Monday Stats Breakdown: Midfield passing, fouls and more

Happy Monday, everyone. I hope you're still buzzing after that win — I know I still am — and with a bit of luck, it'll carry us right on through to the next one. We had a bit of a rough-and-tumble few matches there — two losses, a draw, a last-gasp win — in what has been a dramatic season thus far.

Actually, I don't know that dramatic really begins to describe it. Breathtaking? Heartbreaking? Heart-attack-inducing? Something like that. Since the start of the season, we've:

• Scored two late goals to beat Los Angeles in our season opener
• Bossed a New York side that proved to be much better than they made themselves out to be in that match
• Lost to a defensively stalwart Chivas USA
• Scored twice very, very late on in Portland to grab three points, minutes after it looked like we'd leave with none
• Beat our nearest rivals 2-0 without looking all too bothered
• Lost to the "best" team in the league
• Had two men sent off in a 3-1 loss to San Jose
• Beat the "worst" team in the league with a stoppage time goal

And there's been more, too. I fear this season has taken 5-10 years off my life and made my hair a bit more grey. Not the worst thing in the world, the latter, and I do plan on wasting plenty of time when I get to the ripe old age of 500 (that's how old people will live in the future: I'm convinced), so that's not too much of an issue, either. Still, though.

Right, a short one today, but here are some quick and hopefully interesting stats to tide you over until I write something a bit longer in form.

• Jonny Steele by far has the lowest passing accuracy of any of our midfielders at 70.63% (the average is 81.98%) — but this may well just represent the sorts of situations he's been dropped into: Late in the game, dying embers, yadda-yadda. Further, he's played the fewest number of minutes of our midfielders who've played more than a few minutes here or there, at 233.
• Our leader in midfield passing is, unsurprisingly, Kyle Beckerman, having completed 570/659 passes over 900 minutes of action. This puts him at about 0.73 passes/minute — though this is only just ahead of Javier Morales, who is sitting at 0.72/minute. Inevitably, there are differences in accuracy, though they are not particularly vast: Kyle hits about 86.5% accuracy, while Javi hits about 85.4%. Further, while Kyle has 19 key passes, Javi's got 15 — 3% of his passes are deemed key passes. I'd imagine this number goes up as the season goes on — I'll be sure to keep you up-to-date.
• I addressed this yesterday on Twitter, but it bears repeating. We're sometimes cited as a "dirty team" (though never by anyone who has real evidence). I'm not concerned with how supporters of other sides view us, but it did make me wonder about our foul numbers and how they compare with the league. Without further ado:
  
  • 9th in fouls, at 12.8/match. Philadelphia Union leads at 14.29, while New England is best with 8.71/match.
  • 12th in fouls suffered, at 11/match. Vancouver Whitecaps are the most fouled, at 14.5/match, while Houston Dynamo are the least fouled at 8.33/match.
  • 9th in yellows at 1.7/match, while Philadelphia Union are unsurprisingly at the top with 2.14/match. New England, as expected, is lowest at 0.71/match.
  • 11th in yellows-to-fouls, at 7.53 fouls per yellow card. New England Revolution are best off at 12.2 fouls per yellow, and Chivas are worst off at 5.86 fouls per yellow.

There's that for today. 'Til tomorrow, folks!