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By CASEY CANNON
Hello and Welcome to the Soccer by Ives Fantasy Corner – now in concentrate! Every week I dig through statistics, news, and rumors to provide the reader with the kind of fantasy advice that only The Dude can provide.
This is a truncated week so this will be a truncated update. Once again I suggest saving a trade if possible unless your wildcard is available. Going into week 18 with maximum flexibility seems ideal.
Gratz to last week’s winner Beast Of The East who scored 86 points. Back on the overall SBI lead and 5th in the known universe is DamagedGoods. I picked an injured player – Josh Williams – and slid down to 49th in the SBI league. Want to catch the leaders? Read on for my picks.
TEAM PICKS
Take Three – New England Revolution . New England has a 75% chance to shut out DC United. Jay Heaps boys also have less than a 20% chance of being shut out. After New England put a beating on LA I’m sure everyone expects an New England win.
Seattle Sounders. The Sounders have had too much variance for my tastes, but the spreadsheet says there is less than 10% chance they give up more than one goal to Vancouver. At the same time the Sounders have a 17% chance scoring 3 or more goals. And the Sounders must feel confident after an epic win against Chivas.
Avoid – D.C. United . In the comments will someone with knowledge please explain if it is United players, coaches or upper management that is the problem? Look at their Goals per game. They are more likely to be shut out in any given game than score. Even Toronto Fans feel bad for DC United Fans.
INDIVIDUAL PICKS
Captain – Jose Goncalves, New England Revolution . This feels odd. I guess the league will have to get used to the Revolution being a real team again. I expect Goncalves to earn over six points this week and this week that is enough to earn the armband. For those looking for more upside try Morales.
Value – Stephen McCarthy , New England Revolution. Let’s do a comparison. McCarthy is earns 6.1 PPG Compared to Gonclaves 6.6 PPG. Salary is 4.8M compared to 6.4M. McCarthy is owned by only 1.1% of the league while Goncalves is owned by 15.6%.
Overpriced – Chris Wondolowski, San Jose Earthquakes. 23% of folks still cling to last year’s golden boot winner. If you are one of those people, San Jose has a bye, this is a perfect chance to free up 10M of your Salary Cap. It’s OK. Those 3.9 PPG can be earned elsewhere.
THREE-PLAYER MONTE
The three player Monte game has two elements selecting: three players to score goals and creating a streak of picking a captain who scores every week. The players can be awful, tossed out of the game for reprehensible fouls, and single handedly responsible for costing his team the game, just once like an internet writer, the only thing that matters is scoring just once.
1. Diego Fagundez , New England Revolution
2. Javier Morales , Real Salt Lake
3. David Estrada , Seattle Sounders.
Tiebreak: 13
That’s all for today. Come back next time for more MLS fantasy notes.
Unfortunately it’s a combination of players, coaches, and management that’s plaguing DCU. Players who really delivered last season (DeRo, Pontius) aren’t doing nearly as well this season. They made up part of our scoring corps. We let Salihi, Najar, and Boskovic go in the offseason and they made up the other part of our scoring corps. Combined with the defense (holy Hamid included) being a bit of a sieve, that explains the goals per game.
Olsen brought the team together and had a bunch of one goal victories late last season but he’s kind of been dealt a bum hand this season since they let a bunch of playmakers go and didn’t replace them with quality signings. Thorrington and Ruiz for Najar? No thank you. What’d they do with the $3M from Najar’s transfer to Belgium, anyway? Didn’t sign a player of similar caliber, that’s for sure. So Olsen is left with a squad at it’s scrappiest and I think his inexperience as a manager is starting to show. Unlike Porter who had collegiate coaching experience but not MLS experience, Olsen went from player to interim manager to full time. So a lot of his coaching is coming directly from playing experience.
Finally, the management. Where to start? Dave Kasper needs to go no matter what. We need a GM who is passionate about the team and I don’t see it in Kasper. As for the owners, Thohir was supposed to be the money and Levien the mouth behind a stadium deal. Instead, Thohir is out trying to buy Inter Milan (and replace San Siro to boot!) and Levien is running the Memphis Grizzlies. I don’t know what Will Chang has been up to, but he seems to have been absent as well.
Speaking of the stadium deal, I’d almost attribute the team’s performance to that as well. Since the team pays a lot to be there but doesn’t get any money from usual stadium revenue streams (concessions etc), they basically rely on ticket sales. We all know how THAT’S going this season. Added to the fact that upper management might be holding money back to pay for the imaginary new stadium and you have a situation where the team won’t spend on what they need most: better players. Not players past their prime or Beckham-like European retirees, but good players.
Why would you think David Estrada will score. Vancouver will score at least one, and Seattle won’t run over Vancouver like Dallas and SJ, especially SJ.