ACFC Attacking Midfielders
Happy New Year! We’re getting right into it with the offseason analysis of the ACFC Attacking Midfielders. This article will cover Meggie Dougherty Howard, Kennedy Fuller, and Clarisse Le Bihan.
Meggie Dougherty Howard
As I mentioned in the last article, it’s a little bit hard to classify what Dougherty Howard’s main position was. She spent time as more of a No 8 at times, and also as more of a No 10. Ultimately, I put her her as an attacking midfielder because she consistently had another midfielder behind her, usually Hammond. So even when she was playing as a No 8, she had a little more freedom to attack. And when she was playing as a No 10, she often had an average field position higher than whoever was playing striker. So it’s not totally fair to compare her to other central midfielder, but it’s also not totally fair to compare her to other attacking midfielders.
Along those same lines, there’s also the question of who she was replacing? Angel City didn’t renew the contracts of both Dani Weatherholt and Savannah McCaskill. Because Dougherty Howard played in both positions, it’s hard to say exactly who she was replacing, and in the end, I think that it’s somewhere in between. In short, her offensive numbers look better than Weatherholt’s but not as good as McCaskill’s.
In all, she played 18 matches with 14 starts for 1,165 minutes. Those were her most minutes since 2021 with the Pride. Angel City acquired her for $40,000 right before the draft.
Passing
Dougherty Howard is in the lower level of NWSL midfielders in terms of passing, but the important point there is that FBRef groups her with midfielders, rather than attacking midfielders. She’s in the 34th percentile of Pass Attempts and the 36th percentile of Pass Completion Percentage. Amongst Angel City’s Attacking Midfielders, Dougherty Howard has 5 fewer Pass Attempts than Le Bihan, but 16.1 more than Fuller. Her 73.4% Pass Completion Percentage is better than the other two.
Looking at the various passing distances, Dougherty Howard was best at Short Passes (84.2 %, 49th percentile). Medium Passes were the lowest (73.6%, 16th percentile), while Long Passes weren’t much better (43.3%, 19th percentile). Her 4.33 Progressive Passes and .93 Key Passes were both in the 55th percentile. Through Balls were a highlight: her .31 per 90 is in the 92nd percentile.
Categories like Passes into the Final Third (30th percentile) and Passes into the Penalty Area (64th percentile) are both skewed by the time that Dougherty Howard played as an Attacking Midfielder, in my opinion. My feeling is she’s probably closer to the 50th percentile of the similar position for each respective group.
Offensive Contributions
Dougherty Howard took 17 shots (9 On Target) and scored 1 Goal, from 1.5 xG. That Shot Total puts her 6th on the team and in the 61st percentile of midfielders. Her 52.9% rate of Shots on Target is in the 98th percentile, though, and third best on Angel City. her .09 NPxG per Shot is in the 67th percentile, so I think that we can say that Dougherty Howard was a little unlucky to score only 1 time.
In terms of playmaking, Dougherty Howard had 2 Assists, or .15 per 90 (86th percentile) from 1.9 xAG and 1.2 xA. Both Assists, incidentally, went to Alyssa Thompson. She had 27 SCAs or 2.09 per 90, 51st percentile. Maybe a point of concern is that 20 of those 27 SCAs came from Live Ball Passes, meaning that she was only in the 43rd percentile of midfielders in that respect. I guess another way of looking at it is that she generated Shots through other actions, but I think ideally, you want to see your midfielders generating chances through passing, and then adding other chances through things like Shots.
Dougherty Howard does have a very high number of Goal Contributing Actions, .39 per 90 and in the 87th percentile). Amongst Angel City’s Top 5 players in GCAs, Dougherty Howard has the highest ratio of GCAs to SCAs, 18.67%. Overall, Dougherty Howard was 5th on the team in Total GCAs with 5. Interestingly, 3 of those 5 GCAs came in the final 10 games after the Olympic Break, as did 21 of her 27 SCAs. Her Goal and both Assists also took place in this same time frame. Part of this is that she did have an injury in the early part of the season, but it is after the Olympic break that she really started to play in a more advanced role, plus that is when Alyssa really caught fire.
As I mentioned earlier, these numbers put her somewhere between the contributions of Weatherholt and McCaskill. Last season, Weatherholt had 0G-1A, and McCaskill had 4G-3A. If we look at xG+xAG per 90, it goes McCaskill (.4), Dougherty Howard (.26), and Weatherholt (.1). Of course, that’s Dougherty Howard from 2024 and McCaskill and Weatherholt from 2023. I feel like this is important because it isn’t clear how this team was built. I’d argued at the end of last season that McCaskill wasn’t the answer, and I think that it was the right move to let her go to San Diego. But instead of upgrading the position, we brought in a player that doesn’t fit the profile. Or maybe the plan was for Rodríguez to play that spot, but as I also discussed, that never really made sense either.
Possession
None of Dougherty Howard’s Possession stats really stand out. 31st percentile in Touches (48.9), 45th percentile in Take-Ons Attempted (1.08), 48th percentile in Successful Take On Percentage (50%), 58th percentile in Carries (28.89), and 36th percentile in Progressive Carries. She is in the 77th percentile of Progressive Passes received, which supports my case that she was usually playing in a more advanced role, but she actually doesn’t have any credited Carries into the Penalty Area. She was pretty middle-of-the-pack in Miscontrols, but had the 4th highest rate of Times Being Dispossesed. She was 87th percentile in Fouls Drawn, but 14th percentile in Fouls Committed. I’m not going to put her Team xG +/- in a seperate section, as there’s not a lot that stands out to me. For her time on the pitch, Dougherty Howard’s Team xG Differential was -3.8 (or -.29 per 90), and her On Pitch vs Off Pitch Team xG per 90 was -.05. All of these were between 15th and 17th on the team, so not the best or the worst, just in the middle.
Additional Thoughts
Dougherty Howard, to me, is the epitome of the replacement level midfielder. This isn’t a bad thing; it means that she’s right at the standard of what you should expect from an NWSL midfielder. But it also means that you should be able to acquire a midfielder of that caliber at any point in the season. I’m not sure that she was an upgrade over resigning Dani Weatherholt, or fellow free-agents Cari Roccarro or Bianca St. Georges. I also don’t know that any of these players would have commanded a much higher salary, but signing Dougherty Howard also required a $40,000 transfer fee, and I don’t think that they would have been asking for $40,000 more in salary. They are all in that same level of veteran NWSL player, but none of them are star players. That $40,000 takes on more significance due to the salary cap violations, but I also think that if Angel City had waited until later-February or March, they could have gotten Dougherty Howard for the same amount if they felt strongly that they needed her. But by signing her in January, before the draft even took place, they took away options.
I also feel like this is another case of not putting a player in a spot to succeed. I think that Dougherty Howard is a good depth player, but just isn’t at the level required to be a starter for a top team. She’s been in the league for awhile, and I don’t think that she ever has looked like a star player. Overall, I don’t think that Dougherty Howard is bad, or even that she had a bad season, but she shouldn’t be leading off a discussion of Angel City Attacking Midfielders. And adding in her transfer fee makes her season even less successful in my eyes, but through no fault of her own. Her contract expired at the end of this season, and Angel City has decided to move on. I think that’s probably the right call, and I fully expect her to be picked up by another NWSL team. She’s good enough for just about anybody’s roster, and she’ll bring quality experience with her.
Kennedy Fuller
Fuller joined just before the season started, signing through the U18 mechanism. She started in the first match of the season, and in total played 979 minutes from 19 matches with 10 starts, despite missing time away with the USYNT for the U17 World Cup. I don’t believe that any other 17 year old played as many minutes as Fuller did in 2024, and even Olivia Moultrie only played about 100 more minutes in her Age 17 season, despite the fact that it was her third year in the NWSL at that point.
Possession
I want to start with Possession, because I think that it affects the way that we should view everything else about Fuller’s Season. Specifically, she averaged 34.4 Touches per 90, which was 2nd to last on Angel City. It also puts her in only the 9th percentile when compared to other NWSL Attacking Midfielders and Wingers. She also only averaged 12 Touches in the Attacking Third, which puts her in the 6th percentile. And for comparison, Dougherty Howard averaged 49.1 Touches per 90, while Le Bihan had 56.7.
Similarly, Fuller averaged 17.2 Carries per 90, which again, is 2nd to last on the team, and only in the 6th percentile. She also almost never attempted Take-Ons, only .92 per 90 (6th percentile), but she wasn’t bad when she did, averaging a 40% Success Rate (42nd percentile). Of the 98.92 Total Carry Yards that she averaged, 41.09 were Progressive Yards. So still very low (7th percentile), but it does show that when she carries the ball, it tends to be very direct. Miscontrols (1.2 per 90) and Times Dispossessed (1.1 per 90) are both very good, 98th and 83rd percentile respectively.
Offensive Contributions
Fuller had 1 Goal - 0 Assists for the season, but I think that’s far from the whole story. She was 7th overall on ACFC in NPxG+xAG with 2.5, so it’s more than fair to think that she should have earned more Goal Contributions. Fuller had 20 Shots (6 On Target, 30%) and was 4th on the team in both Shots and Shots per 90, as well as 5th in xG (1.7). Compared to the other attacking midfielders in the league, her 1.84 Shots per 90 is 29th percentile, while her xG is in the 20th percentile.
In terms of playmaking, her .08 xAG and .12 xA per 90 are in the 19th and 34th percentiles. It’s interesting to me that her xA is higher than her xAG, as that doesn’t always happen, and implies that there were plenty of occasions where Fuller completed the pass, but her teammate didn’t get off a shot.
This trend of actual contributions not living up to expectations also continues with SCAs and GCAs, where Fuller has 23 SCAs, but only 1 GCA. Even at ACFC’s average of 9.8% of SCAs turning into a goal, we’d expect to see Fuller with more than 2 GCAs. She is 12th on the team in SCAs per 90 (2.12), but 6 of those players had less than 500 minutes. Compared to the league, Fuller was in the 26th percentile of Attacking Midfielders in SCAs.
I thought that Fuller did pretty well with the Touches that she did have, so I was curious what would happen if I divided Shot Creating Actions by Touches. The problem was who is a good player for comparison? Most attacking midfielders are very good. Not every team plays with one, so generally a coach is only going to deploy this formation if they feel they have the players to execute it properly. I ended up picking Jaedyn Shaw, Savannah Demelo, Savannah McCaskill, and Dougherty Howard for an ACFC comparison. It went like this: Jaedyn Shaw 8.55%, Demelo 7.42%, McCaskill 7.95%, Dougherty Howard 2.32%, Fuller 6.13%. It’s kind of unfair, I think, to compare Fuller to these players. Demelo and Shaw are both always in consideration for the USWNT, and McCaskill and Dougherty Howard both have vastly more experience. Even Shaw, despite being so young, was completing her third NWSL season. Still, I think that Fuller’s numbers compare very well. Fuller had 375 Touches in 2024, playing 41.8% of Angel City’s minutes. If she had even gotten up to Shaw’s 620 Touches, whether that was from more minutes, or more Touches per Game, Fuller would have been on track for 46 SCAs, which would have been the 3rd most on ACFC, behind Alyssa and Emslie.
Passing
Not surprisingly, Fuller is pretty low in terms of Passing Volume. Her 23.07 Pass Attempts per 90 is only in the 9th percentile, while her Pass Completion Percentage is a little better, in the 26th percentile (64.5%). Her Short Passing Percentage is actually right around league average, 79.4% and 52nd percentile. Medium and Long Passing Completion Percentage are both very low, 59.4% and 23.5% (3rd and 2nd percentile), but she only had 69 Medium Passes Attempts and 17 Long Passes Attempts all season, which represents 34.26% of her Total Pass Attempts. Progressive Passes (1.84) are only 13th percentile and Progressive Passes Received (3.03) are only 2nd percentile. Key Passes are also very low, .74 per 90 and 9th percentile.
xG +/-
And just to quickly talk about Fuller’s Team xG Differential per 90, which is -.2 and is the 10th best on the team. Her On-Field vs Off-Field Team xG Differential per 90 is +.11, which is 11th best. As usual, the outlier trio of Anderson, Nielsen, and Henry are part of the 10 ahead of her.
Additional Thoughts
I thought that Fuller played well beyond her age, and for her first season as a professional. I watched a couple of the U-17 World Cup games that she played in with the USYNT, though, and I think that she was always more involved in that team, and she did finish that tournament with the Silver Boot. I’m not entirely sure how to explain the low level of involvement that Fuller had. My best guess is that she’s probably been the best player, or close to it, for most of her life, and her teammates then were probably always trying to get her the ball. That’s no longer the case, but I’d guess that up until this point, getting the ball hasn’t been something that she needed to work on. I also don’t think that Angel City’s tactical structure really did a lot to help her, with a common emphasis on bringing the ball up the wings.
That ratio of Shot Creating Actions to Touches does support my feeling that when Fuller gets the ball, she usually creates something. The positive On-Field vs Off-Field Team xG Differential also suggests that the team is better with Fuller on the pitch. I think that she definitely shows signs of being a top attacking midfielder. Historically, that’s probably not going to happen until she’s in her 20’s, although there are exceptions, of course. But we need to remember that even other rookies, like Croix Bethune, are also five years older than Fuller.
For me, this season showed that Fuller has a lot of promise, but also still has a lot to develop. It all comes back to volume for me; the more she can touch the ball, the more influence she’ll have in a match. I think that the team could do more to get her involved, but also I think that she can do a better job of being available for a pass. She’s under contract for two more years, and I think that it’s going to be important for whoever the new coach is to continue her development. She definitely has the ability to become a top player.
Clarisse Le Bihan
Long time readers know that I’m a fan of Le Bihan, and I really thought that this was going to be her breakout year for Angel City. Of all the disappointments from this season, and they are many, this was one of the biggest for me. This is also another case where something was happening behind the scenes, but I’m not sure that we’ll ever know what it was. During the last offseason, Le Bihan was given a contract extension, but when the season started, she wasn’t included at all. Initially she wasn’t even on the bench, and then she made the matchday squad, but didn’t play. She finally got onto the field as a substitute in Week 4, but didn’t get her first start until Week 8. In those first 7 weeks she only played 30 total minutes. Both Le Bihan and Becki Tweed spoke about this in both articles and post-game press conferences, with Tweed saying that she felt Le Bihan hadn’t been at a high enough level in training, and that Tweed was challenging her to do more. And at that time, Tweed said that Le Bihan had risen to that challenge, and also spoke highly of her finishing and her ability to unlock a defense. Le Bihan then had 5 straight starts, although she only played the full 90 in one of them. Then, in the next four games, there was only 1 start, 2 substitute appearances, and 1 match in which she didn’t play at all. Her final appearance was coming off the bench for 12 minutes against Gotham. Then, during the Olympic break, it was mutually agreed to cancel her contract and a week later she had signed with Lazio in Italy. All in all, she played 10 games, with 6 starts, for 489 minutes for Angel City in 2024. I have absolutely no evidence of this, but it does feel to me like Le Bihan was forced out, at least at some level. I don’t know if this was because of the need to shed salary, or something else. Mostly I feel like it was strange to re-sign her, and then almost never play her. Ostensibly, Tweed was consulted before offering Le Bihan a new contract, but something had to have changed during the season, and my feeling is that they realized they were over the salary cap.
Offensive Contributions
Le Bihan had only 1 Goal + 0 Assists for ACFC, and the Goal kind of doesn’t even really count, as it was a cross that just snuck in on the back post. And maybe it was that lack of tangible production that hurt Le Bihan in the end. Shooting-wise, she only took 6 Shots, and it was only that accidental one that was On Target. Still that 1.1 Shots per 90 put her in the 52nd percentile of NWSL Attacking Midfielders and Wingers. Her .3 xG, or .06 per 90, was only in the 30th percentile.
But playmaking is where I think that Le Bihan really shines. She had 1.2 xAG and 1.0 xA, which on a per 90 is in the 94th and 88th percentiles, respectively. Le Bihan also had the most Key Passes per 90 on the team (min 90 minutes), and is in the 97th percentile of NWSL Attacking Midfielders. In fact, Le Bihan had the 4th most Total Key Passes on Angel City (13), despite playing only 20.9% of the available minutes.
Shot Creating Actions are the metric that I give the most weight for Attacking Midfielders, and again, Le Bihan is exceptional. She has the 2nd highest SCAs per 90 on Angel City behind only Zelem (4.04), and that also puts her in the 89th percentile of NWSL Attacking Midfielders. Her 2.94 per 90 Live Ball SCAs put her in the 95th percentile. Goal Creating Actions drop off, only 1 for .18 per 90, amazingly. Even going by the Angel City average of 9.8% of SCAs leading to a GCA, Le Bihan should have had at least 2.
There is, of course, the concern that Le Bihan’s 489 minutes represents too small a sample size, which on it’s own is valid. But she actually had an even higher rate of SCAs last year (5.95 per 90), and she has also continued this with Lazio (5.83 per 90). In 2023, she was actually 1st in the NWSL in xA per 90, xAG per 90, and 2nd in SCAs per 90. So I think that she has proved that it’s not a fluke to see her creating chances.
Passing
Le Bihan’s passing doesn’t exactly stand out, but her productivity from that passing does. First, the bad news: her overall Pass Completion Percentage (69.7%) is in the 11th percentile. Short Pass Percentage (79.1%) is in the 17th percentile, Medium Pass Percentage (65%) is rock bottom 1st percentile, while Long Pass Percentage (65%) is actually a very good 83rd percentile.
But like I said, she accomplishes a lot with her passing. I’ve already mentioned her xA, xAG, and Key Passes, but it goes beyond that. Her 1.29 Passes into the Attacking Penalty Area are 92nd percentile (and 2nd best on Angel City), and she also added .37 Crosses into the Attacking Penalty Area (94th percentile and 2nd best on Angel City). She is also in the 79th percentile in both Through Balls and Switches.
I also want to highlight her Progressive Passes. Le Bihan’s 5.56 per 90 is in the 82nd percentile, and of her 458.47 Total Passing Yards, on average, 147.79 (or 32.23%) were Progressive Yards. She was very good at getting the ball into scoring positions, but it really stands out as Angel City players generally didn’t have a lot of Progressive Passes. Le Bihan is 2nd only to Henry on the team in Progressive Passes per 90, and her 5.56 mark is much better than Dougherty Howard’s 4.34 or Fuller’s 1.83.
The other factor that stands out to me is that all of Le Bihan’s starts took place when the team didn’t have Henry or Zelem. This was, in my estimation, the weakest midfield that Angel City had all year, especially from a passing perspective. And this also goes back to last season, when McCaskill had a near stranglehold on the No 10 role, so Le Bihan almost never got to play with Henry during that time either. In my mind, it seems like such a good match. Le Bihan was our best Attacking Midfielder at finding space, and if there was a deeper midfielder that could consistently get her the ball, I think that would have been very successful. It’s entirely possible that the club’s emphasis on possession last year meant that they didn’t like seeing the direct passing of Henry and Le Bihan, and that’s part of why they left. Certainly if they played together, there would have been much more direct passing than what we saw. But of course with Zelem, we did see a switch to trying to get the ball upfield, and I think that Le Bihan would have done well playing with Zelem as well. I’ll get ahead on the Possession stats here by saying that Le Bihan was only 8th on the team in Progressive Passes Received, with 4.44 per 90, which is still in the 79th percentile. But I think that number would have gone up if she played consistently with Zelem or Henry.
Possession
Le Bihan had a decent amount of touches, 56.32 per 90, which is in the 64th percentile. What’s interesting to me is that Le Bihan has 22.4 Touches in the Attacking Third (89th percentile), but 2.58 Touches in the Attacking Penalty Box (74th percentile). That makes Le Bihan 3rd highest on ACFC in the Attacking Third Touches, but 10th in Attacking Penalty Box Touches. To me it was always very clear that this is the space in which she operates, behind the striker, in the half space, and we didn’t always see that from other Attacking Midfielders, e.g. Dougherty Howard having a higher average position than the striker.
Le Bihan’s Carry statistics are also very good. Total Carries (31.84) is in the 79th percentile, but Progressive Carries (1.84, 86th Percentile), Carries into the Attacking Third (1.47, 82nd percentile), Carries into Attacking Penalty Area (.74, 86th percentile), Total Carrying Distance (184.05 yards, 95th percentile), and Progressive Carrying Distance (73.25 yards, 83rd percentile) are all higher. I like this because it means that she’s not just in the top of any of these categories due to volume; she is doing more than average each time she carries the ball.
On the other hand, Miscontrols (2.21, 18th pecentile), and Times Dispossessed (1.84, 14th percentile) are both pretty bad. To me, Le Bihan’s game is a bit of high risk / high reward, so I would accept those numbers, especially compared to other ACFC players like Bright that were higher risk / lower reward (which we’ll get into in the Strikers section). This is possibly why Tweed kept Le Bihan on the bench, but again, the coaching staff had seen Le Bihan play for two years prior. If that was a concern, they should have let her go last offseason.
Defensive Statistics
I haven’t included defensive stats on the other Attacking Midfielders, because there really wasn’t that much to talk about. Fuller is fairly average, maybe slightly above average, in most defensive stats. Dougherty Howard is below average, but because FBRef groups her with Midfielders, not Attacking Midfielders, she is being compared to players like Taylor Flint, which isn’t helpful or fair. Le Bihan, however, actually fares quite well.
On a per 90 basis, Le Bihan has 3.13 Tackles per game, which is 3rd on Angel City behind Curry and Gisele, and in the 83rd percentile of NWSL Midfielders. Part of that is the ACFC philosophy of having the whole team defend; Le Bihan’s 1.48 Tackles per 90 in the Defensive Third are more than Gorden (.92) or Reid (1.05) and puts Le Bihan in the 91st percentile here. But she also has .55 Tackles per 90 in the Attacking Third, which puts her in the 88th percentile. Angel City was 11th in the league in Tackles in the Attacking Third, and often we only ever had one player pressing, which makes this stat for Le Bihan stand out even more. Some of this may be down to the small sample size for Le Bihan, as she only had 2.11 Tackles per 90 and .26 in the Attacking Third in 2023, but she was often playing more as a Central Midfielder. In 2022, Le Bihan had 3.11 Tackles and .82 Tackles in the Attacking Third, so much more in line with 2024.
Aerials stand out, too. Le Bihan is in the 94th percentile of Aerial Duels Won (2.76) and 95th percentile of Aerial Duel Win Percentage (71.4%). She actually finished 5th overall on ACFC for Aerials Won, despite such little playing time. She also Committed 5 Fouls, with 1 Yellow Card, and Drew 2 Fouls.
xG +/-
This particular statistic is often so confounding to me. Le Bihan’s Team xG Differential per 90 was -.5, which was 20th on the team, and her On-Field vs. Off-Field Team xG Differential per 90 was -.3, 19th on the team. What stands out to me the most is that her On-Field Team xG For per 90 was 1.17, which is basically second to last, just above Gisele. It seems so bizarre to me, as with Gisele, that players in the Top 5 on the team in SCAs are at the bottom of Team xG. Angel City averaged .11 xG per shot, so just from her SCAs alone, the team should generate .47 xG.
You could make the argument that this is kind of a square peg in a round hole situation, and that the rest of the offense just functions better without her. But I think that it actually had more to do with the deeper midfield. Using the admittedly low bar of 1.2 Team xG For, Henry achieved that in 100% of her starts (3 of 3), Zelem had that in 75% of her starts (6 of 8), but in the games in which neither of them started, Angel City only achieved it 60% of the time (9 of 15). I think the fact that all of Le Bihan’s starts came in this stretch brings down her team xG, because I don’t actually see a drop from the other attackers when I look at the match reports from Le Bihan’s games. Leroux was still getting chances, for instance. Alyssa was also getting chances, but she clearly played better after the Olympic break. And I don’t think that she played better because Le Bihan left; I think that she started making better decisions and her confidence seemed to grow. So my personal feeling is that Tweed only played Le Bihan at a point when the team wasn’t performing well. I think that someone who creates chances is always going to help the attack, and I consider this discrepency an anomaly.
Additional Thoughts
If I could ask Tweed one question, and get an honest answer, it would be, “Why didn’t you play Le Bihan more?” From both her stats, and my observations, she should have been a player that we were building around, instead of keeping her off the pitch. I would have loved to see her play with Henry or Zelem, and I would have loved to see her sliding in passes for Alyssa in that second half of the season when Alyssa was on fire. Regarding that idea that Angel City was just better without her, I’d say that it’s not like the version without her was particularly good. Angel City finished 9th in xG For in 2024. If a player is generating chances, but the team isn’t scoring from them, I don’t think that the answer is to take away the creator, I think it’s to change the finishers, or at least the positioning of the finishers.
Beyond the stats, on of my enduring memories of Le Bihan from this past season was her dummy to create a wide open shot for Rodríguez in the game away to Bay FC. She wouldn’t get any credit for the play, because she never touched the ball, but she showed creativity to open up space for a teammate, and that was something that I didn’t see often enough in 2024.
As I mentioned, she plays for Lazio now, and despite missing some time (she’s played 71.4% of the available minutes), she is 2nd in all of Italy in xAG, Key Pass, SCAs, and 3rd in xA. In my opinion, she should be at an even bigger club.
Final Thoughts on Attacking Midfielders
This position was the most glaring hole on Angel City’s roster for me, and the fact that the most qualified player, in my opinion, had the fewest minutes encapsulates a lot of my frustrations with the season. In total, these three players contributed 3 Goals and 2 Assists. Amongst the Top 4 teams in the NWSL, the lowest number of Goal Contributions from an Attacking Midfielder is Rose Lavelle with 7G + 1A. The other teams all had more contributions. And again, to reiterate, all four of these teams got at least 3 more Goal Contributions from a single player than Angel City got from 3 players. I do think that Le Bihan could have reached that level if she played the whole season as the starting No 10, but it never happened. Obviously we need to see what the vision is for the next manager, but I’m also not sure that Angel City needs a player in this position. I kind of like the idea of a 3-4-2-1. Or, if we do stick with it, I’d really like to see Endo get some opportunities in this role. It would give her more touches, which I think suits her style, and would allow Endo, Alyssa, and Emslie to be on the field at the same time.
At the very least, 2 of the 3 players I wrote about in this article are no longer with the club, as is Rodríguez, who also got a few minutes in the No 10 role too. If we’re playing with an Attacking Midfielder next year, it is a position that definitely needs to be addressed, even if Endo does play there and/or Fuller is able to take on more minutes. I think that we have too much money committed to the striker position to make any changes there, so if we were going to make a big, splashy signing, I think that this would be the position to do it. Erin Cutbert maybe?
All stats are from FBRef