Three or so games in I created a scatter plot on MLS fouls per game to see if Sounders were getting fouled more than the norm. We are now 7/34 through the season and Sounders are receiving almost 7 more fouls a game than the league average.

I added a box plot for fouls suffered and committed, if you click in the gray you can see the median, upper/lower quartile and whiskers.

The data is proposing a chicken v egg question to me. Four of our 7 opponents are the top 4 in the league in fouls committed per game. Two of the top 4 in 2013 (Sporting and Chivas) are also in the top 4 so far in 2014.

Question to the community, do you think this is because the en vogue strategy is to kick the hell out of us and hope for the best, or has the fixture list been unkind and we'll start to see fouls suffered regress closer to the mean after playing VAN, COL, SJ (how are they not committing more fouls???).

Also - could this mean that the flood of goals we've seen is only the beginning, if we're going to see more open play the rest of the year, could we see more goals too?