Angel City Team Statistics From 2023
I’ve been writing a lot about individual players, but I’d like to take a step back and look at some of the team-wide trends from last season, as we prepare for the upcoming season. We’ll look at offense and defense, and because of how things went last year, we should separate the games that Freya Coombe was in charge from the games that Becki Tweed managed. All statistics are from FBRef.
Offense
As a whole, Angel City actually did surprisingly well on offense last year, or surprising to me anyway. They finished tied for 2nd in the league in goals scored. However, I think that this is somewhat skewed by the five goals scored against Portland on Decision Day. Had they not scored at all in that game, they would have finished tied for 9th, but maybe getting shutout is a little unrealistic. In their other 21 games, Portland conceded 1.29 goals/game, and in that final game, Angel City actually only had an xG of 1.5 (Leroux’s overhead golazo must have had a minuscule xG). So even if we round up, and say that ACFC would likely score 2 goals based on those stats, that would still only put their season total in a tie for 7th with the Red Stars, and in the lower half of the league. Also, 1st Place went to Portland with 11 more goals than anyone else, 42 to 31 (and that was with Sophia Smith being injured for a decent stretch). So I do want to temper expectations a little, and say that Angel City was closer to a league average offense, then a goal scoring juggernaut, despite that second place finish. The margins between 2md and 11th were razor thin.
So how much changed between coaches? I was actually upset at the time that Coombe wasn’t replaced after the Chicago game, but things did end up balancing very well with each coach in charge of 11 league matches. I still say that decision came too late, but it is good for comparing statistics. In the 11 league games that Coombe oversaw, ACFC scored 14 goals, or 1.27 goals/game. Their xG over that time frame was 14.3, so it’s not like we weren’t getting any breaks. There were only 2 of the 11 games that had an xG over 2.0, and we were shutout in 3 games. When Tweed took over, Angel City scored 17 goals in 11 games off of 16.3xG, which comes out to 1.55 goals per game. Tweed had 3 games with an xG over 2.0 and the team was also shutout in 3 games. Again, though, we need to acknowledge that that final 5-1 game against Portland was an outlier. Had Angel City scored the statistically likely two goals in that match, Tweed’s goal total would be exactly the same as Coombe’s 14. Her superior xG of 16.3 to Coombe’s 14.3 does suggest improvement, but not a lot. The fact that they both were shutout in 3 games a piece also says to me that this was not a team that was firing on all cylinders offensively.
There are a few other statistics that I find interesting for the season in general. Angel City was 4th in the league in terms of Shots and Shots on Target, but only 7th in Shots on Target Percentage (i.e. the percentage of shots taken that end up on target) with 33.8%, well behind the 1st Place Thorns who had 39.5%. Angel City was also 7th in the league in Goals per Shot and Goals per shot on Target. And finally, a few xG stats: ACFC finished 3rd in Total xG with 30.8, but 7th again in Goals minus xG (G-xG) with -1.8. I like that last stat, as it gives a clear idea of if a team overperformed or underperformed expectations, and we can see that Angel City slightly underperformed.
What all of this says to me is that Angel City was generating chances at a higher rate than the rest of the league, but not finishing them, and thus was probably more realistically the 7th best offense in the league. They were getting some things right, but not everything. We could debate whether that’s because of the quality of chance being generated or the finishing ability of the players, though I’d say that it’s some combination of both. These stats do reinforce my belief that Angel City’s offense was close, but just missing a key piece. I’m hoping that Messiah Bright is that piece. With just a little bit more clinical finishing, and getting the ball in a little bit more dangerous areas, I think that we could go from league average to clearly one of the top teams.
One final thing to talk about regarding goal scoring is penalties. Angel City only scored one penalty last season (no team had less), and were only awarded two (only the Dash were awarded less). In comparison, Louisville and the Spirit both scored 5 penalties. In the 2022 Season, Angel City were awarded 5 penalties, so I don’t think that the lack of pens has anything to do with style of play, etc. It feels like it’s just one of those things that didn’t shake out in 2023. I’d expect a regression to the mean, at least, which should add a couple of goals to our offensive output this upcoming season.
Defense
For the year, Angel City conceded 30 goals, good for 9th place. However, this is where we really see the big difference in the coaching change. In Freya Coombe’s 11 games, they conceded 21 times, or 1.91 Goals Against per Game. The xGA for that time span was 17.3. There was only one shutout, a 0-0 draw away to the Courage. After Tweed took over, things dramatically improved. In her 11 regular season games, Angel City conceded only 9 times, good for .82 Goals Against per Game. Less than half as many goals. And that was nearly instantaneous; in her first three matches in charge, Angel City only allowed 1 goal. Tweed recorded 3 shutouts, and 10 of her 11 games had one goal or less, compared to only 3 of 11 for Coombe.
There’s also the switch in goalkeepers that needs to be considered. Initially, it seems like this was because of an injury to Haracic, but I think that Anderson won the starting job outright by the end of the year, as she started the playoff game. Of course, the details on injuries are always murky in the NWSL, but that was my impression. Statistically, Anderson was a lot better than Haracic, which I spoke about before, but I’ll recap some of those stats here. Anderson led Haracic in save percentage (86.4% to 74.1%), Goal Against per 90 (.75 to 1.5), and my favorite, PSxG+/- (+1.9 to -1.4). The last stat is Post Shot Expected Goals Plus Minus, which states that Haracic allowed 1.4 more goals than we’d expect based on the xG of the shots, while Anderson saved 1.9 more goals than we’d expect. To be fair, though, we should compare the games of Haracic under Tweed with Anderson’s games, which I can’t easily do with all of the stats, but GA/90 is a pretty straightforward one. Haracic does get the edge here, (.67 to .75 for Anderson), but it’s a lot closer.
If we were to project Tweed’s defensive record over a whole season, it would be 18.04 goals conceded, or right with the Dash, who had the league’s best defensive record with 18. Similarly, if we make that same projection for Anderson, the goals against would drop to 16.5. I think that both of these sample sizes are too small to accurately predict how things would look over a whole season, but I also think that they both also provide cause for optimism. Especially with Tweed’s immediate impact on the defensive side of things, I think that it is safe to say that her influence wasn’t any kind of fluke. In addition, we’re returning out entire back four, have unprecedented depth at fullback, and signed a more experienced, defensive-minded midfielder than we’ve had before. I’d also expect to see some progress from Anderson. She was only a rookie last year, so I think that there will be some growth, and I expect that she will be the starter. So despite those small sample sizes, all signs are pointing to those numbers being legitimate. I’d actually go so far as to say that I think that we will have a top 3 defense in 2024.
Conclusions
I was a little surprised when I initially looked at the broad stats from last year. Going into the offseason, I felt like we needed to be improving our attack, and strengthening our midfield depth, but I wasn’t worried about our defense. And then I look and see that Angel City was actually 2nd in Goals Scored, but 9th in Goals Conceded, or completely at odds with those priorities. But after digging a little bit deeper into all the different stats, I don’t think that told the whole story. The picture that it paints for me is that Angel City’s offense was actually right in the middle of the league last year, while the defense was one of the best by the end of the season. I think that our signings this offseason have reflected that. It’s hard to make anything more than a general prediction for the coming season, as there are two new teams and I think that the general level of the league is going to rise. I will say that based on this analysis, I think that Angel City will be a playoff team in 2024, and better overall than the 2023 team was. The only thing that I know for sure is that I can’t wait for matches to actually start.