Crew Draft Picks Not Surprising
Crew goal location for 2006 seasonToday was the MLS Superdraft, and the Crew has, not surprisingly, picked three forwards.
Why is this not surprising, you may ask. Well, look at the statistics sheets for last season:
GOAL-SCORING TOTALS
OVERALL GOALS FOR
TEAM RECORD TOTAL AVG
D.C. United 15-7-10 52 1.63
FC Dallas 16-12-4 48 1.50
Chivas USA 10-9-13 45 1.41
Real Salt Lake 10-13-9 45 1.41
Houston Dynamo 11-8-13 44 1.38
Chicago Fire 13-11-8 43 1.34
Kansas City Wizards 10-14-8 43 1.34
New York Red Bulls 9-11-12 41 1.28
New England Revolution 12-8-12 39 1.22
Los Angeles Galaxy 11-15-6 37 1.16
Colorado Rapids 11-13-8 36 1.13
Columbus Crew 8-15-9 30 0.94
That's right. The Crew scored a grand total of 30 goals all season. That's less than a goal per game (32 games). Now granted, we had a lot of injury problems this season. But that's not, by any means, a reason for not scoring more goals. The simple fact of the matter is that the Crew's forwards all suck. A LOT.
I used to give Jeff Cunningham of the Crew some grief for being offside a lot. But it was always with tongue in cheek, as Cunningham was an extremely prolific scorer. Though rarely given credit for it by Crew fans, Cunningham was the top scorer in the league over a two-season period. And he was the top scorer in the league last season, for Salt Lake City.
On the other hand, we had two forwards this season, Jason Garey and Joseph Ngwenya, who were offside more often than not. And each of them had five goals. TOTAL. Cunningham had 16. Five players in the league had 11. Our top scorers? Five. That's 10 total - less than those aforementioned five guys.
So it's really no surprise to me that we went for more forwards. And I won't be surprised to see either Garey or Ngwenya on the chopping block as the preseason draws to a close.
Sigi, I sure hope you've got something planned for this season. Because last season was painful.
Extra Note: Looks like the Crew Nation was well-represented in Indy at the draft! Good work, Crew fans!
2 comments:
See, towards the end of the year I thought Ngwenya (and Virtuoso) both were improving a lot - and now with Herron there's a hope we might not totally suck at forward. Of course, having Cunningham back would be great...
Ngwenya may be getting better, true. Virtuoso isn't a forward, though. He's a true winger with great crosses.
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