That game was definitely… something. A truly wild game that ended with 10 players for each team and a late giveaway leading to a player’s first goal for the team. There is so much to talk about from it, so I’ll get right into that!
Leaving the Drought with Tucson
Finally, after three whole games, 284 minutes into having not scored a goal at home, the drought was broken. It was the longest home scoring drought we have had in the club’s history. We’ve only had one prior stretch of home games that could actually be considered a goal drought, during the losing streak in 2020 we didn’t score in two consecutive home losses. There have been other games where we have failed to score at home but those have been one-off events. So finally getting through this rough patch was such a relief.
And how did we do so? Well, it was through Hugo’s goal in the 14th minute which also ended his own goal drought. He hadn’t scored in the league since the first goal of the first home game, all the way back in late April. He did score in the game against Minnesota in the cup in May but seeing him able to get that weight off his shoulders was just incredible to see. Hope to see many more in the coming games as well (頑張って宇々護!).
A Quick xGdate
Last week I talked a bit about how against North Carolina we weren’t as efficient with our xG as we could have been. I gave some examples of our best and worst performances based on that metric as well. Well guess what? This game would also make that list as one of the better games we’ve had this year xG-wise!
We scored 2 goals (1 somewhat gifted) on only 0.8 xG while only giving up 1 goal from 1.31 xG. That’s great as not only does it mean our offense produced more than it necessarily should have, but our defense was more solid than expected as well. Though why those numbers are so skewed in general comes to the last point…
Cards Gone Wild
The red card we received in the first half was indeed an interesting one. But I’ll let the others talk about that incident and instead focus on what the stats as a whole mean. 10 yellows, plus 2 second yellows which resulted in 2 reds. That’s a lot of cards. In fact, that is the most cards in one of our games ever. We’ve had 9 in a couple of other games, but that doesn’t even touch those 10 initial yellows in this game. Tucson continues to be one of teams that we have the most cards with, with on average 3 yellows per each team per game, and this exacerbated that even more in the overall numbers. That even isn’t mentioning the otherwise relatively modest number of fouls this game (10 for us, 12 for them, for 22 total) which is actually lower than the usual mark which is on average almost 30 total fouls per match with them.
The stat that really sticks out to me though, is the red cards. This is not the first game in which both us and the opponent have received reds, that goes to the game in North Texas in 2020. It is only the second time we’ve had that happen, though. It also means that, along with the red received in the prior game this season, both Tucson and us now have received 2 reds each against one another. And that is definitely a first for us, as only North Texas had split reds before and only Tormenta have multiple reds against us. It also means they are the first team that we have had 2 red cards against. It all comes down to the truly special match-up this fixture is. Maybe not special in a good way, though our 8 wins and only 1 loss may actually end up having us still feel pretty good about it, despite the rough nature of each game.
Now, onto Belt Week!
Who Gives A Hoot? 