Quakes have internal questions to answer after shambolic season progresses

PHOTO: Lyndsay Radnedge/LRadiCal Photography  Minutes, hours, days and months have passed by and the San Jose Earthquakes are demonstrating that they haven’t hit rock bottom. But it might very well be that for structural reasons they never will. They can never become…

Is Zone 14 defending the biggest issue facing the San Jose Earthquakes?

PHOTO: ISI Photos Following a disheartening California Clasico loss to the Zlatan-less LA Galaxy, 1-0, on Friday night courtesy of an out-of-the-box strike from Romain Alessandrini and a stellar save amidst a less-than-stellar season from deposed goalkeeper David Bingham, last Sunday…

Pre-Post-Mortem for the 2018 San Jose Earthquakes

PHOTO: ISI Photos  By Dan Mazin The San Jose Earthquakes have pulled 9 points from 12 matches, which by any metric, is a tire fire in a dumpster fire covered in fresh elephant manure. Were this any other league and…

Early Season Statistical Observations

Sports analytics don’t tell the whole story, particularly in soccer, a game that is notoriously hard to quantify, with 11 players on each team, low sample size of successes (goals), and about a million confounding variables. I do, however, like…

Quakes head into BC Palace looking to preserve winning ways

PHOTO: San Jose Earthquakes  The Earthquakes entered the friendly confines of Minnesota and left with their second win—against Minnesota United, and for the year. It was a strange match, one in which San Jose looked dominant for long stretches but…

San Jose will try to remember what winning feels like at Minnesota

  PHOTO: ISI Photos There’s a good rule about playing Portland at your home stadium: if you don’t want to be victimized by a late Diego Valeri free kick, don’t put yourself in a position where you’re tied in the…

What Expected Goals tells us about the 2018 Quakes so far

The Expected Goals (xG) metric is the all the rage in soccer analytics right now. To some, xG is the Swiss army knife of metrics: it can be used for everything from predicting game outcomes, to setting fantasy lineups, to…

An ode to Jon Busch, a San Jose Earthquakes great

PHOTO: San Jose Earthquakes  When the news broke out about Jon Busch’s impending retirement, I was immediately flooded with thoughts, memories, and nostalgia of one of the San Jose Earthquakes greatest players ever. I know that’s quite a bold statement,…

Quick Salary Report Thoughts

It’s my favorite time of year: the MLS Players Union salary guide release day! I thought I would put down a couple thoughts about what we learned about the San Jose Earthquakes based on this release: I had previously estimated…

San Jose needs a win. Here’s how they can do it

There are coaches in soccer who only practice transition: switching quickly from the attack to putting together a defense, or from winning the ball to pressing the attack. It seems clear, seven games in, that San Jose is not one…