Columbus Crew not only team in East to load up for MLS stretch run | Michael Arace
The standings were packed Nordecke-tight as the MLS season slide-tackled into its 24th weekend.
The top seven teams will make the playoffs. The top four will get a home playoff game. Here we go.
Traditionally, about 1.4 points per game is good enough to get a team above the playoff bar. Prior to kickoffs Saturday, the Eastern Conference view looked like this:
Nine teams, from fourth through 12th place, were averaging between 1.14 and 1.13 points and 13th-place Toronto was at 1.0 ppg.
Look out for Toronto. They loaded up on the flanks this summer. They're poised to charge.
Columbus Crew: Lack of toughness a problem for Porter's team | Michael Arace
The season is more than two-thirds complete and intra-conference games – six-pointers – are coming with a rush. The standings will crash and reform, week after week, like a Jenga tower. The stretch drive is here.
The Crew are in the thick of it. They were 7-6-9 heading into their game against New York City FC, the defending MLS Cup champions, at the new Crew Stadium Saturday night. They had 30 points in 22 games (a 1.36 average).
Beginning with the NYCFC game, the Crew had 12 games remaining. Five of them are against conference opponents. Four are against teams above them in the standings as of Saturday morning. Another five are against teams that were within three points of them.
The next three months are going to be like the quarter mile of the Kentucky Derby, when talent, training and jockeying are exposed.
The Crew addressed what they saw as their biggest need when they purchased striker Cucho Hernandez from Watford of the English Premier League. The transfer fee, $10.5 million, set a franchise record. The acquisition was one of the most significant deals to be consummated during the MLS secondary transfer window, which closed Friday.
Hernandez had an immediate impact with four goals in his first three games as the Crew extended an unbeaten streak to nine games. The streak was snapped when the Crew melted down late and lost 2-1 to Montreal in Columbus Wednesday night.
It was one of those six-point games. And it hurt. It put a hot light on the Crew’s middling play at home – they were 4-4-3 at Lower.com heading into Saturday’s game – and their inability to generate any real momentum.
Yes, the nine-game unbeaten streak is a franchise record. But this is a team that has yet to win two games in a row in league play this season. This is a team that hasn’t posted back-to-back shutouts since September 2020, when they began rolling downhill toward an MLS Cup championship.
From the time they lifted that trophy to the kickoff against NYCFC Saturday night, their regular-season record was 20-19-17.
We have seen that Hernandez and attacking mid Lucas Zelarayan have the ability to lift their teammates, which is part of their job descriptions. But I’m going to pick a nit here and say that the wing play, while improved, needs to be better – and if I’m a Crew fan, I would have embraced the acquisition of another outside piece before the summer transfer window closed.
Other teams did not sit still.
Let us leave aside the big acquisitions out West – LAFC, for one, imported a galaxy (in the disambiguated sense) of stars headlined by Gareth Bale – and remain focused on the East. And let us begin in Cincinnati, where new-ish GM Chris Albrect is bringing stability to what had been a volatile, and futile, operation.
Cincy’s erstwhile futility parked them in the No. 1 spot in the Allocation Order, which is to say they had first dibs on transfers. Albrecht thrice traded from No. 1 down to No. 2 and collected $325,000 in allocation money in the deals. He had moved back to No. 1 when the man he wanted – U.S. international center back Matt Miazga, a throwaway for Chelsea – became available on a free transfer. He signed Miazga, and addressed Cincy’s most pressing positional need, without using a DP slot.
Brilliant.
Albrecht also added depth at forward when he traded, with the Philadelphia Union, for Sergio Santos.
Miami is similarly climbing out (dis-Interring?) of a hole. The acquisitions of Spanish attacking midfielder Alejandro Pozuelo and French striker Corentin Jean represent aggressive moves to transform their offense. (Gonzalo Higuain is now coming off the bench as a super sub.)
Heading into the weekend, the Crew was one point ahead of Cincinnati and one ahead of Miami. Here come the six-pointers:
The Crew will play at Cincinnati on Aug. 27, home against Miami Aug. 30 and at Miami Sept. 9.
Those are but a few of the six-point games the Black & Gold will face over the last eight weeks of the regular season, which ends with Decision Day on Oct. 9.
Are they tough enough?
Last year, the Crew buried themselves at midsummer, when they lost six in a row and eight of 10. This garish stretch rendered their 6-2-2 stretch run virtually moot. They did not give themselves a chance to defend their MLS title.
This year, the Crew are in the middle of what promises to be a volatile stretch run. They need to show they have some mettle. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they need to win more than one game in a row.
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Coverage of Saturday's match vs. New York City, on Dispatch.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Can Columbus Crew get MLS playoff spot?
