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.