Crunching the Numbers- TFC

Real Salt Lake came away from Saturday with a dominating win over TFC 3-0. RSL is still undefeated on the season and sits second in the Western Conference with 8 points.

It is still early in the season but some statistical trends are starting to form. Lets take a look at the numbers from the match.

• RSL has scored 8 times so far on the season or a goal every 45 minutes. Last season the team scored a goal every 53 minutes which was a club record.
• The team is currently giving up a goal every 90 minutes. The club record for defense was in 2010 when RSL amazingly only gave up a goal every 135 minutes.
• The team has now scored 6 times in the first half of matches. All of last season the team only scored 22 times in the first half. 
• RSL has a record of 6-1-4 since Chris Schuler came back from injury late last year.
• In the last 11 matches that he has played, RSL is only giving up a goal every 145 minutes when Schuler has been on the field.
• RSL completed 383 passes vs TFC. That is the highest amount of completed passes so far this season.
• Kyle Beckerman is currently leading the team with 238 competed passes. Chris Wingert is second on the team with 189.
• Beckerman completed 64 passes against TFC. That was a team high for a match so far this season. 
• RSL had a season high 9 key passes (a pass that leads to a shot) against TFC. They had been averaging a little over 5 key passes a game so far.
• After coming into the match Rich Balchan was perfect in his 13 pass attempts. 

I really looked at a lot of the passing stats coming out of this match and they really paint a picture of how much RSL dominated the midfield against TFC. In looking at the passing stats so far this season I was surprised to see that Wingert was second on the team in successful passes.

The offense is really clicking in the early season for RSL. Coach Cassar made a point in the preseason that he wanted to get more people into the attack this year. That is clearly showing dividends so far. Gil's goal on Saturday really pushes that point home when looking at how many players were involved in the attack on that particular play. 

The trend of RSL scoring early also continued vs TFC. Last season RSL only scored 22 times in the first half and only 11 of those came in the first 30 minutes of play. This season RSL has already scored 6 times in the first half with 4 of those being in the first half hour of the match. Because of this, RSL has led in each of their first 4 matches. This has also been something that Cassar has been telling the media that he wanted to see.

Chris Schuler's value to this team continues to skyrocket. In the past 11 matches that Schuler has played in RSL has given up 7 goals. In the last 12 matches that RSL has played without Schuler the team has given up 24 goals. That is an incredible difference.