Week 4 is when things got wierd in MLS. Bad teams beating good, East beating West and away beating home, with New England of all teams managing to do all 3 of those at the same time. When all was said and done, the standings look a lot less skewed towards the West than they used to,l and there's plenty of teams in surprising positions. There's only one team with a perfect record, also there's only one team left pointless. Sigh.

The week started on Friday night with FC Dallas travelling to D.C United after a tough late loss in Kansas City last week. Nothing tough or late about this one though as D.C hammered them 4-1, with Maicon Santos of all people getting 2 of the goals, the first one very similar to Ryan Johnson's against Seattle. That was D.C's first win of the season, lifting them to 4 points, which is the same that Dallas has now, after consecutive losses. They're almost the most surprisingly disappointing team in the West. Almost.

Saturday saw Toronto FC and Columbus crew, but we don't need to go into that one again, much more fun to look at what happened in New Jersey. After a disappointing start, losing 2 away games, New York have lit it up at home, following up last week's 4-1 victory over Colorado with a 5-2 thumping of Montreal. For all of us who were enjoying seeing Thierry Henry mope his way through the first two games, it's a bit disheartening to see him back to top form, as he repeated his player of the week award after getting a hat trick. The Red Bulls are now in 2nd in the East, annoying to see, but hey, the important thing is that L'Impact lost.

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The MLS season is only 3 weeks old and we only have two teams left without a point as well as only two teams who have collected maximum points. At one end of the table you have Sporting Kasas City (3-0-0) and Seattle Sounders (2-0-0) while the other end features the Philadelphia Union (0-3-0) and our beloved Toronto FC (0-2-0).

The weekend saw New England Revolution, Columbus Crew, Chicago Fire, Chivas USA, and New York Red Bull all pick up their first wins of the young campaign. It was a weekend that finally saw the Eastern Conference teams picking up some points but that was mainly due to two factors. Firstly more intra-conference games, and secondly games between the conferences actually taking place in the East, New England, Kansas City and New York all picking up wins against Western teams on home soil.

Seattle Sounders 2 - 0 Houston Dynamo: The week kicked off with the Dynamo picking up their first defeat of the season as they learned a similar lesson to the one that TFC and Santos have already learned this season. It may be early days but in Seattle's three games at Century Link Field they have looked very impressive. The match itself was fairly even but Seattle made a good five minute stretch count as they netted twice in a short span. The first goal came from on fire David Estrada who had his shot take a kind deflection off of Geoff Cameron and into the goal. Cameron's night only got worse 5 minutes later when he was whistled for a penalty which Brad Evans converted past Tally Hall. The Dynamo tried to fight back but their first two goals allowed of the season were too much to overcome, and it got worse for them with the negative publicity surrounding Chris Clark's verbal abusing of a ball boy.

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Week 2 in the MLS saw the Western Conference continue its dominance over the East. For the second week in a row the only team from the East that took on the West and came away with anything were the Houston Dynamo who took home a second straight 1-0 win on the road.

The real highlight of the weekend came to us from Quebec where the Montreal Impact played their first MLS home match at Olympic Stadium. The Impact put on a decent show for the nearly 59,000 fans that were in attendance and in the end they came away with a hard fought 1-1 draw against the visiting Chicago Fire. For the fans the game was all about partying to celebrate their team finally making it to the top flight of North American soccer but their real celebrations ended up being a bit premature. What the fans thought was the first MLS goal for the club did not end up counting as Justin Braun had his effort correctly ruled out for offside.

The home fans would have to wait until the second half for the Impact to get on the scoreboard and the first goal came thanks to their captain. A well taken header from Davy Arnaud gave the Impact a 1-0 lead just before the hour mark. After that though, the Fire really started to push back and we rewarded for their efforts with an equalizer when Dominic Oduro got in behind the Montreal back line (some suggestions of offside) to level things after 71 minutes. Montreal were a bit unlucky to not steal all three points late in the game as a brilliant strike from Josh Gardner in the 94th minute found the woodwork.

In the end, the draw was probably a fair result for both teams. It was a wide open and fairly sloppy match for both teams as they showed a lot of early season struggles. The Montreal back line was solid once again led by Matteo Ferrari and Tyson Wahl but their midfield and attack were a bit lacking. Even Patrice Bernier and Braun failed to show enough in their two way game for the Impact. For both clubs the draw was their first points on the season so both should be happy with the result.

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Thanks to some generous schedule making, Toronto FC weren't involved, but 16 of 19 clubs had their 'first kick' this weekend, and all those predictions of the West being dominant came true early on as out of the 6 games featuring East v West, 5 were won by Western teams.

That dominance started early on in the first game, the all Canadian affair between Vancouver and Montreal, a game that almost 2.5m (yes, m) Canadians watched at least part of. It was a predictably tough start to life in MLS for the Impact, a goal down within 4 minutes, and never really looking like they'd pull level, before eventually going down to the 2-0 defeat. It certainly wasn't all terrible for them, as they did more or less match Vancouver except for one particular department, the sadly rather crucial one of attacking talent and creativity.

The big question for the Whitecaps coming in was how exactly they'd fit all their forwards into the team. For this match at least, Sebastian Le Toux was up front with Eric Hassli, with Camilo wide right in midfield and Davide Chiumiento out right. It worked out very early, Hassli springing Le Toux behind the defence and Le Toux knocking it past a less than impressive Donovan Ricketts. The second goal, early in the second half really was a thing of beauty, Hassli and Le Toux combining fantastically to put Camilo into the box. He still had plenty of work to do, and with a little help from sloppy defending from Matteo Ferrari he jinked his way into the middle of the box and knocked it past Ricketts. A great advertisement for the Whitecaps new forward line, as they didn't play great, but had the quality to make chances and take them. There'll be plenty of goals for them this year.

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Today SB Nation added their 19th MLS blog which is a very exciting milestone as it means that you now have access to coverage of every team on a single platform. For us the launch of the 19th blog is significant because Mount Royal Soccer is going to be all about the Montreal Impact!

In the past our blog has been lacking any real rival team blog to interact with on SB Nation as the Crew blog, "Massive Report", only just officially joined the network this off-season. Now we have both in place at will be looking to do some more interacting with these "Rival Blogs" in the lead up to the teams playing. With Toronto FC and the Montreal Impact playing almost every other week this season you might just be seeing a fair bit of interaction.

For now though, take a minute and check out the latest blog and let our francophone neighbours feel welcome. Just make sure to remind them that we are still better.

MLS is a professional soccer league and one that has stated its desire to be among the top leagues in the world. So it might just seem odd to you that until now they did not have an sort of established organization for professional referees. In fact, in previous seasons the leagues officials have not actually been designated as professionals. That makes a lot of sense now doesn't it. A professional league not having its own base of professional refs. Yet, we still wonder why the standard of reffing in the league has been so low in previous years.

Now the creation of the Professional Referee Organization, or PRO, is not going to fix that awful officiating over night but it is a key first step. It was really only a matter of time before MLS got together with US Soccer and the CSA to put something in place to improve ref quality. This PRO setup will now oversee the referee program for professional leagues in the United States and Canada.

The following is from the official MLS press release on the new program:

NEW YORK (Tuesday, March 6, 2012) – Today Major League Soccer and the U.S. Soccer Federation announced the formation of the Professional Referee Organization (PRO), an organization that will be responsible for managing the referee program in professional soccer leagues in the United States and Canada.

The creation of PRO is designed to increase the quality of officiating in U.S. and Canadian professional leagues, develop more professional quality officials at a younger age and develop officials who will represent the United States and Canada in FIFA competitions.

Veteran English referee Peter Walton has been named General Manager of PRO. All current U.S. Soccer professional referee staff positions will transition to PRO and report to Walton, who begins his full-time work for PRO on April 2 and will be based in New York City through the conclusion of the MLS season.

U.S. Soccer and MLS will govern and fund the organization, with ongoing collaborative support from the Canadian Soccer Association and other professional leagues. Beginning this year, PRO will manage officials in the MLS and MLS Reserve games, the North American Soccer League, USL PRO and the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.

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It's been a bit of a wait, but TSN has finally released its broadcast schedule for the upcoming Toronto FC and MLS season. All in all, 36 games will be broadcast on either TSN or TSN2, with half of them featuring our beloved Reds -- which means all remaining league matches will likely be found on GOL TV Canada, with Sportsnet hopefully picking up the Champions League games again.

Some other highlights of the schedule include every all-Canadian league matches on the main network, while the seven TFC matches on TSN 2 are all for away matches only.

While some will inevitably say that 18 is still too few -- compare it to the fact that Vancouver will only have 11 matches shown on the TSN networks, while Montreal will only get 12. (Granted, some of the Impact's matches will be on the French equivalent of TSN, RDS), and having a majority of those 18 games on the main network is probably icing on the proverbial cake.

As for GOL TV Canada, while there is no official schedule released (nor has Rogers Sportsnet released their upcoming schedule for the Whitecaps) -- we can only assume that the rest of the matches not shown on the TSN networks will inevitably find their way to that network. And for a small cost, a TFC supporter could enjoy every match televised from the comforts of their own home.

So there's pretty much no excuse to miss a match now -- and even then, there's always the PVR!

Today is the day that you have all been waiting for! Well, not really. Today was the day that MLS released the official roster rules for 2012 and despite there being only a few small changes in there to note it does provide us with a convenient teaching moment. If you are anything like me, and most MLS fans are, you tend be to daunted by the very thought of breaking out the scalpel to try and dissect any of the MLS rules and the roster rules are no different. So I have decided to put aside my own fears and try and help you all understand some of the in's and out's of the MLS just a bit better.

First the changes. The majority of the changes are felt in the way that Designated Player contracts work out this year. For Toronto FC this is important as they carry 3 DP's (Torsten Frings, Danny Koevermans, and Julian De Guzman). This year each DP will count as a maximum of a $350,000 hit against the salary cap. That maximum cap hit will apply to Designated Players who are over the age of 23. Players who are younger than that will fall under the new "Young DP" rules with players 20 and Under counting as $150,000 against the cap and those 21-23 as $200,000.

Continuing with the changes to the Designated Player rules there has been another shift made to encourage teams to go after those "young DPs". If you have a DP under the age of 20 as your third DP would will no longer have to pay that one time $250,000 fee that used to be required to "buy" that third slot.

The final real change to this years Roster Rules is that the summer transfer window has been moved. In the past the window ran from the middle of July until the middle of August but now the league has decided to move it forward and have it run from June 27-July 27 this year. That change is presumably to allow the league to attract more players who are out of contract as most European based players have their contracts expire in early June.

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