“A tie where it feels like a loss” – Jay Mims. In his Mims’ Minute (incredible name by the way, wonder who came up with that one….) said just what I was thinking.
I felt Jay was dancing around the fact that the team let off the gas a bit after scoring our first goal and didn’t wake back up until they’d given up a goal. Recording the podcast, my co-hosts disagreed with me. Only one way to find out if they are wrong, let’s dive in.
1) Did we let off between goals?
In the past, we’ve had guests on the pod say, that as defenders, they believe if they keep a clean sheet their team will win. Could the attacking players hold a similar belief? If they score a goal, they don’t need any more goals to win?
I think they certainly acted like they felt that way during this game. My basic argument is that we stopped trying as hard to attack and score goals after the “shross heard round the league” and before a Richmond player bounced a ball off Tobias’ chest and into the goal.
Below I have included an image all of the shots and goals taken by Union Omaha and saves by Akira Fitzgerald. In the image after that I have done the same thing, but time constrained it for the time between goals (Sousa 31′, Otenio (OG) 76′).
So Union Omaha had 21 shots in the game. Just 4 of those shots (19%) happened in the half of the game (45′) that took place between goals. Akira Fitzgerald had 8 saves in the game. Just 1 of those 8 saves (12.5%) took place in the 45 minutes between goals.
Thanks to the incredible folks at American Soccer Analysis, we can run this theory past xG for the match as well.
g+ GameFlow: USL League One Regular Season @RichmondKickers v @Union_Omaha on June 19, 2021. #RVAisRED #UpTheOwls #RICvOMA
Originally tweeted by GameFlow (@GameFlowxPG) on June 20, 2021.
So my theory doesn’t hold up as well to the Max Goal Probability chart as it does to the shot and save charts. However, that 15 plus minute stretch (60′-75′) where we literally generated ZERO xG does indicate at least a small issue in generating attack after we scored a goal.
2) Akira Fitzgerald was heroic
The chart above looks good for us. The metrics look good for us. And even though our xG wasn’t off the charts at 1.66, Akira Fitzgerald was still amazing. How amazing? Well his 8 saves in the match, currently ranks 3rd for saves in a single game in all of League One in 2021. Too bad it was against us.
3) Possession & chances
If you had told me going into the game we’d have 44.4% of the possession, 18 chances (tied for season best) and 42.9% shooting accuracy, I’d tel you we would win that game easily. But as discussed above, we did not.
In fact, the last time we had less than 45% possession and didn’t earn 3 points was our fifth game last season: 8/23/2020 at North Texas, a run of 19 matches. You can try and attribute this one to a superlative performance from Akira Fitzgerald, but we went more than 50 minutes between shots on target. I think we fumbled the bag with three points in it a little bit on this one.
The good news is that two our closest rivals (MAD & GVL (not just emotional rivals either, as of 6/24/20 those two clubs have the 3rd and 4th best chances of making the playoffs according to SportsClubStats; we are number 2 on that list)) have had an even worse time than us since our game kicked off. While we had an unfortunate own goal, a season’s best performance from their goalkeeper, and a 45 minute long power outage, each of those teams lost over the weekend and drew each other midweek. The bad news is Chattanooga is looking great despite letting us sign their best players in the offseason. But no need to look past this weekend. See you at Werner Park on Saturday to beat Tucson!
Who Gives A Hoot? 