—by Mike Coleman

Tuesday is one of my favorite days of the week as far as soccer goes. It’s the day when most of the power rankings are released (for those of you who are unfamiliar, Power Rankings are where ‘experts’ look at the 19 MLS teams and rank them based on their current performance and future potential – these rankings are, of course,  100% subjective).

Another one of my favorite things is futzing with data in Excel. I’m not a statistician by any measure, but I love manipulating data and trying to figure out any relationships that might exist (yes, I know, that sounds terribly exciting).

In any case, back to soccer . . .

I read about 5 different power rankings, and have always wondered how they compare. So this week I built myself an excel spreadsheet where I take power rankings from 5 different sources (MLS.com, Bleacher Report, Sports Nation, Soccer By Ives, and The Oregonian) and figure out what the average ranking was, how much (on average) the teams moved from one week to the next as well as the standard deviation in the ranks and movement. Finally, I thought the results of the past 5 matches would be an interesting indicator of a teams "power" (although it would be a trailing indicator at best, and doesn't account for who the opponents were during that time e.g. there is no "strength of schedule" component)

I’m not sure if anyone else cares about this, but I thought I’d share it here this week. If folks dig it, I’ll happily keep doing it. I’m also looking to go back and input the data for the first 8 weeks so I can chart the change in power rankings over the season.

So, without further blathering here are your meta power rankings for Week 9:

Nothing to surprising here, but what’s interesting is what happens when you look at the last point totals from the past 5 matches:

 

 

 

 

 

 It would seem near the top and bottom the last 5 games are pretty well reflected. Houston is ranked a bit higher than their past 5 matches would suggest. The real surprise is San Jose who, despite only earning 3 points in the past 5 matches (which is tied for 2^nd worst in the league) is ranked middle of the pack. One can only assume that the ‘experts’ feel like the 3 points are not indicative of their potential.

 

 

 

 The next thing I looked at was movement. The Union were this week’s biggest losers – their 2-0 loss to New England cost them an average of 3.4 spots in the Power Rankings. On the opposite side of the spectrum Columbus picked up a whopping 3.6 points by virtue of their 3-0 defeat of D.C. United (one could question if beating the consensus worst team in the league warranted such a big leap). D.C. United, Colorado, and Chivas all  held pretty steady week after week, and our beloved Timbers picked up the 2^nd highest number of spots (2.8) with their defeat of Sporting Kansas City (it would be hard for me to argue that they should have picked up more spots as that would put them above Montreal, their lone defeat, LA, and Dallas).

The last thing I looked at were the standard deviation of both the movement and rankings. Like I said, I’m not statistician, but I believe that standard deviation (which basically provides an indication of how much variation there is in a set of numbers) offers interesting insight into what the ‘experts’ all agree on and where there is a lack of alignment.

 

With a standard deviation of 0 the ‘experts’ all agree that D.C. United is the worst team in MLS – every single one of them ranked them 19. On the other end of the spectrum there is considerably less agreement on New York (1.82) and Philadelphia (1.92). In the case of New York the rankings are almost uniformly spread from 7^th (Soccer By Ives and the Oregonian) to 11^th (Bleacher Report). For Philadelphia the main outlier is The Oregonian where they ranked 15^th (compared to 10^th, two at 11^th , and 12^th) – clearly GCA has no love for the Union. It’s also important to note that the teams at the top are generally agreed on by the ‘experts’ (as is the placement of Vancouver).

 

 

 Looking at the deviation in movement – clearly the biggest outlier by a pretty significant margin is New York. In two rankings they gained a whopping 4 spots, in two rankings they gained 2 spots, and in one ranking, Bleacher Report, they actually lost 2 spots, falling from 9^th to 11^th  (for the sake of completeness I will note that they were actually tied for 11^th).

 

 

 

What does all this mean, I have no idea. Like I said, I just like to geek out with numbers. I’m sure some of my conclusions aren’t necessarily that insightful (or even correct). If you have a suggestion on how to improve this exercise, let me know.

For those who want to see the information for themselves, you can find my spreadsheet here on google docs.