Contents
The Numbers
| Moneyline (Regular Time) | |||
| Home | Draw | Away | |
| DraftKings | +160 | +220 | +165 |
| 38.5% | 31.3% | 37.7% | |
| Insights |
38.1% | 26.3% | 35.6% |
| Over/Under (Regular Time) | |||
| O 2.5 | U 2.5 | BTTS | |
| DraftKings | -110 | -115 | -155 |
| 52.4% | 53.5% | 60.8% | |
| Insights |
48.5% | 51.5% | 53.2% |
What The Book Sees
The line suggests that Seattle is roughly 16 xGD better than San Jose over the course of a full season.
What Insights Sees
The BI model projects Seattle as the 4th best team in MLS and San Jose as the 24th best team in MLS.
What we reasonably expect...
Seattle will play out of a 4-2-3-1 shape with an approach that’s primarily dictated by the players. With a savvy collection of veterans in every line, Seattle’s sharp off-ball movement and effective rotations (mixed with their top-end talent) make them very hard to stop. They’ll defend in a fairly safe 4-4-2 block.
San Jose will likely use a 4-3-3 shape (though they recently experimented with a three-at-the-back shape based on need) in this game, mixing aggressive vertical movement from their wingers with patient buildup from their deeper players. They’ve really struggled to create chances this season, landing at the edge of the bottom-third of MLS teams in xG per game.
The high-leverage variable will likely be…
San Jose’s defensive discipline on set pieces.
So far this year, no team in MLS has allowed more xG from set pieces than San Jose. They’re also giving up 31% of their xG to set pieces every game, on average. That’s at least 2% higher than any other team in the league this season. Seattle, for their part, are a fairly average set piece team this year. Still, they scored two of their three goals in their last game against Vancouver directly from set pieces. If San Jose aren’t disciplined in those dead ball moments, they’ll lose an edge in this game.