For instance, when San Jose was on a hot streak towards the end of last season, they were still stuck around 12th on the list and covered it up with trash like, "Pretty depressing results for the Quakes this past weekend. Obvious must-win against Colorado on Wednesday night," and, "If either Colorado or LA lose this weekend, San Jose will be one point out of the playoffs and even on games played. With games against Colorado and LA coming up. Parity rules."
In contrast, PremierLeague.com provides the scores of last six games instead of trying to rank its teams. So, I decided to compare the power rankings with form (PPG from their last five games) and see which one comes closer to the next five games PPG. I decided to take one week from the beginning and end of the year to see if it makes any difference.
The average difference is the average of all MLS teams' differences between expected results(PPG of Power rankings rank) and the actual result(next five games PPG). For example, if FC Dallas is first in the power rankings but only ranks 13th in PPG from their next five games, their difference would be twelve. The averages are totaled up for all MLS teams and averaged to figure out the average difference.
| Week | Power Rankings average difference | Last 5 PPG average difference |
|---|---|---|
| 13 | 6.05 | 5.2 |
| 31 | 5 | 4.5 |
Although slightly, the PPG still outpreforms power rankings. Probably if the strength of schedule is also factored in, the results will become even more precise, possibly an interesting topic to explore in the future.
If interested, here is a link to the raw data
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YGe93Dr2P9Jy2WVHyC3Y6ztEZbPA-I7nxM4541kk6fg/edit#gid=0
