I had a great night at Werner Park this week did you? Nothing like an early goal and perfect weather to make the game go down easy. Despite the relative ease of the win, some interesting things still happened, so let’s dive in.
1) Greg Hurst loves Werner Park
One, who else is super happy we didn’t have to face Chattanooga at home last year? Greg would have scored a brace against us for sure. Two, we are not singing “Greg Hurst is on Fire” nearly enough. To me the whole point of the song is that it is an insidious ear worm that we want to place in the heads of the opposing defenses. We want to remind them they are terrified!
Anyway, back to the data. Greg Hurst started the scoring with a brilliant give and go with Sousa. I’m a frequent critic of the camera quality of ESPN+ coverage of League One. The clubs pay way too much money for the quality to be bad by 2010 standards. An upside to the single camera angle is that you could see Greg alter his run to lose his defender at the last second to head the ball into the goal. By the end of the first half the commentator was suggesting Greg could have had another hat-trick. So I was curious.
As you can see Greg had 6 of our 12 shots for the game. Additionally, he had 3 of our 6 shots on target. And they were good shots. As it happens, Greg’s xG for this game was 1.6 (thank you American Soccer Analysis) indicating perhaps he could have scored more goals. Even crazier though, his xG in the last home match, the one where he had a hat-trick, was 0.9 xG.
2) Is Emir our lockdown defender?
I was surprised that Jay swapped JP out of the lineup for Emir, but figured a night of rest for JP would be fine. I was even more surprised when Conor Doyle lined up in central midfield and Emir on the left wing. Both players were hyped as Swiss Army Knife type players who could play anywhere, but according to Transfermarkt that was Emir’s first professional appearance at left midfield.
Watching in the 2nd half, it became obvious that Jay wanted to give Dami some extra help covering one of League One’s fastest players: Shak Adams. We kept our first clean sheet in 6 games, so hard to argue with any defensive choices, but Shak did create 3 chances in the game, compared to 8 chances created in his previous 7 matches.
Emir was sparkling at left midfield though, stuffing the stat sheet with 41 passes, 8 duels won (to 3 lost), 2 chances created, 0.67xA (expected assists (for context that was almost 2x Ferrety’s for the game), 2 interceptions, 3 fouls won, and none conceded.
3) A clean sheet!
As noted in my colleague Ryan’s article, we had gone a team record 6 games in a row with conceding a goal. Thankfully, we’re back on our clean sheeted ways. During those six games, we conceded all 7 goals we’ve allowed this season. We earned 9 points during those 6 games. Compared to 12 points earned in our 4 clean sheets, you can see why we all want clean sheets!
The starting back four (Viader, Crull, Knutson, Sousa) earned their first clean sheet as a unit, but the four backline players have actually all started during a clean sheet previously. During the 45 minute attempt to play Dami at left mid last year, those four players all started. They also were on the field together at the end of the first two games of the season.
Currently, we are top of the table and headed for a top 2 clash (by RPI) next weekend. I predict fireworks.
Who Gives A Hoot? 