Armchair Analyst: What I'll be watching for in Week 7 of the 2015 season | Three Things

In case you missed this past Monday's episode of ExtraTime Radio, I'm going to link it for you HERE. The theme of the show was this: Nobody can really claim with any certainty to know who's bad, who's good, and who's heading in which direction.

A week ago Vancouver were flying high; then they were brought crashing down to earth by taking one point from two games. FC Dallas were in the catbird's seat before the 'Caps, but they've been beaten down to the tune of 7-1 over their last 180 minutes. One of the league's two unbeaten clubs – Real Salt Lake – are in the midst of a painful tactical and formation switch that's seen them score, through five games, just two run-of-play goals.

Meanwhile, the team that sits dead last is actually playing for the continental championship next week.

It's played havoc with the Power Rankings, which we should probably just light on fire at this point.

Let's focus, though, on the team at the top:

1. Too Much Love

Admit it, Red Bulls fans: Seeing your team atop the aforementioned Power rankings and unbeaten into mid-April – including taking four points from a home-and-home with hated rivals D.C. United – has you nervous.

The Curse of Caricola is long dead, but RBNY still feel on some level like a star-crossed franchise, and I have a huge and emotionally fragile group of friends back in the Metro area who are patiently waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even when it's good, it feels like it's about to be bad. And right now, it's very good, because the Red Bulls are following through on Jesse Marsch's plan to press high, hard and often:

This ability to put defenders under duress will be especially handy on Friday night when RBNY host the San Jose Earthquakes (7 pm ET; UniMás), a team that have struggled mightily playing from the back this season.

2. Get Innocuous!

Lee Nguyen was the breakout player of 2014 (apologies to Dom Dwyer), an MVP finalist who by some metrics had a stronger claim on the trophy than eventual winner Robbie Keane. Nguyen carried New England's attack for most of the year, scoring 18 goals and adding five assists.

That "five assists" is not a wildly impressive number, but given the finishing problems the rest of the Revs' attackers had last season, it's not surprising that Nguyen's assist total was so low. "Assists" are a noisy stat because there are so many variables – the big one, obviously, being the quality of the guy who's supposed to be doing the finishing.

Until Charlie Davies caught fire late in the regular season and into the playoffs, New England's center forwards were pretty poor at putting the ball into the net. The same could not be said of Keane's teammates, or Obafemi Marins', or Thierry Henry's, or any of the other elite attacking players of last year.

A better metric of Nguyen's creative prowess is "chances created from open play," a stat that Opta tracks. Last season he was tied for fourth in the league with 62, behind only Landon Donovan (84), Javier Morales (73) and Diego Valeri (63). This season Nguyen is tied for seventh on the Revs, having created only two open play chances all season. Just as worrying is the fact that his passing accuracy in the final third has plummeted from over 70 percent to just under 64 percent.

It's fair to say that Nguyen is in a slump:

Here's the happy part for New England: They play at the Philadelphia Union on Sunday evening (5 pm ET; ESPN2). Philly aren't as bad as their record indicates, but even when they win, they concede a ton of possession in their own third and give up a chances.

3. Great Release

Back in 2013, when Caleb Porter took his first MLS bows, he talked frequently of the style and culture at Real Salt Lake – how it was a model for smaller-market teams and how their tactical approach (value the ball, set the tempo) was the path forward for his team.

Jason Kreis was, of course, the architect of that era in Utah. He's now moved onto NYCFC, who've aped those "glory days" RSL teams in function if not necessarily form. The diamond might be gone for good or just on hold, but Kreis' team is still all about the ball. They are near the bottom of the league in both long balls hit per 90 minutes and average distance per pass (the total distance the ball travels per game divided by the total number of passes).

Portland are now on the opposite side of the ledger on both those metrics, and Porter has, thanks to injuries and backline frustrations, drastically changed the way his team plays. You can see the way the attacking philosophies of the two coaches have changed thanks to this chart below, which I ganked from Alex Olshansky's Tempo-Free Soccer debut (read it HERE for a deeper look at the numbers and what they mean):

Bear in mind that numbers aren't everything. But ahead of Sunday night's encounter between NYCFC and Portland at Yankee Stadium (7 pm ET; FOX Sports 1), it's worth noting the stylistic divergence of the two teams.

It's the weekend. Try to have a little fun.