The Data Dive is a little late this week as I was actually in North Carolina this past weekend with family, so was able to attend the game. It was a good experience, even with the rain! In this Dive I’ll mention a few things from this game as well as some other things that I’d been collecting for a bit now.
Rainy Days
It was storming quite a bit this past weekend in the Raleigh area, so it wasn’t a big surprise when we ended up in a rain delay. We haven’t had many rain delays in our games that didn’t just end up rescheduled (like Chatt in 2020 and Madison last year).
So it was interesting to see how we started, after having that big delay. How much that effected the play I’m not sure, especially as it is only our second rain delay. The first home game we ever had, against North Texas in 2020, was the only other rain delay game that I can recall. With more data, maybe across all of the teams in the league, it might be interesting to consider. But as for now, it was an odd quirk to our normal schedule and an interesting experience having been there for it.
Unexpected Goals?
After this past performance where we had the run of play the whole second half but weren’t able to score, I thought now would be a good time to talk about some Expected Goals (xG) metrics. Here are our xG stats during the league season compared to how many goals we’ve actually scored/conceded:
xG Scored: 12.74 goals. Actual Scored: 14.
xG Scored Against Us: 9.93. Actual Conceded: 11.
So we are actually slightly above the expected on both ends. There are a few games to point to in particular as well for how these came to be.
For goals scored, the best games for us are the home game against Fuego and at Tucson, where we over-performed our xG by about 1.5 each game. On the other hand, we under-performed by a whole 1 xG in the games at Charlotte and home against Hailstorm. The home games against Greenville and Charlotte were not the best either in that respect.
For goals conceded, we were poor in this last game, as NCFC only scored with 0.18 xG. We’ve had a few other games like this, at Charlotte, the second time at Tormenta and home against Greenville. In each of those games we allowed about 1 xG more than we should have. Those really hurt our otherwise good numbers. Both the first time at Tormenta and at Chatt,they had over 1 xG but we were able to shut them out. This is on top of a number of other games where we kept clean sheets while teams had some very good chances.
Does this mean we don’t need to still score more and give up less? Sort of. We are tracking behind other teams in goals per game, but we are also actually doing really well in goals conceded. So there is some mixed results in these stats, which seems to match how the season has gone so far.
Fitting Combinations
This last one is more of a personal project that I’ve been doing, though it is a fun coincidence that it was actually mentioned on the pod this week. A couple of weeks ago, there were a few weird looks on the berm when we saw the uniform combination chosen against Charlotte. The White/Volt/White look was definitely… odd. After discussion during that match I decided to take a look at what combinations we’ve all worn this season.
Of the total 17 games we’ve played this season, we’ve only worn the Black jersey 6 times, going 2-1 in the cup and 1-1-1 in the league. That’s the easiest to look at on it’s own, aside from the goalkeeper kit. The Volt GK kit has 2 wins and 3 draws in the league, but has a very ugly open cup loss. The Blue kit has the 3 early cup wins plus a win, a loss, and three draws in the league. Finally, the Gray kit has 1 cup win, 1 league win, and 1 league loss.
Here is the combination table:
And here is the full table:
Does it mean anything? No. Or at least I wouldn’t think so. But some interesting data to compile, especially since Gabe said on the pod this week that he liked the Black/White/Black, which we’ve yet to see. So I guess we’ll see what is chosen for the next match to see if he gets that combo.
Who Gives A Hoot? 