No words could sum up my feelings for this game as well as the following emoji: 😑
I’ll save the feelings talk for the pod this week, but I think it’s okay to be in your feelings after two straight painful draws, 24 days since we tasted victory, and 38 days since Greg Hurst’s hat-trick (for perspective, we played our first game 87 days ago). We’re still top of the table, but only because everyone else is stumbling harder than us (and we have the best defense in the league). Anyway, let’s dive in.
1) What will it take to get a penalty awarded?
We’ve played 28 matches in club history and have been awarded one penalty. There was an obvious penalty on Elma Nfor in this game that stands out as a potential issue worth talking about, but it is a symptom of a larger issue. Since we are sitting on 28 matches, which is the number of matches every team in the league played in year one, some direct comparisons become available.
In the 2019 USL League One season (season one), there were 43 penalties given in 280 games. This means in 15.4% of season one matches, there was a penalty given, I’m going to call this the ‘penalty rate’ for the league. On average, each team received 4.3 penalties or 1 every 7 matches or so. Check out the table here, but North Texas received 9 and Richmond received 2. Which means in the 28 games in season one every single team received AT LEAST twice as many penalties as we have in the last 28 games.
Last season there were 20 penalties given in 176 games. That’s a 11.4% rate. In the 2021 season there have been 18 penalties given in 154 games. That is a 11.7% rate. Here is a chart of the combined penalties awarded in 2020 and 2021.
| Club | Penalties Awarded |
| Richmond Kickers | 8 |
| North Texas Soccer Club | 7 |
| FC Tucson | 5 |
| Toronto FC II | 4 |
| South Georgia Tormenta FC | 4 |
| Greenville Triumph SC | 2 |
| Fort Lauderdale CF | 2 |
| Chattanooga Red Wolves SC | 2 |
| Orlando City B | 2 |
| Forward Madison FC | 1 |
| New England Revolution II | 1 |
| Union Omaha | 1 |
| North Carolina FC | 0 |
I’m sure that chart fills your belly with rage. Orlando City B + Toronto FC have been awarded 6x the penalties we have in this timeframe. But, we’re clearly not the only team getting hosed here and penalties awarded don’t necessarily correlate with success. Especially this season, where 3 teams haven’t been awarded penalties: the teams in 1st place, 2nd place, and last place.
I think there are some more interesting questions that can be teased out here (eg. Why do MLS 2 sides get so many penalties?), but I’ll leave that for another time. For your reference here are some other data points from other leagues of note: in USL Championship 17.3% of games had a penalty in 2020; for MLS it was 12.1%, and League One in England was 12.8%.
Given that, the penalty rate in our league is a bit low but not crazy different, in fact in this small sample set the USL Championship seems to be outlier. But since we know we’re seeing a reasonable number of penalties in our league, Union Omaha fans can feel extra unlucky/screwed/aggrieved that we’ve received so few.
2) Are we giving up too many goals or is there a power outage (pun intended)?
While I’m sure all of us in the Omaha metro have had enough power outage talk this week considering this game was one week removed from a storm that caused more power outages in the metro than any other in history, we need to talk about the power outage for the Owls.
We’ve always relied on a balanced attack, just at Luke Opperman how his team-wide beer bet is going, but lately, we’ve been reliant on two guys: Greg Hurst and Devin Boyce. The last time a player not named Greg Hurst or Devin Boyce scored a goal was 31 days ago with Sousa’s goal in Richmond, and the last time a player not named Greg Hurst or Devin Boyce scored at home was the first goal of the season, a full 87 days ago.
Despite giving up just 9 goals on the season, 69.2% of the goals the next best defense has let in, those goals have all been in our last 9 games. We’ve scored 17 goals on the season, but just 12 in the last 9 games. This is likely why we are seeing so many 1:1 draws. (All five of our draws have been 1:1 and in the last 9 games). We’ve scored more than 1 goal 4 times this season, and 2 times in the last 9 games.
With a league leading defense, it is hard to fault the defense for not getting more clean sheets. We need to be scoring more goals as well. But in the immortal words of Jay Mims: “Scoring goals is the hardest thing to do in soccer.”
3) Are we using enough subs?
So I’ve been tracking the number of subs used since the start of the season and have not found much interesting in the data. We’ve used the fully allowed 5 subs a total of 4 times. In a win, a draw, the loss, and a win in that order. In our collection of 1:1 draws we’ve used between 2 and 5 subs for an average of 3.2 subs per draw. See, not much there to draw conclusions from.
We’ve got a very small roster though, with just 19 players fit and with the team currently (assuming Tobias Otenio is not injured). Against Madison, with JP Scearce suspended, we had literally every available player on the field or the bench . This has nothing to do with the point I’m trying to make, but let’s pause a moment to let that sink in.
-pausing….3, 2, 1…-
Okay we’re back. Given the available personnel and makeup of the starting line-up we had one of our strongest benches of the season in my opinion. Given that, I was a bit surprised to see John Murphy Jr getting into the mix but I was super impressed with his play.
He stepped in quite admirably for Tobias on paper as well.
I was very surprised when Jay made his final substitution in the 81′, bringing on a very game looking EVD, and left two potential offensive subs on the bench in Firmino and Molina. Since I don’t attend post match press conferences, I didn’t get to ask him this directly, and while I’m sure he’d have a satisfactory explanation if I did ask him, he’s not here, so I’m going to express my opinions.
We were the better team in the game. We held Madison to 0.40 xG, the best mark we’ve held an opponent to all season (and less xG than the chance Greg Hurst. almost scored in the 2nd minute). We are at home. I’d like to see us pushing to win the game. You can make all kinds of arguments about the players on the bench vs the players on the field, but both Firmino and Molina would bring fast, fresh legs and are proven clutch performers. In the past, Jay has clearly valued fresh legs over other factors. I was a bit surprised he didn’t do that here as well, but that might just be feelings talking again.
In conclusion, we’ve beaten Madison 2.91 xG to 2.25 xG over the three games we’ve played, yet we’re only 1-1-1 against them having scored 3 goals and given up 3 goals. We are clearly the better team, but they’ve got our number on the field and their fans live rent free in our heads off of it. Therefore it is my sincere wish we only play them one more time this year.
Who Gives A Hoot? 