Power Ranking Averages - Week 6 (4/14/22)

14 sites publishing, FCD jump up, NER crash hard.

14 sites published this week. Soccer By Ives put on drop notice as they have not published since week 2.

Sites Used

• Jeff Sagarin
• Five Thirty Eight (Proj. points)
• Who Scored
• ESPN
• Massey
• Sonny Moore Rankings
• MLS
• MLS Fantasy Boss - No ranking since wk 3.
• Sports Club Stats - No ranking wk 6.
• Freeborg Power Index
• Coach & Crew
• Betting Odds
• Waking the Red
• Verses Sports Simulator
• Simmons Ratings
• US Soccer Players (monthly) - No ranking wk 6.
• Boston Sports Wave (NER discord)
• Soccer By Ives - No ranking since wk 2. (Drop Notice)

You may notice the inclusion of ‘analytic’ sites; they serve to function as a ‘control group’ to the rest which are based on personal opinions. There are also sites included that some will argue are ‘prediction rankings’ - but that also is a form of Power Ranking is (see the quote at the top) since it uses algorithms to calculate a team’s likely final position.

Bias for or against certain teams are sometimes an unfortunate feature of power rankings. It can be based on their analytic formula, or the raters preference. In some cases the bias can become extreme - If you feel a site got the ratings wrong for your team I invite you to contact them regarding it.

I will typically only remove sites for two reasons.

1. Duplicating / copying ratings from another source on the list.
2. Failure to update for 6 consecutive weeks. Previous ratings will not be removed, but new ones may or may not be added. I will still periodically check them to see if they have resumed.

All the averages use the Olympic method (I.E. Truncated Mean value) of dropping the highest and lowest scores, and then averaging the rest to reduce bias.

The full spreadsheeet is here.

• Highest Standard Deviation: New England Revolution 6.23
• Lowest Standard Deviation: Philadelphia Union 0.43
• Biggest Rise: FC Dallas up 8.
• Biggest Fall: New England Revolution down 7.

Site Bias

All sites are going to have bias, whether conscious (blogs) or due to analytic calculation (based on past performance). This section lets you see the extent that sites are biased for/against teams. Negative totals (-) are bias FOR, positive numbers (+) are bias AGAINST.

This bias list is based on Season Average and not weekly ranking.