ACFC Fullbacks Part II
M.A. Vignola
Continuing on from the last article, we start with Vignola and in her case the statistic that supersedes all others is minutes. It’s hard to talk about any other aspect of her game without looking at it through the lens of injuries. In her three seasons with Angel City, she’s played in 37 of a possible 70 games with 25 starts for a total of 2,039 minutes. This season it was 17 matches, 10 starts, and 827 minutes. In fact, she only completed 90 minutes 4 times in those 10 starts. Coming into this season, I thought that she was going to be the clear starter at Left Back, but after an injury in the second game of the season against Orlando, she was out for about two months. There were several times that she either started on the bench, or came off early, and I felt like Becki Tweed was being just a little bit cautious with her. Because when she was on the field, she was often electric.
Offense
As with Gisele, Vignola also spent time playing as a winger, and as with Gisele, I wasn’t a fan. When a defender is already facing Alyssa, for instance, and then Vignola overlaps, that defender can easily get overwhelmed. When it’s just Vignola up top, the defender won’t have their attention split. By my count, she had 101 minutes as a winger, or 12.2% of her total minutes. But as with Gisele, Vignola didn’t record any of her Goal Contributions, and only had 2 of her 18 Shot Creating Actions, as a winger. Which, once again, shows that she’s more dangerous as a fullback.
Vignola is at elite levels in a number of categories, starting with Shooting. She took 11 total Shots, which was 11th on the team, and 7 of them were On Target. That 63.5% On Target Percentage was actually the best on Angel City. And when we compare her to other NWSL fullbacks on a per 90, Vignola looks like one of the best in the league. Just sticking with Shooting for the moment, she’s in the 95th percentile or higher in Shots (97th), Shots on Target (99th), Goals (95th), and xG (95th). She had an xG of 1.0, so her actual Goals was the same as her Expected Goals, and as all but three ACFC players underperformed their xG, that’s pretty good.
Moving on to Passing, Vignola is not particularly highly rated in terms of her involvement in the passing game, or passing volume. Her 49.3 Pass Attempts per 90 is only in the 36th percentile of NWSL fullbacks. Completed Passes was only in the 29th percentile. Even within Angel City, on a per 90 basis, Vignola is behind Eddy, Mathias, Curry, Riley, and Gisele in Pass Attempts. However, her final ball looks very good. She was in the 97th percentile for Assists, and 95th percentile for both xA and xAG. I think that all Angel City fans remember her assists to Leroux this season, and those passes looked amazing. That’s definitely something that she can contribute.
Unfortunately, the underlying stats don’t look as good. Vignola is in the 71st percentile in Key Passes, and only the 32nd percentile in Passes into the Attacking Penalty Area and 49th percentile in Crosses into the Attacking Penalty Area. When we take a closer look at that very high xAG, we find that it all comes from only 5 of her 17 appearances, and 1.5 of her 2.1 xAG actually comes from only 2 games. She records a Key Pass in only 7 games. At her best, Vignola can have a game like the 3-2 home loss to the Reign, in which she had 3 Passes into the Attacking Penalty Area, 1 Cross into the Attacking Penalty Area, 2 Key Passes, .4 xA, .6 xAG, and 1 Assist. But more than half the time, she only puts up zeroes in all of these categories. And in 6 of those 9 games with zeroes, she was a starter, so it’s not exactly a matter of her coming off the bench for only a few minutes and not really getting a chance to make a difference.
We see this in Shot Creating Actions, too. Vignola is in the 55th percentile of Shot Creating Actions, and only the 36th percentile of SCAs from Live Ball Passes. However, she is in 92nd percentile of Goal Creating Actions, and 99th percentile of GCAs from Live Ball Passes. Consistency does look a little better here, with SCAs in 11 of her 17 games, and 4 of those 6 games without an SCA were as a starter.
I just want to make a comparison to illustrate the difference. Izzy Rodriguez also had 1 Goal and 2 Assists for KC. But she does much better than Vignola in the categories that I just mentioned. Per 90, Rodriguez has more Key Passes (2.20 to .98), Passes into the Attacking Penalty Area (1.67 to .54), Crosses into the Penalty Area (.71 to .22), SCAs (4.05 to 1.96), and SCAs from Live Passes (2.38 to 1.2). A lot of this has to do with the teams that they’re on, and how they play. And probably Vignola would have higher stats if she played for KC instead. But I wanted to show why two 1 Goal - 2 Assist fullbacks are not the same.
Back to Vignola, though. I did also want to look at some of her possession stats. Vignola is only in the 42nd percentile in Total Passes received, but 97th percentile in Progressive Passes Received. In a similar fashion, she was 60th percentile in Total Touches, but 90th percentile in Touches in the Attacking Third, and 99th percentile in Touches in the Attacking Penalty Area. As with Spencer, Vignola is getting into good attacking positions. We see this same trend in Carries: 64th percentile in Total Carries, but at least 95th percentile in Total Carrying Distance (97th), Progressive Carrying Distance (97th), Progressive Carries (99th), Carries into the Attacking Third (95th), and Carries into the Attacking Penalty Area (97th). Vignola is a very North/South player I think, who benefits from a more direct style, as we see on her goal and both assists. She is also 99th percentile in Take Ons Attempted and 97th in Successful Take Ons, but only 32nd percentile in Successful Take On Percentage. So not a great conversion rate, but a lot of volume. To me, this is actually more about her positioning, in the sense that she is often so high up the pitch, that she doesn’t have many options beyond trying to beat the defender in front of her. I’ll speak more about this at the end of her section.
The other real cause for concern is how often Vignola gets dispossessed, which ties into those Take On numbers, although they are seperate, i.e. losing a Take On does not count as being Dispossessed. Vignola is only in the 5th percentile of NWSL fullbacks for the number of times that she’s Dispossessed per 90. In fact her mark of 1.63 is more than double then league average of .76.
Defense
One continuing source of frustration for me is the lack of any kind of consistent and transparent data on physical stats in the NWSL, e.g. number of sprints, sprint speed, distance covered, etc. I mention this because I think that Vignola’s speed is one of her best attributes defensively, in that it allows her to venture so far forward, and yet still get back to help. I don’t really have the concrete data to prove that, but it is my observation.
Statistically, Vignola’s defensive stats aren’t bad, though they don’t jump out either. She’s 9th on the team in Tackles + Interceptions per 90, and 5th among ACFC fullbacks. Compared to the rest of the league, Vignola is in the 49th percentile of fullbacks in Tackles + Interceptions (3.81). She rates particularly well in Tackles in the Attacking Third (82nd percentile), and % of Dribblers Tackled (86th percentile). I thought that it would be worthwhile, though, to compare her to other top fullbacks that play a more attacking role. These are players that I picked solely on my own impressions, and I went with Izzy Rodriguez again, as well as Carson Pickett, and Jenna Nighswonger. Compared to these three players, Vignola is only behind Rodriguez in Tackles + Interceptions per 90. She has the most Tackles in the Defensive Third in this group, and also the best Tackling Success Rate. So while she is about league average in most basic defensive stats, I think that she is actually very good in this area compared to other players in a similar role.
Of course, it is worth noting that Gisele and Spencer all record more Tackles per 90 than Vignola, despite also being asked to get forward, and in circumstances more similar to Vignola than Rodriguez, Nighswonger, and Pickett. But I’m not convinced that this necessarily proves anything bad about Vignola’s defensive ability. On ACFC, she did finish second in Interceptions per 90 (minimum 270 minutes played), and I think that Interceptions are a better stat to speak to a defender’s positioning. Coupled with her very high Tackling Success Rate (69.2%, third on the team), that shows her to be quite able at making the stop when called upon, but she is just usually not called upon, because she plays higher. My impression has always been that she’s solid, and I think that the stats paint a similar picture.
One final note: fouls. Vignola was only in the 14th percentile in Fouls Committed, with 1.31 per 90, well above the average of .87. She is also only in the 36th percentile of Fouls Drawn (.54). However, she had zero yellow cards this season. She’s still 12th on Angel City in Fouls Committed per 90. This isn’t really a concern for me, but if she could bring those numbers down a little, I think that would help her overall game.
Team Success
As I did with Gisele, I think that it’s important to look at how the team as a whole faired with Vignola, because these are maybe the most interesting stats of all. On Angel City, Vignola had the best xG Differential (+1.2), and the 4th best xG Differential per 90 (+.13). The players above her on that last one, though, are Henry, Anderson, and Nielsen, none of which played after Matchweek 3. Every other Angel City player has a negative xG Differential. When we compare the xG Differential of a player when she’s on the pitch versus off it, Vignola is 6th, behind those same three players, plus Gorden and Emslie. Her On-Off Differential per 90 is +.61. I think what’s striking here is the balance. Looking just at the team’s xG when she’s is on the pitch, again on a per 90, Vignola is 5th on the team in both xG For and xG Against.
This does not translate at all to actual goals, however. She’s 17th on the team in Goal Differential per 90 (-.76), and 15th in the Goal Differential with her on the field, versus off (-.4). Vignola was on the field for 8 Goals For, compared to an xG of 13.9, and 15 Goals Against, compared to an xGA of 12.17. So the team as a whole underperformed both offensively and defensively when Vignola was playing. That 5.9 difference offensively seems particularly troubling.
Additional Thoughts
There’s a lot to like about Vignola’s season, but I think that there are some holes. I’ve said it before, but I think that Vignola is pretty rare as a fullback. She doesn’t just score goals, but she crashes the net, cutting in from the wing directly at goal. She had 1 Goal this year, with limited minutes, and 3 Goals last year. She takes good shots, and gets them on target. My feeling is that she needs to do better with making the pass, and that’s as much on the rest of the team is it is on her. I think that part of her injury problems have been that she can hold onto the ball too long. Being able to pass the ball more will reduce the rates that she gets dispossessed and the number of inadvisable Take Ons that she attempts. I don’t feel like Vignola doesn’t look for a pass, rather I think that one is not presented often enough.
I also don’t consider Vignola to be a defensive liabilty. I think that she does what is need in this area, but she shouldn’t ever be looked at as a shutdown defender, because that would negate so many other strengths that she has. The xG +/- numbers convince me that the team doesn’t concede more chances when Vignola is playing.
If Vignola can remain healthy for a full season, and play on a high octane team, I think that she’s capable of at least a 5 Goal - 5 Assist season, which would be unbelievable for a fullback. But that means that she needs to get some help. Her combination with Alyssa for her goal this past year is the kind of thing that Angel City should be trying to create more often. I don’t really see this happening, though, if Angel City continues to pursue a possession based system. Vignola is still under contract for next season, but if Angel City is committed to playing possession football, then we should be looking for a transfer fee for Vignola and trying to bring in another fullback instead. I also really like the idea of playing three at the back. I think that Curry* would be an outstanding left-sided centerback, and Vignola would be a great winger, and this would give Vignola more of the passing options I mentioned earlier. No matter what, I think that there is no clearer mismatch of player and system than Vignola and Angel City in 2024. But I think for starters, we all just want to see her stay healthy for a full year.
*Curry has now signed with Seattle, so that won’t be happening.
Merritt Mathias
From this point on, the fullback analyses will look a little bit different. I think that the sample sizes are starting to get too small to really have meaningful data, but I’ll talk about any stats that I find interesting and some thoughts on the player in general. Mathias did play in 13 matches this year, but only 3 of those were starts, and they totalled only 371 minutes. Her highest total was 71 minutes in the home loss to the Pride. She did actually seem to be rounding into form, with 3 starts in her final 4 games, but she never played again after the Olympic break. I get so frustrated by the communication of injuries, which I don’t know if that’s on the team or the league or both. But we never really know how severe the injury is, unless someone is placed on the SEI list, and I kept hoping that we’d get to see Mathias play just one last time. It never happened, and even though her time at Angel City was brief, she had an amazing career and we were lucky to see her play at BMO.
Statistics
The one that really jumps out for Mathias is her xAG, which was 1.5. She had the 6th highest Total xAG on the team, and the 2nd highest xAG per 90, behind only Elizabeth Eddy, who I don’t think we can count. Unfortunately, Mathias never earned an assist from these. A lot of it was concentrated to just a few chances, for instance she earned .6 of that 1.5 on a single chance that Leroux put off target. In total, there were only 4 games in which Mathias added xAG, but I think that it’s not a coincidence that the xAG she earned wasn’t just the accumulation of a lot of low value chances; they were all finding teammates in dangerous positions. Mathias has 3 seasons with 5 goal contributions, including a 5 assist season in 2019, so it’s not a surprise to see this. Maybe the surprise is that none of the chances she created resulted in a goal.
Shot Creating Actions go hand in hand with xAG, of course. Mathias had an SCA per 90 of 2.18, and only Gisele had a higher number among ACFC fullbacks. One aspect of that is that 5 of her 9 SCAs came from dead balls, and only Zelem and Emslie had more SCAs from dead balls than Mathias. Zelem never really convinced me down the stretch, despite her reputation as a dead ball specialist, and in general I believe that it is an advantage to have multiple players capable of taking a set piece. Had Mathias been healthy, I think that his could have been a real advantage to the team.
Mathias’s xG +/- isn’t great (-2.6 or -.63 per 90), and the -.43 per 90 when she’s on the field versus off is also one of the lowest, but I think that’s a matter of circumstance. In many of her substitute appearances, there isn’t a big shift one way or the other, and two of her starts were the home losses to the Pride and Gotham, in which Angel City was outmatched in both. In fact, Mathias was unlucky in this particular stat in the Gotham game, when she was on the field for both Gotham goals, and then was substituted right before Emslie took a penalty that added .79 xG for Angel City. So had she stayed on the field for literally one more minute, this stat would look a lot better.
Additional Thoughts
Mathias announced before the season was over that she was going to retire. Her time at Angel City never went the way that any of us wanted it to go. And unfortunately, she joins a trend of players that Angel City trades for, and then ends up injured. There’s also the trend of fullbacks being injured, which we’ll talk more about with Ali Riley next. I thought that this might be the year when that wasn’t a problem, and generally there was the depth, although a big part of that were exceptional rookie seasons from Gisele and Curry. But with Mathias hanging up her boots, and that being a general issue, I think that Angel City will be having to look for another fullback for next year. As for Mathias, she achieved just about everything there was to achieve in the NWSL, she was one of the original players that built the league from the ground up, and she should retire with pride in her accompllishments. We’ll look forward to what she does next.
Ali Riley
Coming into this season, I thought that we were going to see a changing of the guard, but I still had Riley at the top of my depth chart for Right Back. And she was the starter in Matchweek 1, but she only played in 5 matches, with 3 starts, for 260 minutes. And honestly, for me, she looked a little behind the pace in those games. This is another case where we just never heard a lot about her injury, but I think that there were a number of other extenuating circumstances in this case, namely that she was trying to be ready for the Olympics. I also understand that with this injury, a chronic nerve issue, that it’s hard to have a timeline on her return. I’m not even particularly clear about when this issue started, and how long she’s been dealing with it, but my guess is that it was impacting her performances at the start of the season.
There’s not a lot of good at looking at Riley’s statistics, because it’s really just too small a sample size. For instance, I was intrigued that that Riley’s xG +/- was -1.5, while Paige Nielsen had a +.8, yet Riley only made two substitute appearances in games that did not feature Nielsen. Those substitute appearances only totalled 24 minutes. But in the 14 minutes she played against the Courage, North Carolina Denise O’Sullivan had a .17 xG shot and Brianna Pinto had a .78 xG shot at the end of the game. In the other game against the Current at BMO, Riley played 10 minutes, but that was the game when Angel City completely collapsed at the end. Lavogez scored two goals, one with a .29 xG shot, and one with a .9 xG shot. Then Chawinga added on two more shots for an additional .48 xG. Even as badly as this season went for Angel City, this 24 minute stretch is about is bad as it can possibly be, and very much skews a lot of Riley’s numbers. Had she played more throughout the season, that 24 minute stretch would have been diluted down. But with only 260 minutes played, every aspect of it gets amplified.
Riley is under contract for one more season, but I think that everything hinges on the injury. Obviously, her health is the most important factor. As it is, Mathias is retiring, all indications are that Spencer is also leaving, and today we learned that Curry is definitely leaving and moving to Seattle. I don’t think that Angel City can count on Riley to play meaningful minutes, but she is still the captain of the team, and her leadership is still important. ACFC will have to sign additional fullbacks for next season, even if we can pencil Gisele and Vignola in as starters. I hope that we’ll see Riley take the field again, but I also think that we need to see plans made for the future. I don’t think that we can plan on Riley being a starter, even if she can return.
Elizabeth Eddy
Eddy is an even harder player to discuss, and I don’t think that we can count any statistics at all. This year she only played in 3 matches, all as a substitute, for a total of 32 minutes. She had 1 Shot Creating Action, but that gets almost tripled when we make comparisons to other players on a per 90 basis. Consequently, Eddy ends up at the top or bottom of quite a few statistical categories for Angel City. I want to talk more about her contract then her actual football. ACFC initially signed Eddy last season as a national team replacement player prior to the World Cup, but then offered her a contract for the rest of the season. In January, they signed Eddy to a new two-year contract, ahead of the extensions of players like Reid, Nabet, and Hammond, before the draft, and before the big money transfers for Rodríguez and Bright. In total, the front office signed 11 players after Eddy’s new contract. I don’t think that the front office or coaching staff could have viewed her as a key player after last season, as she only played 55 total minutes then. This ends up being particularly important come the trade deadline, when Angel City has the maximum of 26 players on the roster and needed to open up a spot for Christen Press to return. As we later learned, they needed to shed a lot of salary too.
I want to be clear to differentiate between Elizabeth Eddy the person and Elizabeth Eddy the player. She seems like a very nice person, and I think that she seems like a great fit on the team. Everyone seems to like her. She also seems very professional, and when she has played, I’ve always thought that she looked good. Really, I thought that she looked like what she is: a veteran player with a decade of professional experience. But instead of looking at the person, I just want to look at that role. Angel City wanted someone as depth who could play fullback, someone that could be a role model for the younger players and would be good in training, and in an injury crisis could take the field. Obviously I don’t know that for sure, but I am confident in that guess. If that’s right, I think that Angel City could have waited to fill that role, at least until March. But by signing Eddy so early on, it did limit Angel City’s options with the rest of the roster, including necessitating the trade of Henry and/or Nielsen, to some degree. If they’d waited, I’m positive that they could have found someone that fits that role. Ideally that person would have been Eddy, and they could have kept her at training camp as a non-roster invitee. And also, since it was a two-year contract, Angel City will be in the same position next year. And one other aspect that I don’t like is that Angel City wasn’t lacking in veteran leadership. They already have so many veteran players on the roster. Angel City actually had the second oldest roster this season, when weighted for minutes played. I think that it would have made more sense to make the key signings first, and then determine if you need a player like Eddy in the group. So none of this is meant to be a knock on her; I think that she did the job that was asked of her. It’s more about how the squad was built.
The Fullback Position
Overall, I think that the fullbacks did very well this year. Gisele and Curry were particular bright spots for their performances as rookies. As a group, they took 17.11% of the Shots, 25.23% of the Passes, 21.76% of the Shot Creating Actions, and 37.73% of the Tackles + Interceptions for Angel City. They were involved in nearly every aspect of the game.
The problem is that I looked at 7 players here. Two of them (Curry and Mathias) definitely won’t be back next year. Spencer looks unlikely to be back, although we did just re-sign Stambaugh, despite also declining the club option on her contract. Two (Riley and Vignola) have a recent history of injuries. That leaves two players: Gisele and Eddy, the latter of which has only played 87 minutes in two seasons. So despite the fact that this group did well in 2024, it’s a position that Angel City will definitely need to address for 2025.