MNUFC can't win at home - but the underlying numbers say they should

If the Loons could finish, they'd be a top-five team in the league.

I covered Saturday’s Minnesota United home game for the Pioneer Press. It was a 2-1 loss for the Loons against St. Louis, a come-from-ahead affair where Minnesota failed to convert some early chances, then gave up a pair of pretty good goals to the Fightin’ Toasted Raviolis.

Photo by Chaos Soccer Gear on Unsplash

Postgame, everyone that talked to the media - manager Adrian Heath, and midfielders Wil Trapp and Hassani Dotson - were at paints to stress: the Loons don’t feel like they’re playing that badly. They’re just not converting their chances.

“I thought the first half was one of our best performances of the season,” said Trapp. “But ultimately, and we said it at halftime, [we need] the cutting edge to score goals. The chances we had at the beginning of the game - the first 10, 15, 20 minutes - these have to be goals.”

Said Heath, “I have to take positives out of what we’re producing and what we’re doing. Are we getting opportunities? Yes we are. Are we creating opportunities? Yes we are. It’s not like we’re playing and not having a shot at goal.”

And, just to add to it, here’s Dotson: “Right now I feel we are outplaying teams, and just not getting the results that we need to get, or we deserve.”

These seem like excuses… but if you look at the underlying numbers, they’re not wrong.

I went and looked at the numbers at American Soccer Analysis, the invaluable data repository.

For one thing, if you look at expected points - which takes the expected goal differential on a game-by-game basis, and converts it into the number of points the team would expect to pull out of the game - you find something that’s actually a little shocking.

This is the best that Minnesota United has ever played at home.

Seriously, this season, the Loons currently have 1.93 expected points per game - better than 2019, when they took more than two points per game at brand-new Allianz Field. That season, the Loons earned 1.83 expected points per game, but managed to allow only 13 goals all season at home, which boosted their numbers.

In fact, if you go back to the beginning of the ASA data, which is in 2013, the Loons are actually having one of the top 30 or so best home seasons of all time, based on expected points. And when you start looking into how that’s even possible - after all, Minnesota has just 17 points in 15 home games, the 15th-worst home record since that same 2013 year - you find something that’s actually pretty astonishing.

In terms of underperformance at home, the Loons are the second-worst team in the last 11 seasons of MLS.

The numbers say that the Loons’ goal difference at home this year is -2, while their expected goal difference at home this year is +11.50. That means they’re 13.50 goals behind where they “should” be, had they finished their chances at the expected rate.

Only New England in 2020 was worse, on a per-game basis; on a gross basis, only FC Cincinnati in 2019 finished with worse total numbers.

On the road this year, the Loons are right where you’d expect them to be - sixth in points, eighth in expected points.

At home, they’re now fourth in MLS in expected points… and 28th in actual points.

If they’d just converted their chances at home, they’d be one of the top five or so teams in all of MLS.

I’m sure that’s not much consolation when looking at the standings. The Loons are 11th in the West now, two points out of ninth and four points out of 7th with four games to go.

Trapp knows the odds, and he’s already calling Saturday’s game against San Jose a “final.” “It has to be three points,” he said, “or else we can confidently say it’s going to be very, very difficult to make the playoffs.”

Ultimately, there’s only one thing that’s going wrong for Minnesota at home. They’re not playing badly. The ball’s just not going in the net.