Throughout the season, the Montreal Impact have outperformed their underlying numbers. They flew up the Eastern standings because they played more games, they squeezed out undeserving victories with late goals and scrappy defending, they got results without ever playing very well, which is not very sustainable.
As plenty of people highlighted earlier in the year, unless if their performances improved, their lacking play was always going to catch up with them. And over the past few weeks, that is precisely what has happened.
They have won just one of their last eight league matches, now have a -11 goal difference, — incidentally, goal difference is a far more accurate barometer for a team’s quality rather than the number of points, wins or other, more basic, result-based statistics — which betters only three teams in all MLS, and have now slipped to within one point of dropping out of the playoff places.