Nagbe, Dawkins, Alonso, Espinoza and Mustivar have earned at least 1 pass completion point both weeks.

There were 28 BCC in week 2. Significantly less than week 1, but still significantly more per game than in 2015. At this point, I think it is safe to say they will be awarded more often than last year.

There have been only 18 foul points awarded. No player has earned more than 1 in a game. Powers and Godoy are the only players to earn more than 1 point total. Foul points will continue to be largely random and irrelevant for our planning.

League-wide PP90 was 4.74, seven percent lower than last week.

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