2020 Season Preview: New York Red Bulls
/Point-above-replacement values are explained here. Non-penalty expected goals + expected assists are explained here, and you can see all players’ xG+xA in our interactive expected goals tables. Touch percent is the percentage of total team touches by that player while he is on the field, which can be found in our interactive expected passing tables.
By Ian L. (@ahandleforian)
Last season was a down year for the New York Red Bulls, and yet they still ended their season with a perfectly respectable first round playoff loss. They enter 2020 with a few franchise faces missing, but primed for a new youth movement.
2019 in Review
What a disappointing season 2019 was for the New York Red Bulls. The Red Bulls are in an interesting place these days as an organization. Having lost the greatest manager in the world (don’t look it up, trust me it’s true I did the math), the Chris Armas era has been, well, completely unremarkable. Whereas in previous seasons the organization drew plaudits for finding so much success despite having a low payroll, focusing mainly on youth and promoting from within, last season they sort of resembled what you’d expect from a team that had a low payroll, and focused on youth and promoting from within.
| Season | GF | GA | GD | xGF | xGA | xGD | GD-xGD | Points | xPoints |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 49 | 49 | 0 | 46.8 | 43 | 3.8 | -3.8 | 48 | 47.6 |
| 2018 | 61 | 32 | 29 | 59 | 40.7 | 18.2 | 10.8 | 71 | 58.8 |
| 2017 | 50 | 46 | 4 | 51.2 | 41.2 | 10 | -6 | 50 | 53.1 |
| 2016 | 59 | 43 | 16 | 46.8 | 39.6 | 7.2 | 8.8 | 57 | 51.1 |
Coming off of an impressive 2018, the Red Bulls were very much a preseason favorite. FiveThirtyEight had them projected as the second most likely team to win the Supporters Shield and MLS Cup. So it was surprising, to say the least, when 2019 got off to a rough start with the Red Bulls taking only five of the first 21 points on offer. Something wasn’t right, and it turns out that thing was the health of Major League Soccer (and I do not say this lightly) LEGEND, Bradley Wright-Phillips. The extent of the injury wasn’t known at the time, but BWP talked about it in an interview reported by Once A Metro:
“'[The injury] was something I thought you just get through, you know what I mean?… It was a little pain, maybe I’m not stretching well enough. Game by game, it was getting a little worse. But then, yeah, when I really thought to myself, I literally can’t sprint in channels, I can’t beat anyone for pace, I can’t shoot hard, I was like, ‘I need to shut this down.’”
He wasn’t wrong:
This is the New York Red Bulls though. So next man up. That man was Brian White, and while I don’t think anybody would try and claim that White was a better player than BWP, the simple fact was that he was just able to do more.
This stabilized the Red Bulls a bit, and they enjoyed their best spell of the season by taking 22 of the next 30 points available. By this time LAFC had more or less completely run away with the Supporters’ Shield, so the most important thing for New York to do was put themselves in as good of a playoff seed as possible. They did not. Some late-season wobbles, particularly against Montreal and Colorado, saw them take the sixth seed. This meant a trip to Philadelphia where a truly entertaining game saw them lose 4-3 in extra-time and, well, that was that for 2019.
Roster Changes
In:
GK - Kendall McIntosh (11/26/19 - Re-Entry)
M - Jared Stroud (1/7/20 - USL Championship)
M - Chris Lema (1/7/20 - USL Championship)
D - John Tolkin (1/14/20 - Homegrown)
M - Josh Sims (1/21/20 - loan from Southampton)
GK - David Jensen (1/29/20 - transfer from FC Utrecht)
D - Mandela Egbo (1/30/20 - transfer from SV Darmstadt 98)
Out:
D - Connor Lade (10/23/19 - retired)
GK - Luis Robles (11/21/19 - option declined)
F - Bradley Wright-Phillips (11/21/19 - out of contract)
M - Vincent Bezecourt (11/21/19 - option declined)
M - Marcus Epps (11/21/19 - option declined)
M - Derrick Etienne Jr. (11/21/19 - option declined)
M - Jean-Christophe Koffi (11/21/19 - option declined)
GK - Evan Louro (11/21/19 - option declined)
D - Michael Murillo (12/6/19 - transferred to Anderlecht)
This has been a difficult offseason for RBNY fans. The losses of Luis Robles, Bradley Wright-Phillips, Michael Murillo, and Kemar Lawrence not only drain a significant amount of first-team minutes from the club, but in the case of Robles, BWP, and Kemar Lawrence, these are club icons.
Mitigating these losses a bit, we see promising RBNY II players in Jared Stroud and Chris Lema getting a promotion. This is the Red Bulls so expect them to given every chance to compete and win minutes this season. Right back Mandela Egbo joins from Darmstadt 98, and Josh Sims returns after his loan stint with the club last season, but exactly where he fits in is a bit unknown because…
Let’s talk about this 4-2-2-2 thing now
Thus far in preseason, Chris Armas has been tinkering around with the 4-2-2-2 formation. You may be familiar with this particular system if you’ve seen RB Leipzig play in the last couple of seasons. They’ve tried to use it before in New York, usually to not great success. I’m going to assume that RBNY is using basically the same blueprint since geoblocking has made it more or less impossible to watch preseason matches. So the lineup may be slightly or completely different once we actually see it in action, but let’s just go with my assumption for now. They’ll basically line up like this:
If you can’t tell, I’m not really a tactics guy, but the main conceit of this idea is that the front six are all close together so that they can press together as a unit more easily and move the ball quickly when they regain it. The wide/CAM hybrids, in particular, are designed to pin down the flanks when pressing, which forces defenders in possession to make mistakes or to boot low percentage long balls towards the middle of the field. When not attacking/counter pressing, the formation really basically looks like a standard flat 4-4-2. So far in preseason, it’s looked pretty good by all accounts, so let’s break down how this roster may work if they keep going with the 4-2-2-2.
Forwards
The top of the spear is Brian White’s job to lose. Coming in as Bradley Wright-Phillips’ replacement is an unenviable task, but he did well last season, scoring nine goals in 1300 minutes. That’s not a bad start to life in the first team, and I think we’ll only see improvement on that this season. Tom Barlow, who sounds like a Tolkien character, scored four goals in 700 minutes last year and looks to be an option as well. Matias Jorgensen has been in the mix a little this preseason but it’s unclear what kind of minutes he’ll be seeing this year.
The more withdrawn forward position will likely belong to Danny Royer who led the team in scoring last season with 11 goals. Generally deployed out wide last season, it’s going to be interesting to see how he adapts to a more central role, but I have little doubt that he’ll be successful. You may see Barlow deputizing here as well when he isn’t off fighting orcs or starting councils or whatever. Kaku could feasibly slide in here too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Josh Sims gets called on as well.
Midfield
That CAM/Hybrid job is going to be one of the most important roles in this team covering a lot of ground and sparking attacks. Kaku’s offensive abilities make him a pretty obvious choice here. The tempestuous Argentine (I just like the way that phrase sounded in my head) is a creative force in midfield. I cannot overstate that he is really really good.
I’m curious how his pressing ability is going to work in this role, but you can see from the chart above that he manages to grab loose balls at a pretty decent clip. On the other side, we have (knocks on wood, rubs lucky penny, crosses self, lights incense, strikes Faustian bargain with the devil) a (please don’t’ jinx it please don’t jinx it) healthy Florian Valot. Valot has a lot of admirers around the league, and though injuries have kept his minutes tragically sparse, when he’s been available, he’s been productive. As best as I can tell from tweets and weird angled footage, he’s been excellent in preseason. This could be a big year for the Frenchmen. Josh Sims, Alex Muyl, and Omir Fernandez will be able to deputize here or possibly start where needed or if there’s a formation change.
In the middle of the park you have newly inked Cristian Casseres, Jr an excellent young defensive midfielder with a tremendous future in this league, and newly minted captain, Sean Davis, who is in my humble opinion probably the smartest player in Major League Soccer (and I’m not just saying that b/c he came on my podcast to talk about analytics, but let’s just say that didn’t hurt). Casseres and Davis will be a formidable double-pivot.
Backing them up will be Mark Rzatkowski, who is an extremely good player to have as a back-up and Chris Lema, newly promoted from Red Bulls II.
Defenders
RBNY will still feature one of the best center back pairings in the league with Aaron Long and Tim Parker. After having the league’s stingiest defense in 2018, the unit suffered whatever malaise plagued the entire team in 2019. Long, who has reportedly been the subject of interest of a few European clubs, may not last the full season. Amro Tarek and Sean Nealis fill out the depth chart. They’ll be looking to bounce back but will have to do it with two newish faces at fullback. Kyle Duncan seems to have the right back job right now, but expect new signing Mandela Egbo to compete for minutes. On the left, newly signed first round pick Patrick Seagrist seems to be the guy with 17 year old homegrown John Tolkin, who sounds like he writes books about Tom Barlow, being next man up. After losing two first team players this offseason, fullback is definitely the position of most concern right now. If RBNY do make any further signings before the first window closes, I’d expect it to be here.
Goalkeeper
New Danish GK David Jensen looks to be the starter, and has the monumental shoes of Robles to fill. Predicting success in MLS based on other leagues is always difficult, and no position more so than that of Keeper. Jensen has been capped at every youth level for Denmark, and featured 86 times for Utrecht in the Eredevisie. His main competition will be Ryan Meara who is a veteran backup who didn’t see a lot of action behind Robles.
2020 Outlook
I’m not convinced this team is ready to compete for a Supporter’s Shield or MLS Cup. This is a team that’s still in transition, and will be relying on a lot of new and young faces. That’s not a bad thing. That’s the Red Bull way. The new-old formation is intriguing, and I hope that Armas has the patience to stick with it a bit even if it doesn't come off right away. Speaking of Armas, this is a make or break season for the coach. There has been a lot of frustration about him from fans, and that’s understandable. It’s also understandable that the club would want to give him another year to stabilize things and then see where they are at the end of 2020. New York finished with 48 points last season, and even though things are looking a little concerning at fullback, I think they can improve on that. How much depends a lot on keeping players healthy despite a fatigue inducing system. I expect this team to be competing for the playoffs again, but where they seed is going to depend a lot on the teams around them. This feels like a bit of a rebuilding year, but rebuilding is what the Red Bulls have done best.