Mythbusting: Do Revs Need to do More to Get Vrioni Involved?

But Actually More Like Math-busting!

© J. Alexander Dolan

The New England Revolution continue to occupy last place in the league table. Even with a road win against Nashville, New England has collected just 10 points in 14 matches.

This is undoubtedly very bad. Objectively bad. Even, as I recently wrote, potentially historically bad (though the recent win does give them a bit of breathing room).

You can count me among the people who, before the season, couldn’t fathom things going this way. New England occupied a position near the top of the league about a year ago. They had a great roster, on paper. Former MVP Carles Gil lead the charge ahead of a good mix of capable veterans and rising youngsters.

A lot of that roster is still here.

How then did a roster that sat in 2nd place in the league last June find themselves in a seemingly never-ending downward spiral? Did they overperform at the beginning of last year? Was Djordje Petrovic more important than we thought? Was Brandon Bye more important than we thought? Is it coaching? Is it tactics? Locker-room vibes?

Truth be told, it’s likely some combination of all of those things. But, if you ask Caleb Porter, there’s seemingly one thing that isn’t a part of the problem.

"I think when you watch that, you see what we see, those type of goals, on the training ground. We see the skill and the finishing quality that he has."

That’s Porter talking about Giacomo Vrioni back in March after he scored his first goal in about 8 months against LD Alajuelense.

Revs Hoping That Giacomo Vrioni Continues To Find Goals

Through 12 starts, the DP Center Forward has managed just 2 goals and 1 assist in league play. That’s… Well, that’s pretty low. Only 1 pure forward (per FBRef classification) has scored fewer goals while playing more minutes, NYCFCs Monsef Bakrar.

Porter sees those numbers as more of a failing of his teammates than Vrioni.

He had this to say after a 4-2 road loss at NYRB.

"You guys might miss these moments, but if Esmir rolls him in, he's in on a breakaway, we go up 2-1 ... Those don't register as shots. Those don't show up on expected goals. So, those are things I see that you don't where you might go, if you watched it, go, 'Wow he's in a great spot there.’ We don't find him though. He's in a great spot, we don't find him."

The implication is that Vrioni’s stats would look better if the team did a better job getting him the ball.

“We don’t find him”.

Maybe he’s right.

Caleb Porter Credits Giacomo Vrioni's Mentality

I’m in my 30s. I watched Mythbusters when I was growing up — a show dedicated to testing the unsubstantiated and assumed.

So in that spirit, let’s look at the claim that the Revolution ‘don’t find’ Giacomo Vrioni as often as they should.

Does Vrioni get the ball less than average?

At this point of the season, we are dealing with a bit of an uneven sample size, when comparing players. We’re far enough in that some players will have 16 full matches of minutes played, but also early enough that injury absences account for a significant percentage of available minutes.

Even still, I wanted to see how Vrioni’s involvement compared to other MLS forwards. In order to compare apples to apples, I’ve chosen to include only players listed as “FW” on FBRef and who have played at least 360 minutes. I’ve also normalized touches to a per-90 basis.

Of the 60 qualifying forwards, none had a lower touches/90 total then Giacomo Vrioni. His 21.2 touches per 90 were the fewest of any forward in MLS with at least 360 minutes. That would seem to support the idea that he’s less involved than his peers.

That is further supported by his pass receptions per 90. With just 15 pass receptions per 90, Vrioni has the second-fewest of any forward in MLS with at least 360 minutes.

It doesn’t answer the why, but it does lend credence to the idea that Vrioni isn’t seeing as much of the ball as you might expect.

Are his teammates to blame?

This part of the question is really the toughest to answer with stats. Sometimes Vrioni may be open and his teammates don’t pass to him, sometimes they may pass to him and he doesn’t get to the ball, and sometimes he isn’t the right choice for a pass at all.

And none of those situations are easily measured by stats. There are, however, a few ways we can use numbers to make inferences about why he’s relatively uninvolved.

Vrioni’s Historical Touches/90

The first is to compare Vrioni’s involvement over time.

A quick caveat, I wasn’t able to track down touch totals for his best season - 2021 with WSG Tirol in Austria.

However, comparing his other seasons (with a minimum of 90 minutes played) he has remained fairly consistent. He ranged from a high of 27.5 touches per 90 (in about 250 minutes for NE in 2022) to a low of 21.2 this season - with stints with Venezia and Citadella falling in between. All of those would fall well short of the MLS average 36.8 touches/90 for forwards.

This may indicate that lower volume is a feature of his style of play. It certainly could be that his teammates have failed to find him as often as they should, across teams and leagues.

It could, but it doesn’t fit as neatly into that theory.

New England’s Passes into the Penalty Area

Another thing we could look at is whether or not the Revs are making passes into the areas that you would expect Vrioni to inhabit - as a center forward.

With Vrioni dominating the minutes at striker for New England, an avoidance of passing into - say - the penalty area could indicate that they aren’t looking for him when they get into attacking positions.

That… doesn’t appear to be the case. In fact, New England attempts the 4th most passes into the penalty area per match.

You might argue that away as an artifact of Porter’s system. Passes into the penalty area happen from the wide areas, where a winger might be a more likely recipient. Fair enough.

But that doesn’t explain away the fact that the Revs attempt the 3rd most crosses into the penalty area per 90 of any team so far this year. Now those crosses, again. could be targeting anyone. But I think conventional wisdom indicates that the center forward is the most common target for those types of crosses.

Comparisons to Other New England Center Forwards

Last year New England had a relatively healthy rotation, throughout the year, of Giacomo Vrioni, Gustavo Bou, and Bobby Wood.

If you watched the team last year, it may not be particularly surprising that Vrioni brings up the rear in terms of involvement.

Gustavo Bou led the way with 43.9 touches per 90 in his matches for New England last season. Bobby Wood contributed 27.9 touches per 90, while Vrioni managed 24.0 per 90.

Bou and Wood saw more passes last season as well, with Bou again leading the charge with 31.3 receptions per 90. Bobby Wood had 21.9 receptions per 90 while Vrioni only attained 16.5 per 90.

And it’s gotten worse since then for Vrioni, who has received just 15.1 passes per 90 in 2024. That’s with New England attempting roughly 12% more passes this season than last.

What would change if things were different?

By now, we’ve established that there is some truth behind the idea that Giacomo Vrioni is less involved than his Striker-peers in MLS.

Is that an issue? Not necessarily.

Different players have different playstyles and play in different tactical setups. There does, however, seem to be a weakly positive correlation between how many passes the primary forward receives and the number of goals a team scores.

This chart looks at every team’s primary forward, whether that’s a lone center forward or the primary (most minutes) part of a 2 or 3 forward setup. The plot shows each player’s share of their team’s receptions vs the number of goals per game that team has scored. You want your center forwards to be involved. Or at the very least, effective.

What Porter seemed to hint at during that interview was that Vrioni was, but for poor decision-making, a pass away from better stats. And perhaps that’s often the case for the Albanian international.

I’m not sure I buy it.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that is the case. Let’s envision a scenario where Vrioni’s involvement rises to the average level for an MLS forward. Would that add a significant number of goals to his tally?

This chart represents the number of goals forwards score compared to their number of touches per 90

Each point represents an MLS forward, and you can think of a line beginning at the origin and extending through their data point as their goals per touch pace. Vrioni is represented here by the red line, while the dashed lines represent the highest pace, average, and lowest pace (among players who have scored a goal).

Fun fact, that ‘low-pace’ watermark belongs to Nacho Gil. Isn’t 2024 fun?!

Vrioni produces goals at a very slightly below average pace, per touch. If we were to increase his total touches (19.2 per 90) to the league average (34.8 per 90) his goals output would increase to about 3.6 goals on the year. While it’s nearly double, it’s far from inspiring stuff from a Designated Player with ~1,000 minutes played.

Conclusions

I honestly don’t intend for this to seem like a hit piece against Vrioni. He’s a good player - but he has his strengths and his weaknesses just like everyone. The purpose here was to examine the idea that the team doesn’t do enough to find Vrioni when he gets into good spots — as Caleb Porter implied.

While that’s hard to really measure, it’s clear that Vrioni sees less of the ball than any MLS forward with at least ~4 games played. Meanwhile, his teammates actually appear to have increased their total passing output and are near the top of the league in terms of passes into the penalty area.

Porter assessed that missed passing opportunities don’t show up in the stats. And that a possible interpretation of Vrioni’s lack of statistical dominance is that the Revs, as a team, are missing on a high number of potential attacks due to poor decision-making.

But there are a myriad of possible explanations for the data. Maybe Vrioni isn’t actually getting into good spots as often as Porter seems to think. Maybe he is but passes in his direction aren’t connecting. It could even be due to his teammates’ confidence in him.

Here’s a scenario where Vrioni is in behind the defense with a clear chance on goal. He just can’t convert. That’s not the first similar occurrence this season either.

Trust is earned.

New England could be finding more ways to involve Vrioni in the attack, but he also needs to prove he’s capable of doing something with the ball once he gets it.