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Hello and welcome everybody to The Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell on today's episode.

We're doing some MLS-centric, very specific predictions.

To do so, I'm joined by two lovely friends.

Up first, Joe, my predictions will feature analytics.

Lowry.

Hi, Joe.

I think that's true.

I made most of my predictions yesterday, and honestly, don't remember all of them led out of the top. But generally speaking, that is a safe bet, Taylor Rockwell. Have you forgotten them because they were just, like, so solid that you don't have to think about them anymore? Or have you forgotten them because you weren't fully confident, and now you get to find out if you actually like them.

Yes. Mostly the second one. We'll see. I mean, okay. So you and I talked about this before. Maybe this is a discussion for later on in the show. But just for listeners, this is hard. Like this, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's what people want to hear is me complaining about how hard my job is at the very first minute of a podcast. This was a hard exercise of going through and doing the VSP's mid-season.

I believe this is the first time that we've tried to do this. It is. Certainly the first time I've tried to do this. And I had a harder time with it than I thought we can dive into them later. Yes. I would echo that sentiment. I don't know if our other co-host will with us today is David. I don't know if my predictions are any good goss. That's an actual quote from him from before we started recording. David, how you feeling, buddy? I just have no juice for the things that I chose. Really? So you're already doubting? You're already doubting? It's just like why. Why is that the thing I chose? And now they're written down, so I feel worse about them. Because when you see them in writing, you're like, that is the dumbest thing a person's ever put down in written word. Soon to be laminated, I'm sure. And if it helps at all, whatever you have predicted, I guarantee you, they are not the dumbest predictions that anyone on this show has ever made.

Because specific predicting is really, really difficult. I often talk myself into things that I probably shouldn't and then I end up advocating for people to be like golden boot winners that are never ever going to be. Along the way I sometimes get them right. But that is part of the fun is sort of testing what we know or what we think we know about the different teams in the league. And this is the cop-out. Like this is something that the person who doesn't think their VSP is a right would say. But I will say, it seems to me that the purpose of very specific predictions is less to be right, although there is an element of that, and more to be

close to right. Like, I've always thought the idea of VSPs, which we've almost always used

in like a preview capacity, or just to give people things to watch for. It's to try to distill

big storylines or ideas into something more digestible, right? And hopefully we've done that

with our predictions.

I think I've gotten close with mine.

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