



MLS Power Ranking Averages - Week 16



"If two teams played tomorrow, given their current injury concerns, form, and other considerations, who is likely to win on a neutral field? This list is designed to tell you who we feel is most likely to win that matchup. All things being equal, who is the best team going forward, based on what we know now?"



-Richard Farley, NBC Sports ProSoccerTalk. 3/11/14





Sites Used:

Allvoices (www.allvoices.com/users/zacwassink)

Black & Red United (www.blackandredunited.com) - (No ranking Week 14-16)

Dallas News Soccer Blog (www.soccerblog.dallasnews.com) - (No ranking Week 14-16)

Deseret News (www.deseretnews.com) - (No ranking Week 13-16)

ESPN (espn.go.com/sports/soccer/mls)

Fansided-MLS Multiplex (fansided.com/category/soccer/mls/mls-multiplex)

Major League Soccer (www.mlssoccer.com)

Northbank-RSL (www.northbankrsl.com) - (No ranking Weeks 9-16)

Oregon Live (www.oregonlive.com/timbers)



ProSoccerTalk (prosoccertalk.nbcsports.com) - (No ranking Week 13-16)

Reddit/MLS (www.reddit.com/r/MLS) - (No ranking Weeks 10-16)

Seattle Times Blog (blogs.seattletimes.com/soundersfc) - (No ranking Week 16)

Soccer America (www.socceramerica.com)

Soccer by Ives (www.soccerbyives.net) - (No ranking Weeks 10-16)

Sports Illustrated (www.soccer.si.com) - (No ranking Week 14-16)

UTN Sports (www.utnsports.com/category/soccer) - (No ranking Weeks 6-16)



I apologize for the lateness of getting this week's averages sent, there was a recent death in my family. That also prevented me from doing the evaluation articles I had wanted to do. I'll start including some of the evaluations at the end of each weekly ratings.

Due to the World Cup starting, a LOT of sites didn't publish Power Rankings again this week.





If you know of a Power Ranking site that I have not included, please send it to me via this site or on reddit.com/r/MLS and I will consider using it.



Weekly Power Ranking Averages

Using the "Olympic" method of dropping the highest / lowest scores, and averaging the rest.

There were no Power Rankings for week 15 due to the World Cup break.

Week 16 Week 14 Week 13 Week 12 T eam

W16 Avg W14 Avg W13 Avg W12 Avg Low

High

Var

1

1

1

3

Seattle 1.00

1.00

1.00

2.56

1

1

0

2

6

7

9

Toronto 4.50

5.80

7.00

9.56

8

2

6

3

7

9

5

Kansas City 4.75

6.40

8.38

5.56

13

2

11

4

2

2

4

Vancouver 5.00

2.60

2.88

4.67

10

3

7

5

3

6

8

D.C. 6.25

4.80 5.75 8.00 11

2

9

5

8

5

5

Colorado 6.25

8.80

5.63

7.44

9

2

7

7

4

3

1

New England 7.25

5.00

3.50

1.56

9

4

5

8

9

8

6

Los Angeles 7.75

9.40

7.88

6.44

15

3

12

9

5

4

2

Salt Lake 8.75

5.40

3.63

2.00

18

3

15

10

12

14

11

Dallas 10.50

11.40

13.75

11.44

18

3

15

11

10

11

12

New York 11.25

9.80 12.25 12.33 14

6

8

12

11

12

15

Portland 11.75

11.00 12.50 14.67 15

6

9

13

13

13

10

Columbus 12.75

12.60

12.63

11.11

16

12

4

14

15

16

18

Philadelphia 13.25

15.60

16.13

17.89

15

2

13

15

13

10

13 San Jose 14.00

12.60

10.00 12.44 17

11

6

16

18

18

19

Montreal 15.75

17.40

17.38

18.78

17

7

10

17

17

16

16

Chicago 16.25

16.20

16.13

15.44

19

4

15

18

19

19

17

Chivas 17.25

18.60

18.88

15.78

19

15

4

19

16

15

13

Houston 18.75

16.00

14.13

12.44

19

17

2







Biggest Changes

Point Gaps High / Low Variance

Rise

Toronto : +4

Kansas City : +4

Colorado: +3





Fall

Salt Lake: -4

New England : -3

Houston: -3

La rgest

Seattle - 3.50 - Toronto

Salt Lake - 1.75 - Dallas

San Jose- 1.75 - Montreal





Smallest

D.C. - 0.00 - Colorado

Toronto - 0.25 - Kansas City

Kansas City - 0.25 - Vancouver



0 positions: Seattle

2 position: Houston

4 positions: Columbus, Chivas

5 positions: New England

6 positions: Toronto, San Jose

7 positions: Vancouver, Colorado

8 positions: New York

9 positions: D.C., Portland

10 positions: Montreal

11 positions: Kansas City

12 positions: L.A.

13 positions: Philadelphia

15 positions: Salt Lake, Dallas, Chicago





Season Average Power Ranking



Pos

T eam

W16 Avg W14 Avg W13 Avg W12 Avg W11 Avg W10 Avg W9 Avg W8 Avg W7 Avg W6 Avg 1

Salt Lake

2.90

2.29

2.05

1.92

1.92

1.97

2.05

2.05 2.03

2.14

2

Seattle 3.82

3.88

4.10

4.36 4.52 4.71 4.84 5.32 5.95 6.39 3

Kansas City 4.31

4.62

4.48

4.15

4.03

3.94

4.13

4.28 4.28

4.53

4

Vancouver 6.97

6.62

6.92

7.26 7.50 7.77 8.08 8.20 8.28 8.07 5

Toronto 7.44

7.59

7.73

7.79

7.63

7.51

7.01

6.43

6.14

5.88

6

Los Angeles 7.45

7.65

7.52

7.49

7.58

7.28

7.20

6.97

6.94

7.17

7

Dallas 7.95

7.38

7.07

6.52

6.07

5.69

5.33

5.25 5.29

5.66

8

Colorado 8.68

8.62

8.61

8.86

8.99

8.84

8.81

9.11

9.00

9.50

9

New England 9.23

9.37

9.70

10.22

11.01

11.92

12.88

13.76

14.30

14.81

10

Columbus 9.36

8.78

8.49

8.14

7.87

7.30

6.70

6.42 6.54 6.55 11

Houston 10.27

9.79

9.31

8.91

8.59

8.63

8.24

7.80 6.82

5.86

12

New York 10.90

11.54

11.67

11.62

11.56

11.64

12.01

12.67

13.16

13.24

13

D.C. 12.00

12.19

12.76

13.34

13.83

14.44

15.19

15.68

16.63

17.38

14

Portland 12.52

13.45

13.64

13.74

13.65

13.34

13.09

12.92

12.19

11.39

15

Philadelphia 12.75

12.90

12.69

12.41

11.91

11.42

10.75

10.14 9.53

9.16

16 San Jose 14.10

14.23

14.35

14.72 14.92 14.98 15.24 15.24 15.35 15.03 17

Chicago 15.51

15.60

15.55

15.51

15.51

15.75

15.78

15.55

15.56

15.63

18

Chivas 15.60

15.29

15.04

14.72

14.62

14.58

14.38

13.86 13.36

13.10

19

Montreal

17.55

17.87

17.90

17.95

17.87

17.81

17.72

17.82

18.01

17.85





Largest gaps:

2.66 points between Kansas City and Vancouver



1.95 points between Chivas and Montreal

1.41 points between San Jose and Chicago



Smallest gaps:

0.01 points between Toronto and L.A.



0.13 points between New England and Columbus

0.23 points between Portland and Philadelphia



Team High/Low

Best and worst placement for each team

T eam

Week ly

High Weekly

Low

Season

High

Season

Low

Chicago Fire

13

18

16

18

Chivas USA

12

19

13

18

Colorado Rapids

4

14

8

13

Columbus Crew

2

14

5

11

D.C. United

3

19

13

19

FC Dallas

1

14

3

11

Houston Dynamo

1

19

2

11

LA Galaxy

5

11

5

9

Montreal Impact

16

19

17

19

New England Revolution

1

18

9

17

New York Red Bulls

7

17

8

14

Philadelphia Union

3

18

8

15

Portland Timbers

3

18

4

15

Real Salt Lake

1

9

1

1

San Jose Earthquakes

10

18

14

17

Seattle Sounders

1

9

2

6

Sporting Kansas City

2

9

2

3

Toronto FC

2

12

4

12

Vancouver Whitecaps

4

11

4

9



In the weekly averages 5 teams have been ranked 1st (Dallas, Houston, New England, Salt Lake, Seattle), and 3 teams have placed last (Chivas, D.C., Montreal).

In the season averages only 1 team has been ranked 1st (Salt Lake), and 2 teams last (D.C., Montreal).



Site Evaluations

I've broken the sites into 4 groups of 4 for easier publishing.

Group 1 - the "Big" sites (ESPN, SI, MLS, PST)

Group 2 - the "dead" sites (Northbank, Reddit, SBI, UTN)

Group 3 - Newspapers (Dallas, Deseret, Oregon, SA)

Group 4 - Fan blogs (Allvoices, B&R, Multiplex, Seattle)

To avoid making each article longer than necessary I'll split the groups of 4 into 2 separate pieces over the next 8 weeks (or less since some sites have stopped). Each site will be evaluated based on the Week 14 PR Averages above, I'll do a post-season evaluation for the latter half of the season.



Here's my evaluation criteria.

Consistency - Publish regularly.

Bias - Teams are rated equally, not on any obvious bias.



Fairness - Teams dropping / rising significantly due to one result is not a fair representation of overall performance.

ESPN (espn.go.com/sports/soccer/mls)

Weeks in parenthesis are the site's numbering which is off from the actual due to starting their week 1 at pre-season.









Date WEEK C-Fire CUSA C-Rpd Ccrw DCU FCD H-Dyn LAG M-Ipt NER NYRB Puni Ptim RSL SJEq Ssdr SKC TFC Vwcp 03/11/14 (2) 1 17 16 13 11 19 10 6 5 18 15 14 7 4 1 12 2 3 8 9 03/17/14 (3) 2 16 10 14 11 19 6 1 7 18 17 15 3 8 2 13 5 9 4 12 03/24/14 (4) 3 16 13 8 7 19 5 2 11 18 17 14 9 12 3 15 4 6 1 10 03/31/14 (5) 4 16 12 9 1 19 3 7 11 17 14 13 10 15 2 18 8 4 6 5 04/07/14 (6) 5 17 12 6 5 14 1 8 11 18 15 13 10 16 2 19 9 3 4 7 04/14/14 (7) 6 17 14 1 6 10 4 13 8 18 11 15 12 16 2 19 7 3 5 9 04/21/14 (8) 7 16 15 4 5 10 2 13 7 19 11 12 14 17 1 18 6 3 8 9 04/28/14 (9) 8 16 18 8 5 6 3 17 7 14 9 10 15 19 2 13 1 4 11 12 05/05/14 (10) 9 18 19 4 9 8 7 14 10 13 5 6 17 15 2 16 1 3 12 11 05/12/14 (11) 10 16 18 9 14 5 10 12 8 17 1 7 19 15 2 13 4 3 11 6 05/19/14 (12) 11 12 18 11 15 5 13 7 10 17 1 9 19 16 2 14 3 6 8 4 05/26/14 (13) 12 12 17 9 14 5 16 10 6 18 1 11 19 15 2 13 3 7 8 4 06/02/14 (14) 13 14 19 8 15 5 18 12 6 16 2 11 17 13 3 10 1 9 7 4 06/09/14 (15) 14 15 19 9 13 6 17 14 7 16 3 10 18 12 5 11 1 8 4 2 Site Average



15.67 15.93 8.33 9.80 10.93 8.53 9.73 7.80 17.00 8.60 10.93 13.20 13.00 2.47 14.33 4.00 4.80 7.00 7.93

W14 PR Ave



15.60

15.29

8.62

8.78

12.19

7.38

9.79

7.65

17.87

9.37

11.54

12.90

13.45

2.29

14.23

3.88

4.62

7.59

6.62

+ / -



+0.07

+0.64

-0.29

+1.02

-1.26

+1.15

-0.06

+0.15

-0.87

-0.77

-0.61

+0.3

-0.45

+0.18

+0.1

+0.12

+0.18

-0.59

+1.31



Consistency: Perfect. No dates missed

Bias: 4 teams a variance over 1; highest was +1.31 and closest to average was -0.06



Fairness: There were a number of large jumps in the first few weeks, I exclude that due to both teams and raters getting settled. The largest jumps after Wk5 were Colorado (5 pos. Wk6), Houston (5 pos. Wk 6), Montreal (5 pos. Wk 8), San Jose (5 pos. Wk 8), Seattle (5 pos. Wk 8), Colorado (5 pos. Wk 10), Columbus (5 pos. Wk 10), Vancouver (5 pos. Wk 10), Houston (5 pos. Wk 11). That's nine 5 position jumps from week 6 to 11, there were also numerous 3 and 4 point jumps. Some may certainly be explained, others may not without more examination.

Major League Soccer (mlssoccer.com/news/power-rankings)

Weeks in parenthesis are the site's numbering which is off from the actual starting W4 due to unknown reasons.





Site WEEK C-Fire CUSA C-Rpd Ccrw DCU FCD H-Dyn LAG M-Ipt NER NYRB Puni Ptim RSL SJEq Ssdr SKC TFC Vwcp 03/11/14 1 16 14 17 8 19 12 5 7 18 13 9 10 4 1 11 3 2 15 6 03/18/14 2 16 15 14 8 19 13 1 7 18 17 9 4 5 2 12 6 3 11 10 03/25/14 3 15 16 11 5 19 1 2 10 18 17 9 8 14 4 13 6 3 7 12 04/01/14 (5) 4 17 14 12 2 19 1 5 9 18 13 11 10 15 4 16 7 3 8 6 04/08/14 (6) 5 14 15 9 4 18 1 8 6 19 16 12 11 13 2 17 7 3 5 10 04/15/14 (7) 6 13 14 7 5 15 2 12 6 19 11 17 9 16 1 18 4 3 8 10 04/22/14 (8) 7 13 16 7 6 15 2 11 5 19 12 14 10 17 1 18 4 3 8 9 04/29/14 (9) 8 15 19 9 6 12 3 13 5 18 11 10 14 17 2 16 1 4 7 8 05/09/14 (10) 9 16 19 8 10 13 6 11 9 18 4 5 15 14 2 17 1 3 12 7 05/13/14 (11) 10 15 17 10 12 9 8 11 7 19 3 6 18 16 1 14 4 2 13 5 05/20/14 (12) 11 14 15 12 11 7 10 8 13 19 2 6 17 18 1 16 3 4 9 5 05/28/14 (13) 12 17 16 10 11 6 12 13 9 19 2 8 18 15 1 14 3 5 7 4 06/03/14 (14) 13 16 19 8 12 5 13 15 9 17 4 10 18 14 2 11 1 7 6 3 06/10/14 (15) 14 16 19 10 12 5 13 18 11 17 7 8 15 9 2 14 1 4 6 3 Average

15.07 16.40 10.67 8.27 13.20 7.47 9.40 7.73 18.33 9.27 9.27 12.53 12.60 2.00 14.40 3.80 3.33 9.07 7.20 All Site average

15.60

15.29

8.62

8.78

12.19

7.38

9.79

7.65

17.87

9.37

11.54

12.90

13.45

2.29

14.23

3.88

4.62

7.59

6.62

+ / -



-0.53

+1.11

+2.05

-0.51

+1.01

+0.09

-0.39

+0.08

+0.46

-0.1

-2.27

-0.37

-0.85

-0.29

+0.17

-0.08

-1.29

+1.48

+0.58

