Bruce Arena doesn’t believe in stats. 

Like, not the fact they exist. He’s actually been very vocal over the years as to how helpful and insightful he feels they are due to, well, the fact that there are a lot of circumstances that drive their results.

While his candid thoughts and hesitant approach concerning analytics have understandably rankled the analytics community, it’s Bruce Arena you know? He has a specific way he likes to do things, and he’s not going to change. 

The reality is he’s spent over 20 years crafting and refining his own personal processes for distilling information; an artful approach he trusts and has proven both in concept and reality over his tenure in Major League Soccer. It’s not that more information isn’t better or can’t be helpful but the lack of trust in what that information implies and how to alter decision making from it. 

In my view, the difference between the 2018 LA Galaxy and 2019 LA Galaxy was their willingness to come to terms with their direct style of play, their dependency upon their benevolent god Zlatan, and their need to score multiple goals to win games

No longer is there a pretentious and almost gaudy feel to the tactics employed in Carson. This is a team with fewer luxuries and is less about the use of high priced pieces in their line-up to do something amazing all leading to their unflappable success and glory. Now, there is only Zuul--errr Zlatan. But that has been good enough to buy them a lottery ticket for their sixth MLS Cup.

Welcome to Lowered Expectations! Here we review some of the weekend’s best open-play shot attempts which did not quite live up to expectations. We break down the GIFs through the lense of our expected goal model and discuss each one evaluating the results, and  also the process.