A Short Exercise in the Power of a Player: Mike Magee and Juan Agudelo Observed

I asked the question on Twitter, "how many teams have been better than Chicago since the arrival of Mike Magee?" Let's take a look at the results of games played since the acquisition of Magee on May 24th.

I think we knew that the Fire have been good since the arrival of Magee, but just how good is pretty surprising. Adding to the surprise are both the Whitecaps and Revolution with 1.6 points per game.  Looking to the bottom of the table we see how far FC Dallas has dropped since their hot start to the season.

I know that we all like to think that the results in March and April are vital, and to a degree they are---there is no way that FC Dallas is even considering a run at the playoffs if it wasn't for how they performed in Mar/Apr---however, the season is long; there are nearly 8 months and 34 games.

For now anyway...

I've long been of the belief that one player in soccer doesn't make that big of a difference on an entire season and it's table location. Sure, maybe Clint Dempsey takes Seattle from being an injury prone playoff-ish team to a contender for the Supporters Shield. But Chicago was, and is now, much better. Along with Chicago, New England's performance needs mention too.

Currently, the minute men have 17 points through 8 matches with Juan Agudelo in the line-up. Something pointed out to me by the folks over at Deep in the Fort.  It's also a conclusion that makes me question how much that's true and how much a really good player can impact a season for a club.

Obviously it needs a much closer observance than a single table of points over a time period. There are other factors to consider with both clubs. Regression, sample size, ect. But there is enough there to at least consider further research into the thought that some players can mean big things for the right club.

MLS Attack Pairings

Today, I was asked simply, which team has the best pairing in MLS? It's a good question, and oddly one that I've been asked a lot and. Despite the frequency of requests, it's something that I have trouble answering. There are a lot of ways to measure performance for attacking personnel, but due to my time restraints I found the easiest way to do this was to go to Squawka and use their attack score. Below is a listing of teams and their two highest* attacking score combos. Since it's a purely cumulative stat I pro-rated it to 90 minutes. As you probably wouldn't be shocked to find out. Mike Magee, Landon Donovan and Federico Hinguian round out the top-3.

Player	Team	Minutes	Attack Score	AS per 90
Mike Magee	Chicago	1051	582	50
Patrick Nyarko	Chicago	1554	527	31
Carlos Alvarez	Chivas USA	1653	360	20
Eric Avila	Chivas USA	1634	260	14
Dillion Powers	Colorado	2035	576	25
Deshorn Brown	Colorado	1800	448	22
Federico Hinguian	Columbus	2142	1162	49
Dominic Oduro	Columbus	1987	610	28
Dwayne De Rosario	DC United	1208	343	26
Kyle Porter	DC United	1403	244	16
Blas Perez	FC Dallas	1569	584	33
Michel	FC Dallas	2004	538	24
Brad Davis	Houston	1408	540	35
Will Bruin	Houston	1721	472	25
Landon Donovan	LA Galaxy	1380	753	49
Robbie Keane	LA Galaxy	1320	698	48
Marco Di Vaio	Montreal	1868	897	43
Felipe Martins	Montreal	1768	535	27
Diego Fagundez	New England	1621	613	34
Lee Nguyen	New England	2137	527	22
Thierry Henry	New York	1952	854	39
Tim Cahill	New York	1761	441	23
Sabastian Le Toux	Philadelphia	1864	729	35
Conor Casey	Philadelphia	1528	667	39
Darlington Nagbe	Portland	1895	761	36
Diego Valeri	Portland	2072	725	31
Javier Morales	RSL	1796	838	42
Ned Grabavoy	RSL	2043	467	21
Chris Wondolowski	San Jose	1890	530	25
Shea Salinas	San Jose	1400	434	28
Eddie Johnson	Seattle	1300	461	32
Obafemi Martins	Seattle	1024	448	39
Graham Zusi	Sporting KC	1860	680	33
Claudio Bieler	Sporting KC	1986	620	28
Jonathan Osorio	Toronto FC	1164	397	31
Robert Earnshaw	Toronto FC	1495	333	20
Camilo Sanvezzo	Vancouver	1674	876	47
Kenny Miller	Vancouver	1305	506	35

There are a couple of key individuals missing from this list that may or may not "pop out" at you. The first is Philadelphia's top goal scorer Jack McInereny. Part of this is due to his missing time with the Mens National Team during the early rounds of the Gold Cup tournament. The other part is that outside of his bunches of goals scored early in the season he hasn't done much else with his time.

The other name, though less likely to be spotted, is Luis Silva. Since arriving at DC United, he's posted the top overall score determined by Squawka, as well as the highest rating on Whoscored, with his new club. However, he's only played 5 games and a total of 420 minutes for DCU, so it's a small sample and I decided to drop him from the listing. This lowered DC United's end score rather dramatically and yet corresponds quite well with whatever combination player they might be able to muster.

Now, taking all those dynamic duos and adding them together gave us a combined score of the two best attacking players on each team. Here are those in order.

	AS per 90
LA Galaxy	97
Vancouver	82
Chicago	80
Crew	76
Philadelphia	74
Seattle	71
Montreal	70
Portland	68
RSL	63
New York	62
Sporting KC	61
Houston	59
FC Dallas	58
New England	56
San Jose	53
Toronto FC	51
Rapids	48
DC United	41
Chivas	34

It's not a surprise to see LA at the top of any such list. Robbie Keane and Donovan have long be herald as the best dynamic attacking duo of the league. But if you are looking beyond those two the teams are rather surprising. Vancouver, Chicago, Columbus and Philly all make up the top-5 with the often scrutinized Obafemi Martins and Eddie Johnson contributions falling just outside the grouping.

Another interesting note, taking us further towards the discussion of single best player. While individual performances matter, it's about team accomplishment rather than singular performances over the stretch of the season. It's obvious that while Chicago and Columbus both have had outstanding performances from their key men up top, they are lacking something on a team level such that these individual metrics don't correspond entirely to the tables at the end of the day.