Data Dump: at Madison (#2)

In our first game against Madison, it seemed like we wanted them to have the majority of possession, but we looked terrible in making that happen. 12 days later, it sure seemed like we did a MUCH better job of executing that plan. I didn’t anticipate us having 30.1% of the possession, but I loved to see it. Hopefully, like me, you are much more emotionally stable after match 7 than you were after match 5. That said, let’s dive in.

1) Emir Alihodžić aka Trialist #1

Emir came as close to having the first brace in club history as anyone has so far, forcing and own goal and scoring the game winner. For a guy who has 3 professional goals to his name going into this match he was an extremely unlikely pick to score a pseudo-brace or even start as a forward. But did he play forward?

We all know Jay’s undying devotion to the 4-4-2, it goes without saying. But for Emir, a guy who some of us thought might start at centerback, to start at forward was wild. Obviously, it paid off, but let’s see where Emir really played.

Hmmmm, so you can clearly see Emir (#2) having an average position smack dab in the middle of the center circle. (Conor Doyle is buried under #20 and #6 for Madison). That seems like an odd place for a forward in a 4-4-2. So let’s compare to our best win of season so far. (If you don’t know what game that was, stop everything, read JR’s column and come back, I’ll wait.)

Two things stand out to me here. 1) Greg Hurst has about the exact same position in both games and Evan, who Emir was filling in for, was slightly in front of him in Lauderdale. 2) Emir (buried under #15 and #8 for Lauderdale) is in about the same spot as he was in Madison, a little bit to the left and a little bit back, but still smack dab inside of the center circle.

Not where our forwards usually play, but who I am to question what worked out for us.

2) Boyce moving into first

Devin Boyce, who is the club’s all time leader in appearances (yeah, I know insane), is now tied for first (with EVD) in club history with three game winning assists. What else can I say, but BOOOM.

We asked @devinbernard_ if our return to @WernerPark this Saturday night would be "boom"-worthy. 💥

Devin: pic.twitter.com/C4rRxt2ohJ

— Union Omaha 🦉 (@Union_Omaha) June 9, 2021

3) Is Madison good?

Ahhh the age old question, are the Flamingos any good. We lost to them, we beat them, I want them to be terrible on the field, I just can’t tell. So let’s look at three different metrics: SportsClubStats, American Soccer Analysis, and WGaH Media’s own Jon Ryan’s ratings.

SportsClubStats

SportsClubStats features RPI rankings which have Union Omaha as first and Forward Madison third.

American Soccer Analysis

I took the xGoals Team analysis and standardized some of the offered metrics to a per game basis. For definitions GD is goal difference, xGD is expected goal difference, xPts is expected points, and Diff is points per game minus expected points per game.

Team	Season	Games	GD-xGD	Pts	xPts	Pts/Game	xPts/Game	Diff
GVL	2021	5	2.3	13	9.68	2.60	1.94	0.66
CHA	2021	5	1.91	10	7.51	2.00	1.50	0.50
OMA	2021	7	2.66	14	10.54	2.00	1.51	0.49
TUC	2021	6	-4.13	8	7.05	1.33	1.18	0.16
MAD	2021	6	1.01	11	10.54	1.83	1.76	0.08
NER	2021	6	-2.24	7	6.63	1.17	1.11	0.06
FTL	2021	10	1.01	13	12.44	1.30	1.24	0.06
RIC	2021	7	3.3	10	10.13	1.43	1.45	-0.02
TOR	2021	6	1.32	6	6.33	1.00	1.06	-0.05
TRM	2021	9	-0.47	9	10.13	1.00	1.13	-0.13
NTX	2021	6	-4.81	7	9.48	1.17	1.58	-0.41
NC	2021	5	-1.86	1	6.22	0.20	1.24	-1.04

I believe Diff is telling us how much per game is being added by factors like luck, good shooting and great shot stopping. Madison’s Diff is 0.08 which means their points on the table is basically what their expected points say it should be.

Jon Ryan’s USL League One Ratings

JR has Madison ranked in third in his rankings as well.

All of this would indicate that if Union Omaha is the best team in the league, Forward Madison is close, but not quite as good as we are. To confirm this, I combine JR’s rankings and SportsClubStats RPI and averaged them out to get a weight for opponents faced by each team. Throwing out the games head-to-head, Forward’s draws were, on average, against the 8th best team in the league and our draws were against, on average, the 5th best team. Union Omaha’s wins were, on average, against the 8.83 best team in the league while Madison’s were, on average, against the 10th best team in the league. See my chart below:

Team	RPI	JR	Average
OMA	1	1	1
GVL	2	2	2
MAD	3	3	3
CHA	4	4	4
RIC	5	5	5
TUC	7	7	7
TOR	10	6	8
TRM	6	11	8.5
NER	8	10	9
FTL	9	9	9
NTX	12	8	10
NC	11	12	11.5
Forward Avg Draw	8
Forward Avg Win	10
Omaha Avg Draw	5
Omaha Avg Win	8.83

Not sure my chart actually makes sense to you, but to me it confirms the sad news that our spindly legged neighbors to the north might just be the 3rd best team in the league right now.

So kind of neat that we looked much better than they did last Sunday.

And if you need further reminder of the superiority of Owls over Flamingos, I encourage you watch this highly scientific video.

Start at 16:34 if you need to get straight to that sweet, sweet owl content.