A Review of the D By the Numbers

By now, readers of this blog should be familiar with my minutes per team goal stat (MpTG). Today I thought I would mix it up a little bit. Instead of looking at it as an offensive stat, I thought I would modify it to look at how RSL is playing defensively. Some of my findings were very surprising to me.

This stat is a little different than the MpTG stat. This one takes a look at each of RSL's players on the back line. Instead of seeing how often RSL scores while a player is on the pitch, this stat looks at how often RSL concedes a goal while the player is on the pitch. For the MpTG stat, the lower the number, the better it is for the player. With this stat (which I am calling Minutes per Conceded Goal or MpCG) the higher the number the better. As a point of reference, the team is currently conceding a goal every 83.57 minutes.

Player	Min	Goals Conceded	MpCG
Wingert	360	5	72.00
Beltran	990	9	110.00
Schuler	1080	13	83.08
Bourchers	720	8	90.00
Salcedo	181	2	90.50
Palmer	534	9	59.33
Mansally	328	3	109.33
Watson-Siriboe	450	7	64.29

Only giving up a goal every 110 minutes was a very respectable number for Beltran. I was surprised to see that Mansally  had a very high number as well. I was also surprised to see Palmer's score to be so low. I never really remember thinking that Palmer was playing poor defensively.

Player	Min not played	Goals Conceded	MpCG
Wingert	810	9	90.00
Beltran	180	5	36.00
Schuler	90	1	90.00
Borchers	450	6	75.00
Salcedo	989	12	82.42
Palmer	648	5	129.60
Mansally	845	11	76.82
Watson-Siriboe	720	7	102.86

The table above shows how the team played while the player was not on the field. I couldn't believe that the team was giving up a goal every 36 minutes that Beltran was not on the field. And again, this shows that the team plays much better defense when Palmer is not in the match.

Player	Min	Goals Conceded	MpCG
Borchers/Schuler	540	5	108.00
Schuler/Watson-Siriboe	360	5	72.00
Borchers/Salcedo	90	1	90.00
Schuler/Salcedo	90	1	90.00
Bouchers/Watson-Siriboe	90	2	45.00

Finally, this shows how the center back pairings do when they are playing together. Going into the season we knew that Schuler would be put into the starting lineup. It is good to see that he works so well with Borchers next to him.