MLS Week 27 Notes

1) Various records to watch for: Eric Avila has made 16 subs without a start. Needs four more in the final five games to break the record, or three to tie. The worst Supporters Shield winners in MLS history were the 2004 Columbus Crew at 1.633 PPG. Somebody will need to finish with 50 points to surpass them. This year's Crew would need 7 points in the final five games to do that. New York needs one away point in their final three matches to avoid having the worst road record ever. Currently it's held by 2005 RSL at 0.125 PPG (2 points in 16 matches). The Red Bulls also need 2 more points to avoid having their worst team ever. Also, San Jose needs 7 points (one per game) to avoid their worst record ever, too. 2) The end of the regular season is near. That's always my favorite time to blog, since we get to finally see just how this year's players and teams stack up historically. However, this year there's also an interesting milestone coming up before season is over. MLS had played 2,283 regular season games entering the season. This year, they'll play a total of 225, which means that the 9th to last regular season game will be the league's 2,500th. That match will be Houston vs Los Angeles on October 18th, a Sunday afternoon. 3) Who are the most tenured MLS players by team? Two recent trades have caused two teams to have new tenure titleholders. The first would be San Jose, who dealt Ryan Cochrane back to Houston. Jason Hernandez is now the team's most tenured player. Even though both were taken in the 2007 expansion draft, Cochrane was taken earlier so therefore had been with the team ever so slightly longer. The second recent change is in Dallas, who traded Drew Moor to Colorado. Goalkeeper Dario Sala is now the team's most tenured player, and also the most recently acquired of all the non-expansion team most tenured players. Who holds the title for each team? Here's a list with the date each was acquired: Chicago C.J. Brown, 2/1/98. Chivas USA Sacha Kljestan, 1/20/06. Colorado Pablo Mastroeni, 1/11/02. Columbus Frankie Hejduk, 3/7/03. DC United Ben Olsen, 1/28/98. FC Dallas Dario Sala, 9/15/05. Houston Dynamo Wade Barrett Ricardo Clark Brian Ching Brad Davis Brian Mullan Pat Onstad Eddie Robinson Craig Waibel All on 12/15/05, when the team moved to Houston. Kansas City Davy Arnaud, 1/10/02. Los Angeles Alan Gordon, 8/31/04. New England Jay Heaps, 6/20/01. New York Seth Stammler, 1/16/04. Real Salt Lake Andy Williams, 11/19/04. San Jose Jason Hernandez, 11/21/07. Seattle Sebastien Le Toux, 5/7/08. Toronto Jim Brennan, 9/8/06. If you're interesting in seeing who the most tenured players were in June 2005, click here. That's one of the first posts I made on this blog. Olsen's the only player still standing from then.