Well, we finally lost. The streak is over, long live the streak. Jay Mims had some good perspective, instead of sulking he said he was “celebrating the almost 20 games counting pre-season and closed door matches and regular season where we have amazingly somehow never felt like this right now. It’s a strange feeling and we don’t like it!” It has been a pretty amazing run and it is hard to not be excited about what comes next. Before moving on to the next, let’s dive into the data from this game.
1) What if we’d played on August 12th?
Let’s start with the most painful part of this, that we should have played this match (or won by forfeit) on August 12th. We were coming off our away win at Tucson, we’d just given up our first goal of the season after three full games and were getting ready to play our first midweek game. The Red Wolves were in the middle of a 1-2-2 stretch and we were catching them between North Texas away and Greenville away. Here is a chart of their Elo progression for the season.
1502 to 1505 (2-2 @TRM)
1505 to 1516 (1-0 TUC)
1516 to 1522 (2-2 @NTX)
*The ill fated UO game*
1522 to 1513 (1-0 @GVL)
1513 to 1491 (1-2 TRM)
1491 to 1510 (4-0 NE2)
1510 to 1513 (1-1 @FTL)
1513 to 1528 (1-2 @NE2)
1528 to 1539 (2-1 RIC)
1539 to 1556 (2-0 UO)
note: all scores are (home team – away team)
We would have definitely been catching them on the way to rock bottom, instead of the hot, hot team we faced today. I want to take nothing away from The Red Wolves here, they clearly out played us today and they are clearly a good team. But they also are a clearly better team than they were a month ago and that did not help us. C’est la vie.
Let’s all take a cleansing breath and move on.
2) Did Illal play left back?
First of all, here is hoping Dami is OK. Without putting on a tin foil hat, I think it is safe to say: a) he took a massive and painful shot to the midsection and b) if Jay had planned to sub him off for rest purposes he would have had Jake Crull on the bench.
Second, Dami is a really important player for us. I will not turn this into a Dami appreciation post, but I do want to share this minutes chart.
Dami is leading our team in minutes played even with missing the second half of today’s game. He’s important.
Illal is important too. Since this isn’t an Illal appreciation post, I’ll spare you all that data as well. But he hasn’t played left back since his freshman year of college. But did he play left back today.
Now that you have a clear sense of where Dami roams as our left back, let’s look at Illal’s heat map.
Illal definitely played more centrally than we usually see out of Dami. Illal’s touches could indicate he was playing the left spot in a three man back line.
The first half heat map for our starting center backs look like our standard center back heat maps. Let’s check out the second half.
Kind of looks like we played three in the back, huh? Instead of showing you six more charts that proves this, I’ll just share that Jay said we were playing the same as the first half defensively, but different offensively in the second half.
3) Should Tyler David have been subbed off?
A question from Tim from the Discord who is “curious about how much impact Tyler had. Was he valuable enough to justify not subbing him out, especially after flirting with that second yellow?” Tyler’s toughness and leadership was on full display today. Had the ref been harsher on some other calls he let slide in the game, he might have sent Tyler off.
Either way, I have the same question. Let’s dig in starting with passing. On the season, Tyler has completed 78.4% of his passes. In this game, he completed *checks Opta data again* 78.4% of his passes. So certainly by that measure he was giving us Tyler David level performance.
FotMob player ratings had him at 6.4, which was the highest of our midfielders, but not as high as others on the team.
He created one chance, two tackles, one interception, one clearance, conceded three fouls, and won four of eight duels. Per game he’s averaging about one chance, one tackle won, one interception, about half a clearance, one foul conceded and I don’t have access to his duel success rate. All in all, this seems like a standard performance for Tyler David.
So nothing pops out in the data, but I would be inclined to say that we needed the on-field leadership, organization on set pieces, and general intangibles that Tyler gives the team. With better planning, I’d have asked Jay about this, but I didn’t. On that unsatisfying note, I’ll see you all on Saturday!
Who Gives A Hoot? 