Armchair Analyst: On the radar for Week 13 of the 2015 MLS season

We are now 119 matches into the 2015 season, and there have been only 275 goals scored. That's 2.31 goals per game, the lowest – by far – in league history, with the previous record clocking in at 2.46 in 2010. It's also nearly a 20 percent drop from last year's 2.86 goals per game.

Way back in the 2011 preseason, Sigi Schmid kind of frustratedly called MLS "a counterattacking league." He was right at the time, though the next three years saw some big changes in how teams used and valued the ball. Counterattacking gave way to attacking, and teams were smarter about where they wanted to turn you over and how to convert that into possession, and then that into goals.

This season there's no correlation between having the ball and finding the net:

Thanks to Chris Rifer of Stumptown Footy for inceptioning me into thinking about this on the latest Soccer Made in PDX.

Here are a few more things I'm keeping an eye on this weekend:

1. 3 The Hard Way

If, following the 2010 season, the counterattack was MLS orthodoxy, then let's take a minute to praise Peter Vermes and Sporting KC. His high pressure teams were often inelegant, but absolutely revolutionary on these shores, and laid the blueprint for a lot of what we've seen from other successful teams (Jay Heaps' New England teams and the Jesse Marsch version of RBNY come to mind).

Sporting's press hasn't quite been the same over the last 12 months following the double-loss of Uri Rosell (sold to Sporting CP) and Chance Myers (in the last stages of coming back from tearing his Achilles). They've had to reconfigure on the fly, a process that's at times been painful, but, as of late, has mostly been very promising.

They jacked up the Revs to the tune of 4-2 in the middle of last week, then turned around and went to Seattle to pitch a weekend shutout. After months and months of floundering, Sporting's really good again. And they can beat you multiple ways:

On Friday night against FC Dallas (9 pm ET; UniMas | UDN | UnivisionDeportes.com) I'd expect to see the "front foot" KC team. They won't press quite as high or hard as the 2011-through-2013 group did, but with guys like Benny Feilhaber, Roger Espinoza, Krisztian Nemeth, Dom Dwyer and Graham Zusi, they're a little more cultured and able to be a little more patient.

I'll also be watching... If there's one team in MLS as good at shape-shifting as Sporting, you know who it is? FC Dallas. They can win on the run or through the build-up, or just by pummeling you with set pieces. When I think about what the next orthodoxy might be for MLS teams, guys like Feilhaber and Mauro Diaz come to mind because they allow you a level of flexibility via their quality on the ball and picking the last pass.

True, midfield No. 10s are about to be in in a big, big way.

2. It's the New Style

While much of the league was adjusting to new looks over the last half decade, Schmid kept his Sounders relatively stable and forward facing. Whether their overall possession was down around 48 percent (as it was in 2012) or well over 52 percent (as it was in 2013), Seattle pretty much looked the same.

So yes, we know that possession percentage, without context, is largely meaningless. But there's an undeniable level of flow, symmetry and patience to how the Sounders are playing in 2015 as opposed to years past. And part of it is their newfound comfort building from the back via Brad Evans and Tyrone Mears:

While a lot of the focus has been on Evans' learning curve without the ball – the losses to San Jose and Columbus are particularly memorable – he's unquestionably made the Sounders a better, more well-rounded team with it. He and Mears are making it impossible to press Seattle, and are saving both Ozzie Alonso and Gonzalo Pineda from a lot of the running they've had to do in the past. 

All of that makes it interesting that Marsch has promised to bring his high pressure ethos with him on Sunday evening (5 pm ET; ESPN2) at CenturyLink Field. The Red Bulls have been mostly really good this year, but pressing a full-strength Seattle team is a different prospect than it was in May of 2014.

I'll also be watching...Luis Robles doesn't get enough love considering he's one of the league's best goalkeepers. He has pulled off some remarkable saves this season, and he'll need to have a few more in store if RBNY are going to get points in Seattle.

3. Beastie Revolution

One of the principles of the modern game, which is being applied almost across the board, is dropping a central midfielder deep to the back line to start possession, which then splits the central defenders out wide and allows both fullbacks to push up the flanks. This is how a 4-4-2 or a 4-2-3-1 suddenly looks like a 3-4-3 or even a 3-3-4. Understand that soccer is a fluid game, so saying someone is a "midfielder" or that a team is playing a "3-5-2" actually denotes nothing more than a solid, but still relatively unspecific shorthand for said player's responsibilities or said team's general shape.

In other words: if you can have a central midfielder drop back and do this...

Then you've provided yourself some flexibility in how and where you attack. Jermaine Jones struggled mightily throughout May, but he was a beast on both sides of the ball last weekend against D.C. United, and that Pirlo-esque pass is one of the best examples of how he can flip the game in an instant.

Jones, however, needs protection in central midfield, and that's where Scott Caldwell comes in. Caldwell's game is subtle and un-flashy, and he doesn't have the ability to hit a long-ball like Jones or, say, Wil Trapp (they were college teammates at Akron, by the way – how's that for a decent college midfield?). What he does do is get into the right spots to be an easy outlet when the Revs have the ball, and cover for Jones' forays at all times.

He is a security blanket, and has my vote for "Most Improved Midfielder" so far in 2015. He'll want to put to bed any lingering memories of last December's subpar MLS Cup performance when the LA Galaxy dared him to beat them in the final third, and he repeatedly couldn't.

Sunday's nightcap at Foxborough (7 pm ET; Fox Sports 1) is a shot at a little bit of redemption for Caldwell, and another chance for Jones to show that yes, Jurgen, he's a midfielder.

I'll also be watching... We know that when the Galaxy cross the country, they tend to play for a point. And we know that New England have been vulnerable on set pieces. Omar comin'.

The silly season is about to start, which means we'll be hearing lots of stories about new players coming in to solve big problems. However, I pretty firmly believe that most teams have the solutions to their problems at hand, and are just ignoring them:

Don't be that.

Happy weekend, everyone.