ACFC 2-2 Portland Thorns
The magic that imbued Angel City the last time Portland came to visit wasn’t on hand Monday. I think that this would have been an entertaining game for neutrals, but it was pretty frustrating for both Angel City and Thorns fans. Both teams needed a win. Angel City had lost their last two and the Thorns had lost their last four games, but had to settle for a draw. My feeling is that Portland will be happier with the point. They were without Sugita and Smith, and their head coach was out sick too, leaving an interim to supervise the implantation of a new formation. The absence of Smith, especially, cannot be overstated. She’s an MVP caliber player, but Portland still were able to generate a number of chances without her.
Team Comparisons
In addition to the 2-2 scoreline, the xG was also level at 1.6 for both teams. As Angel City had more shots, 15 to 13, that means that Portland also generated slightly better chances, on average. The Thorns also did a better job keeping their shots on target, with 7 compared to 4 for Angel City. I think that the xG is a little bit misleading, though, because Emslie’s goal was a .8 xG shot, meaning that one chance accounted for half of Angel City’s xG. Looking at Shots that were over .1 xG, Angel City only had 3, Emslie’s goal and two more that were both after the 88’. Portland, on the other hand, had 5. Angel City won the Possession battle, 56%-44%.
The 9 and 10 Conundrum
One of the big problems for Angel City, for me, is that I think our two best attackers are Emslie and Alyssa, but they both play so wide, that they’re not in great positions to score themselves. I think that they both do an excellent job of creating opportunities, but there often isn’t anybody in the middle to finish off the chances. In recent games, the two players that have been playing the No 9 and 10 roles are Leroux and Dougherty Howard, and at a very surface level, it doesn’t look like they’ve been too bad. Leroux has 6 Goals, which puts her in a tie for 9th best in the league. Dougherty Howard has a Goal and 2 Assists since the Olympic break, and 12 Shot Creating Actions in those 5 games. But the thing is, neither of them seems to be making a consistent impact.
In this match, Dougherty Howard had only 16 Touches in the Attacking Third, and only 1 in the box. Leroux had only 11 Touches in the Attacking Third and 3 in the box. Just for comparison, Fuller also had 3 Touches in the box in only 24 minutes (we’ll talk more about her later), while Hammond had 5.
The Passing Network above is from Statsbomb, and I got it from Beyond the Vaudivillian Cane, who does a good weekly roundup of the NWSL. Passing Networks can be kind of overwhelming if you’re not familiar with them, but the two things that really stood out to me, is that Leroux’s average position is almost the same as Hammond’s, while Dougherty Howard is playing very, very wide for a Central Attacking Midfielder. First, regarding Leroux, I’m not inherently against a striker dropping deep. I think it’s often a good strategy. But when it’s working, I think it looks like this: the striker drops into midfield to receive the pass, while the wingers make overlapping runs from the outside into the central channels. The striker then has to make the forward pass to the winger in stride, which should generate a clear chance, or at least get the defenders moving laterally, and open up some holes. But Leroux isn’t doing that. She drops deep (the majority of her passes are in the middle third), but the total number of progressive yards from her passes in the entire match was 22. That’s over the course of 90 minutes, when you put all of Leroux’s passes put together, the ball only got 22 yards closer to the opposing goal (and back passes only count for 0 here, if you’re wondering). Dougherty Howard isn’t actually much better. She only had 42 total yards.
In terms of shots, they only had 1 between the two of them. In terms of Shot Creating Actions, Dougherty Howard had 2, while Leroux had 0. So the players playing as our No 9 and No 10 are not shooting, not getting the ball in the box, and not progressing the ball to other players in scoring positions instead. We can’t say whether the responsibility for this falls on the players on the coaches without knowing what the players are instructed to do, but these are the roles that typically generate the most production, and instead it’s almost non-existent. Again, looking at that Passing Network, we see other players doing their jobs. Alyssa had a fantastic passing value, and there were good marks from Zelem and Curry as well. But everything seems to grind to halt in central attacking areas.
Red is Off Target, Green is On Target, and Blue is a Goal. From the NWSL.
The image above shows the positions of all of Angel City’s shots from Monday. As you can see, the only kind of central shots are the two from outside the box, Megan Reid’s overhead shot off target, and Emslie’s goal. Now, obviously you can score from somewhere other than the area around the penalty spot, but your chances are dramatically better. On most of these shots, I feel like any NWSL caliber goalkeeper will be able to cover that angle.
Formations
I don’t honestly expect Becki Tweed to change anything at this point in the season, but seeing the formation that Portland used, and my observations on the No 9 and 10 roles, got me thinking about a new formation. Namely, do we need both a No 9 and 10, if this is the production we get from them? I would be really curious to see a 3-4-3 or a 3-5-2 used. I feel like this suits our players in a number of ways, but primarily defensively. The way that I envision this, Reid would be the central defender, with Gorden in the center right, and Curry center left. This would allow Gorden and Curry to both be more aggressive in attacking the ball, knowing that there was always someone behind them. Curry, especially, is suited to this. I think that she’s a good fullback, but I think that she could be an amazing part of a back three. The role suits her defensive stability and her ability to start the attack. I think that Vignola, Spencer, and Gisele are all closer to natural wingbacks and this would give them extra license to go forward. This might also facilitate playing out of the back, as their would be an additional player to receive a pass. And it would allow Curry and Vignola to be on the field at the same time.
I think that it would help Hammond and Zelem to have the extra defender behind them, and allow them to stay a little more centrally. They wouldn’t have to cover so much of the field. If we go with the 3-5-2, I’d personally add Fuller as the other midfielder, but no matter who it is, I think that this allows the midfielders to stay more central.
Up top, I think that Emslie and Alyssa could play together if we’re only going for two attackers. If it’s the 3-4-3, I’d hope that they could stay a little more central, and allow the wingbacks to provide the width.
I’d not really thought about formations too much before, but now it strikes me as odd. The 4-2-3-1 doesn’t always lend itself to playing possession football. If that is the desired style, maybe there’s a better formation that can facilitate that. Again, I don’t think that anything is going to change, but it’s a fun thought exercise to think about how that might look with our personnel.
Kennedy Fuller
Fuller has had kind of an odd season. She was a starter in the opening match, and played almost the entirety of each of the first three games. Since the Olympic break, she has only played 147 out of a possible 450 minutes. It seems pretty clear that Dougherty Howard is now the preferred choice, but I thought that Fuller actually had a pretty great performance against Portland and it was worth highlighting. She had 2 shots, one blocked and one off target, worth a combined .2 xG, which was the second highest mark on the team behind Emslie. She had 2 Shot Creating Actions, good for 4th on the team, and equal to Dougherty Howard. xA was .1, which was still good for third on the team. She had as many touches in the opposition box as Leroux (3). She had more Progressive Distance on her carries than Leroux and Dougherty Howard combined (17 yards), and her Progressive Passes were also more than Leroux (32 yards). And of course, she did all of this in only 24 minutes of playing time. Most of those numbers aren’t huge, on their own, but in that context of happening in only 24 minutes, plus the fact that she outperformed other players that played significantly longer in the same metrics, makes it worth mentioning. I think that she has the potential to become a really great player and I hope that she stays on this trajectory.
Goals
10’ Angel City - This starts with Curry winning the ball in midfield on Angel City’s left. She wins the ball cleanly, and then gets it to Dougherty Howard in space. She has the time to turn and pick her pass, and makes the forward pass to Alyssa on the left. Alyssa is not even in the attacking third when she receives the ball, and she still has a lot of work to do. Earlier in the season, I feel like she would have driven right at the defender, but in this case she takes the outside, though still trying to get as direct a route to goal as possible. Once she gets Hubly’s feet moving, she cuts inside to her right, which gives her the space to take her shot. She can go either near post or far post, so Arnold can’t cheat. She opts for the near side, putting the ball just in off the inside of the post. Unstoppable shot. At the end of the year, I want to go back and tally how all of Angel City’s goals are scored, because I feel like we score more in transition, even though the emphasis is on possession. But in this case, it only took two passes from the time Angel City won the ball, to it ending up in the back of the net. Who needs possession?
49’ Portland Thorns - This starts with a giveaway from Curry when she tries to make the switch under pressure. It’s intercepted by Müller on Angel City’s right. The ball is intended for Spencer, who I think has to realize that she’s not getting to the ball first and try to contain Müller instead. But Müller gets past Spencer with her first touch. Zelem comes across, but Müller sends to ball to Sinclair in the middle before Zelem can get there, and crucially, Müller continues her run. Both Reid and Gorden turn in toward Sinclair, who has options. She goes back to Müller, who puts a one-touch cross in to Weaver, who slots it home. Was Weaver offside? It looks like it in the replay, but it is very close. VAR did take a look and they gave it, so there’s not a lot more we can ask for. Regardless of that decision, I think that this was a preventable goal. Spencer getting beat cleanly means that Zelem gets pulled out of position. Zelem coming across means that Sinclair is open. Gorden and Reid are not able to challenge the ball carrier or occupy a passing lane. As each domino falls, the Angel City defense progressively crumbles. And it’s always been my opinion that you can’t count on a kneecap being offside to prevent a goal.
64’ Portland Thorn - I’ll start this play with the controversial part. Portland has possession, and gets the ball over to Reyna Reyes on Angel City’s left. Alyssa is challenging her, Reyes spins out of the pressure, and it looks like she catches Alyssa in the face with her hand. Alyssa goes down, and looks to get caught by Reyes’ heel when she does.. I know that Becki Tweed was really mad about this when she spoke in the press conference, but it doesn’t look to me like there was cause to stop the play. There wasn’t any force in the initial contact with the arm, and I don’t think that the ref could have seen the contact with the heel, as both player’s bodies blocked that view. This wasn’t like a head-to-head collision, and I don’t think that there was any immediate reason to think that a concussion was likely. If the roles were reversed, and it was a Portland player who went down, I’d say play on. So back to the goal, after her spin, Reyes has time and space coming down Portland’s right channel. Dougherty Howard and Hammond are defending, but again, not challenging and not taking away the passing lanes. Reyes splits them with a pass to Sinclair, who’s dropped off into the halfspace. After the pass, Reyes underlaps Sinclair, into the center right channel, and both Dougherty Howard and Hammond follow her. During all of this, Kelli Hubly has found herself pretty far up the field, which is something that can happen when you have three centerbacks. She’s basically trying to be an outlet for Reyes, but by the time that Sinclair gets the ball, Hubly is all the way in the right channel, which creates a 2 v 1 against Curry. Curry has to challenge Sinclair, but that means that Hubly is wide open, and has time to pick out her cross. There’s not actually that many targets in the box, but rather than put it into the mixer, Hubly sends it across to Moultrie who is arriving late. Angel City’s entire defense has collapsed on goal, but only Spencer is actually marking a player, in this case Reilyn Turner. Moultrie has time to settle the ball and buries her shot just inside the post. To me this goal is classic overload-one-side-of-the-pitch-in-order-to-open-up-space-on-the-opposite-side. My biggest issue on this goal is letting Portland get the 2 v 1 against Curry. I think that Dougherty Howard needs to recognize that Alyssa isn’t there to get back, and that she needs to cover that area herself. But there really are too many Angel City players ball watching on this sequence. Also, it is slightly amusing to me that Sinclair, the Canadian icon, gets hockey assists on both goals.
76’ Angel City - This goal comes from a set piece. Zelem takes the corner, and puts it into the mixer. It’s headed clear, but Spencer collects the ball at the corner of the box on Angel City’s left. She drives to the endline, past Obaze, and puts in a cross toward the far post. Arnold gets her finger tips onto it, and tips the ball, but it gets past her. Emslie arrives late at the far post to bundle it home. Seriously, this goal is the embodiment of commitment on Emslie’s part. She goes full steam to attack that ball. Three things that I want to say about this: 1) I think this is 100% a goalkeeping error on Arnold. She should have tipped the ball over for another corner. 2) I always advocate for the late run, but that’s especially true here. Because Emslie is arriving late, she can adjust her run when Arnold tips the ball, and can still arrive with enough force to just bull her way past Becky Sauerbrunn, which is no easy task. And 3) This goal couldn’t have happened before, because Emslie was taking the corners. Now that Zelem has joined, and is taking set pieces, it allows Emslie to get into scoring positions, like this. Really, though, great work and great will power by Spencer and Emslie on this goal, and an absolute shame that Spencer doesn’t get credited with an assist. Also, I somehow missed that Emslie is now the All-Time Top Goalscorer in Angel City history. She passed McCaskill with her penalty against Gotham on July 6th. Congratulations to Claire, and please, let’s get her a contract extension so she can build on that record!
Conclusions
My focus at this point is about building for the future, whether we make the playoffs or not. Portland is not having a great season, but I think there is a lesson to be learned from them. For a long time, Sinclair was the star of that team. She is still an important part of it, but they have clearly moved on, and Smith, Moultrie, and Weaver are now the players that the attack is built for, and Sinclair is supporting them. I think that Angel City is putting Leroux in the best scoring positions, and Alyssa and Emslie are supporting her. There is also the vocal part of the fanbase that says just to wait for Christen Press to save the day. Press and Leroux have both had amazing careers, and are still good players, but I think that the attack should be built around Alyssa and Emslie and play to their strengths. This game showed some of the pieces that Angel City has to build around, and also showed some of the holes that are still in the roster. Similarly, on the coaching side, I think that Tweed and her staff deserve a lot of credit for the fact that the team is sticking together, and even in a game like this, when we’re down 2-1, the players still fight back. But I also think that there is room for growth on the tactical side. There didn’t seem to be any clear ideas of how to break down the 5-at-the-back that Portland used, and going back to the Seattle game, I thought that we were outmaneuvered by Laura Harvey. Each of the past three years, Angel City has looked like a brand new team in the first game of the year. This time, I think that we should start laying a foundation for Year 4 right now.
The next game is Friday, the 27th at 7p, against the Washington Spirit at BMO and on Amazon Prime.
All Stats are from FB Ref, and graphics are from StatsBomb and the NWSL.