MLS Fantasy Boss A Fantasy MLS Community
By: The Fantasy Physician
Week 17 (KB) Big Question – When should I factor in home field advantage in player selections?
Well, it’s been a while. We all took some off for the World Cup (ok, if you were a sicko like me, you played some World Cup Fantasy). Then MLS got going again, but the landscape was strange, which kept me sidelined from an article-writing standpoint as I reoriented. There are a lot of new players in the league (eg Antoine Griezmann), some fantasy titans back in the league after sojourns away (eg Kai Wagner), and some stalwarts are gone (eg Sebastian Berhalter). Certain teams have improved (eg Columbus) and certain powerhouses are struggling (eg Vancouver). Before we could get our bearings, it was already time for another break – this time for Phase 1 of the 2026 Leagues Cup. With this weekend’s matches, we are ready to settle in for the second half of the 2026 MLS Regular Season and a steady diet of the lotus-flower that is MLS Fantasy.
Earlier this year, I did an article on the long-noted phenomenon of home field advantage in MLS and the importance of it in fantasy managers’ considerations. The next week, we looked at expected goals (xG) and expected goals against (xGA) as useful metrics in assessing matchups, a pre-requisite for making good player selections.
This week we build on those understanding by combining them into still-more sophisticated matchup analysis. Just how do teams’ XG and xGA change at home and on the road?
Examining expected goals (xG) and expected goals allowed (xGA) in teams playing home and away
How much is hidden from the human eye when we fail to scroll down a little further? During the break, I was visiting my favorite source for MLS xG data – Footy Stats. Looking a little further down the page, I discovered that the site has xG and xGA data broken down by teams when playing at home and on the road. With 18 or so matches played, the N for home or away matches seemed big enough to matter. From those numbers, I constructed a table that might reveal whether certain teams do better at home or away (or worse or just the same). Here’s what I came up with:
Data from Footy Stats (accessed 8-8-2026): MP=Matches Played, xG=Expected Goals, xGA=Expected Goals Against, GF = Goals For, GA = Goals Against, Green highlighting: favorable for taking players at home, Pink highlighting: favorable for targeting when away, Blue highlighting: teams that do better on the road then at home
First, let’s soak in some of the overall league characteristics by looking at the bottom line averages. Currently xG and xGA across all teams and locations average 1.49 (and are perforce the same number). Actual goals for and goals against are 1.61, suggesting that Footy Stats xG data methods may be missing something. Home xG on average is 1.65 and away is 1.34, implying that teams do roughly 20% better in the attack at home. Conversely (and again these numbers should be about equal; rounding errors are the source of minor discrepancy), they defend 20% worse away than at home.
But we don’t pick abstract players that reflect the overall averages; we pick actual players playing at home or away. Where teams depart from these averages makes for some interesting fantasy possibilities.
Let’s consider some extreme examples. Playing at home, the San Jose Earthquakes have an xG of 2.05; on the road that drops to 1.12. That whopping 0.93 difference looks like something we can exploit. How about xGA? Austin FC has an xGA of 1.40 at home (not far from the league average for home xGA of 1.34). But when Austin packs its bags and flies out, their average defense turns into a porous 2.42 expected goals allowed per match. Do we want to target that porosity every chance we can get? Of course, we do! Here are a couple of paradoxical extremes (in blue on the table): FC Dallas and Houston Dynamo generate more xG on the road than at home. LAFC and Miami allow fewer expected goals on the road. These “paradoxical” squads might make for some interesting differentials. Looking further into the table, there are some teams that generate about the same xG and xGA wherever they are playing, so perhaps we can neglect homeness and awayness for those teams and focus on other factors.
Most weeks, either here or in the #Odds-Ranks-Stats channel on the MLS Fantasy Boss Discord (and if you haven’t gotten the message, that Discord is the best place to interact with and learn from the leaders in MLS Fantasy), I post a simple matchup analysis that looks first at home teams’ xG and away teams’ xGA as a sum, which I call my “attacking tiers” (top table) and then next at the sum of the home teams’ xGA and away teams’ xG, which I call my “defending tiers” (bottom table). I arbitrarily divide these into best (in green), middle (in yellow), and worst (in red). Notably, these xG and xGA numbers to date are averages for the full season.
Here are this week’s:
I will often choose attackers from the green zone teams in the top table and defenders from the bottom one (fuller advice: good defensive choices may come from teams on both lists).
After discovering the data broken down by away and home xG and xGA in the netherworld of the Footy Stats site (we all sometimes have to descend to gain true knowledge), I redid the table, using the home teams’ season long averages at home and the away teams’ season long average on the road. Here are those tables:
What do we see? Ordinally speaking, many teams remain in their general tiers. A big exception is San Jose, a team that has struggled of late but that has big relative strength at home, moving up to the top tier in both attacking and defending. The advantages that Chicago and Colorado appear to have in the standard analysis are intensified.
Player recommendations for Week 17
In addition to recommendations that stem from these xG charts, attentive managers will want to see what teams and players wore themselves down in the preliminary phase of the Leagues Cup tournament over the last two weeks. Eighteen MLS teams participated; the other twelve did not. However, MLS decided to have all non-participants play only each other in the regular season matches this weekend, while the eighteen participants are each also playing another team that participated in Leagues Cup. While there’s no way then to seize on a well-rested non-participant playing participants, within the group of Leagues Cup teams, there are certain teams whose starters will have logged more minutes, most notably teams that were competitive for qualification to the knockout stage so put top players out in 3 matches over the last two weeks. Look to the MLSFB Discord for additional information on that angle.
FORWARDS
Lewandowski (scoring goals, playing 90 min now) every way I analyze attacking matchups, Chicago is on top, but may have to watch minutes from LC)
- Navarro (up against SKC – enough said – looking at teams that outperform at home (and some that don’t). Colorado (and RSL) outperform at home
Griezmann (Orlando vs Cincinatti looks like a goal fest … neither defend)
Bouanga or Son: LAFC at home and their post-WC form has been excellent
Werner or Judd – I was not considering them originally, but their big xG numbers at home changed my mind.
Guilavogui or Solans (cheaper): RSL v Minnesota also a good attacking matchup and RSL home numbers are also strong
Messi…not a great matchup at NSH, coming back from Dad’s funeral; he’s still the number one player in the game
Guilherme – has been on fire, Galaxy has been bad since WC, but numbers do not favor
Musa – could consider away at Austin (FCD xG is paradoxically higher away than home) and Austin is focused on Leagues Cup and has been bad otherwise
MIDFIELDERS
Evander (see Griezmann)
Zinckernagel (see Lewandowski)
Aaronson (good matchups, good home field advantage)
Luna (good matchups, good home field advantage – maybe even more “the man” creatively with Gozo gone)
Beau Leroux – San Jose attack at home.
Guilherme is a midfielder in Sofascore, and could be considered there especially
DEFENDERS
Loic Williams, Rob Holding (since fantasy darling Herrington is moving to Hull City) – would consider double stack or triple stack of Colorado players against SKC
Gutman, Elliott, Waterman (although Portland improved, these guys could get attacking/defending returns)
Wagner (blistering fantasy returns since his own homecoming to MLS)
Zimmerman (xG numbers like the matchup, and he farms bonus points)
Woledzi – one of the best defenders in the game. Note that despite the home field advantage, I am fading Nashville attackers against Miami. I would reconsider that if Miami’s Micael, who sustained an injury in Leagues Cup, appears to still be out, but I am still considering Woledzi on defense.
Porteous/Segura – it remains tricky picking LAFC defenders because there are multiple choices at each position. Segura, playing some centerback and then sometimes out of position as a midfielder seems a good bet. Porteous starts most MLS matches.
GOALKEEPERS
Hansen (Colorado)- my top choice for clean sheet, playing against SKC; others are Hugo Lloris and Montreal’s Breza (a good budget choice in what looks like a low-scoring game, Montreal vs DC United)
Goalkeepers who might do well based on getting a lot of actions in Kickbase:
Bond (Houston), Crepeau (Orlando), and Blake (Philadelphia)
CAPTAIN
Zinckernagel, Griezmann, maybe Evander
I am glad to be back home with you, picking players for the weekend ahead!
The “Fantasy Physician” is Ron Birnbaum, @Half Century City on Discord
The “Fantasy Therapist” is Mike Leister, @Kenobi on Discord
The “Fantasy Meteorologist” is Asher Malaschak, @Storminator on Discord
The “Fantasy Gastroenterologist” is Christian Ward, @xward on Discord
