When we played Austin on May 3, Matthew McConaughey’s second-favorite sports team (I reckon he loves his Longhorns slightly more) was sitting pretty, tied with your Loons on 16 points and in third place in the Western Conference, boasting more wins than the Black and Blue. Less than a month later, they’ve fallen to ninth, having picked up just two points from their last three games, and sit seven points behind MNUFC. I would pretend to be surprised, but I don’t have the acting chops that Austin’s most famous owner has.
It’s been an interesting season in Texas’ capital, but if you read the receipts, I kind of called this. They were fortunate to start so well, but mother math always comes back to humble you. Now that I’ve congratulated myself for a semi-correct, semi-prediction, I’m sure I’ll be humbled before too long, but let’s explore the underlying trend of Austin’s season while we wait for that shoe to drop, shall we?
Sometimes, It Doesn’t Add Up
Based solely on my personal eye test, presuppositions, and biases, I must admit I don’t really believe in this Austin team. I recognize that they’ve got very talented players (I’m a big fan of Brandon Vazquez’s game), but it’s a mixture that doesn’t quite gel in my eyes, and I admittedly feel some sense of vindication when I see them struggle on the field. And struggle they have.
El Tree have scored just nine goals this season, less than half the league average (18.8). That’s the second-worst in all of MLS, ahead of only Montréal (8). Despite spending nearly $30 million on their trio of attacking DPs this offseason (Vazquez, Osman Bukari, and Myrto Uzuni), they’ve only scored multiple goals in a single game on one occasion, a 2-1 win over San Diego. Aside from that, every single one of their matches has either been a draw or decided by just one goal. While their 16 goals allowed isn’t bad on its own, it doesn’t make for a very pretty goal difference when you add it all up.
Bukari and Uzuni were brought in to complement and contribute to Vazquez’s goal scoring, and, as of yet, they’ve failed to do so. The DP trio has scored a combined total of six goals in league play, meaning that thus far, Austin has paid $5 million per goal — and that’s just transfer fees. It simply hasn’t been good enough. At least, not in reality.
If you move past the cold, hard facts into the realm of imaginary stats, Austin could be better off than they are at present. They’ve underperformed their expected goals tally by nearly 10 goals, meaning they’ve scored approximately 50% as many goals as they “should” have by now. But guess what? We don’t measure success by expected points, but actual points.
Some people love expected metrics; others aren’t sure about them. Regardless of which side of the debate you fall on, it’s impossible to argue that execution is infinitely more important than prediction. Were it not for their three-game winning streak that saw them take down LAFC, San Diego, and St. Louis, Austin’s season would be more than just theoretically bad.
With a pair of wins in U.S. Open Cup play that saw them score three goals apiece, there’s proof of life in this Austin side. Vazquez has five goals in his last five games (including Open Cup), and Bukari even got on the scoresheet in their latest USOC win over Houston. The underlying numbers suggest that things could start adding up slightly better for the Verde and Black at any moment, but for the sake of the Black and Blue, let’s hope that the USOC bump doesn’t follow them to Saint Paul this weekend.
