NWSL Power Ranking Averages - Wk 11

8 of 10 sites published this week, one may be dropped soon (Pro Soccer Talk) since they haven’t posted any rankings since week 3. Chicago Red Stars and Houston Dash switch places, as do Seattle Reign and Orlando Pride.

Now on to the rankings. As always, if you come across a site that I’ve not included please send me their link!

Sites Used

• Five Thirty Eight (season projected points)
• NWSL
• Reddit NWSL - No ranking for week 10 (will likely go up late tonight or early Fri.)
• Philly Soccer Page
• MLS Multiplex
• Backline Soccer
• Pro Soccer USA - No ranking wk 4-11
• Stumptown Footy
• RSL Soapbox (my rankings, will include below).
• Sports Club Stats (win shield %)

You may notice the list includes several ‘analytic’ sites; they serve to function as a stable counterbalance to the rest which are based more on personal opinions, and those done by ‘team’ blogs’. There are also included sites that some will argue are really ‘prediction rankings’ - but in reality isn’t that what a Power Ranking is (see the quote at the top).

All the averages use the Olympic method (I.E. Truncated Mean value) of dropping the highest and lowest scores, and then averaging the rest to reduce bias.

• Highest Standard Deviation: Portland Thorns at 1.16
• Lowest Standard Deviation: 3 teams at 0

• Best of the week: FiveThirtyEight with a perfect score.
• Worst of the week: Philly Soccer Page with 1 off by 3.

Site Bias

This table shows how far each team is from average listed by site. Negatives are better (higher on table), positives are worse (lower on table) than the season average from all sites. The further off a site is for each team may indicate how strongly biased they are.

RSL Soapbox Power Rankings

My rankings are a point-based system that rewards or punishes anything outside of ‘normal’. Normal being home team winning, and away team losing, goals scored also play a part. Wins or ties are better for road teams because it is not expected.