Do Sounders FC really have a Set Play problem?

Really, those are the only 3 players that haven’t scored in a PK situation??? ;)

Or more precisely, not any worse than the rest of the league because those look like some pretty bad numbers. My main problem with the Sounders and corners is that they’re not even forcing those keepers into making saves. We’re not even giving ourselves the opportunity to get lucky.

I can’t find any number for comparison from other leagues, mainly because I think no one loves their statistics like Americans.

Maybe if we learned to score from the corners better than the other teams in this league, we would stop our win-less campaign.

Mike, yes. For the current campaign. Of 24 PK situations, there are only 3 misses/shots saved.

Carlos, tracking down that data for other leagues would be difficult, but of course I will try.

Dave: I find it difficult to see how you can pose the question: Do the Sounders have a set play problem? Provide evidence which shows a corner kick rate of 1.8%, point out a missed penalty kick, and no conversions whatsoever on either indirect or direct free kicks and answer the question: Probably not.
Just because the rest of the league has joined us in our complete inability to be dangerous off of set pieces does not give us a pass on this issue. When a team has 65 (as of 6/17/09 prior to the DC United match) opportunities to score, and squanders 64 of them, it’s a problem. Especially when corner kicks do come our way frequently (6th overall in the MLS).
If the rest of the MLS had poor passing, shooting, or tackling stats we wouldn’t be giving the Sounders a written warning for going with the speed of traffic, dig? The idea is not to match the competition (otherwise we’d just draw a lot of games…oh wait…). I think the goal is to perform better. The Sounders are terrible at corner kicks, free kicks, and 0% on Penalties. Do the Sounders have a set piece problem? Yes.

Dave,
I agree with ‘letouxha. . .’.
Here’s the logic you’ve presented:

Proposition: Sounders have a problem with set pieces.
Evidence 1: Others in this league have a problem with set pieces.
Evidence 2: Sounders do no better than these others.
??Conclusion: Premise is false, Sounders do not have a problem with set pieces.

I think we can all see the flaw in this logic.

Two Things,

1- Sounders have a better than league average number now, as they have scored a second corner since I posted this.

2 – I see that the flaw is that you are judging Sounders by a standard other than the league in which they compete. Step one for an MLS team to be internationally successful is to succeed and be judged versus MLS. Just as the Standard for Fredy Montero should not be Messi, the standard for Sounders FC should not be Arsenal. I will always first measure the Rave Green vs. its competition. I hope that means I get to compare them to FMF ijn the CCL/SL and later against UEFA/CONMEBOL, but for now it is MLS and the US Open Cup.

One would not judge a high school athlete against professionals, until said high schooler proves that they are better than other high schoolers

Fair enough, that I hope for the sounders to present us with some truly spectacular football one day is somewhat implied in my response.
Nonetheless, restricting our attention only to the league in which they compete: doing no [or only slightly] better than the competition does not make the sounders into winners—it makes them into a team that draws.
If our standard is that they win (in the competetion that they are in), then they do indeed have a problem with performances that lead do draws—and stats that show that they are doing no better that the competition does indeed constitute a problem.
On the other hand, I appreciate that you are trying to bring some perspective to the matter. I would perhaps rephrase your answer along these lines:
Q. Do Sounders have a problem with set pieces?
A. Probably not as big of a one as you might have thought.

First of all, Arsenal shouldn’t be considered a standard for anything the Sounders should aspire too. The last thing we want is the Sounders to hang out in mid-table purgatory for years to come.
I don’t mind that you don’t want to compare Fredy Montero to Lionel Messi, but one is clearly better than the other, and I’d imagine that even Fredy’d reckon he’d like to practice and see himself improve on some of those skills in which Messi outshines him.

Based on your stats, the average MLS team has a 2% success rate on corner kicks. Now, while I’m unable to find stats this specific, I would assume that this means there are teams with lower conversion rates and teams with higher conversion rates.
Since I assume, that Sigi and the rest of the boys are taking this whole “being a professional soccer team” thing at least kind of seriously, and vocally at least, have expressed a desire to win the damn league (a desire shared by Seattle’s rabid fanbase, which by the way, is the one statistical category Seattle wins hands together and feet down), we should go ahead and assume that it’s a problem that Seattle isn’t on the top end of the statistical average of corner kicks converted. For, as you can no doubt surmise, teams that hang out in the middle of the pack statistically tend to wind up hanging out together in the middle of the table come trophy time. Kind of like Arsenal, actually.

LeTouxFan, I will update these stats Friday, and see where on the league scale the Sounders rank, but if they are in the upper 3rd they would be more than good.

As for Arsenal, they haven’t finished lower than fourth since 1996. I would be happy with a decade long run like that for Sounders

First of all sir, the name is letouxhasscoredonyou, not LeTouxFan, though considering your stunning perception (as evidenced by your highly verbose and intellectual blogging) you can no doubt call a spade a spade and letouxhasscoredonyou a LeTouxFan. Again, stunning. Also, if you are happy with Arsenal’s decade, then I question your ambtion as a fan of Seattle Sounders FC. I am sure that the other viewers of your site would agree that we will hope for more than one league title in the next ten years.

Once again, I was noticing that we had several opportunities towards the declining moments of this rather disappointing match, to score (or at least, threaten to score) off of corner kicks. However, I was so comforted to know, that our 1.8 percent chance of scoring off of one of these set plays was well within the MLS average. Surprisingly, the 98.2 percent chance of not scoring won out every single time this evening, Damn, and I call myself a gamblin’ man. Good point. It’s not a problem. I digress.

Sear sounderatheartfan and letouxhasscoredonyouatheart:

We must forgive letouxhasscoredonyou for his bile, he gets this way when the football club aresenal is used as an example of nearly anything. instead, we should use Knattspyrnufélagith Víkingur as an example of a European team or the Orlando Pirates in general.

Too bad about the Sounders. We hope that they can move towards the top of the distribution when it comes to corner kicks and set pieces.

Have you been able to calculate the standard error of the mean when it comes to this distribution? Or do we not yet have enough data? I think I can say with confidence that we’d love to see a graph.