So the action this past week was fairly exciting, even if some of the better matches this past week were just really, really interesting ways to get to a draw. That doesn’t do much for us in the ratings department, as you’ll see below:

Rank	Team	Rating
1	Union Omaha (7-5-1)	2.104
2	Chattanooga Red Wolves (6-6-1)	1.533
3	Greenville Triumph (6-5-3)	1.082
4	Forward Madison (4-6-3)	0.824
5	FC Tucson (4-4-5)	0.335
6	Richmond Kickers (4-5-5)	0.254
7	Toronto FC II (5-4-6)	0.253
8	North Texas SC (4-3-5)	0.079
9	Fort Lauderdale CF (5-4-7)	0.058
10	New England Revolution II (6-1-7)	-0.253
11	South Georgia Tormenta (6-2-9)	-0.503
12	North Carolina FC (2-3-7)	-0.777

So I’m not including the weekly ratings change table this week because, amazingly, we saw zero teams change positions as far as ranking. Fort Lauderdale also crossed the zero threshold, giving us nine out of twelve clubs with a positive rating. It’s becoming obvious that so long as a team has more combined wins and draws than losses, they’re more likely to have a positive rating.

This makes some sense, considering that all draws result in a positive match rating. This is something I might take into account when I’m evaluating this rating for next year, but we are way, way too far away from lighting that candle. The reason why I may want to to adjust this in the future is because, of course, not all draws should be considered equal. In my opinion, I don’t think any team had a draw that should be considered a “negative” result this past week (maybe Madison), but I think it’s entirely logical to think that Greenville’s draw at home to North Carolina earlier this season was considered a negative result for them.

So, another way to interpret these ratings are with my before mentioned proportional analysis. By rating everybody on a scale that constantly fluctuates depending on what the highest and lowest ratings are, we can reorganize these ratings so that they’re displayed as if they’re calculated with some sort of “zero-sum” method.

In the predictability analysis I’m privately tracking (which has it’s positives and negatives at the moment), I only care about what a team’s rating is in proportion to the best team. In order to calculate this, I add the absolute value of the lowest rating to all twelve teams. This makes the lowest rating zero, and the highest rating can now be used as the denominator to calculate all percentages. Think of it as considering the highest rated team as the absolute best team (100%), the lowest rated team as the absolute worst team (0%), and every other team is graded somewhere in the middle. If you’d rather have a numeric scale similar to the ratings themselves, where 0 is the midpoint, you’d simply take the extra step of subtracting each adjusted rating by half of the highest rating. This can be read as:

(R + ab(L)) – ((H + ab(L)) / 2)

In the above formula, R is the team’s rating, ab(L) is the absolute value of the lowest rated team, and H is the highest rated team. Here is Greenville’s adjusted rating using this method (current rating: 1.082):

(1.082 + ab(-.777)) – ((2.104 + ab(-.777)) / 2) = 0.4185

Here’s the entire table using this calculation:

Team	Adjusted Rating
Omaha	1.4405
Chattanooga	0.8695
Greenville	0.4185
Madison	0.1605
Tucson	-0.3285
Richmond	-0.4095
Toronto	-0.4105
North Texas	-0.5845
Fort Lauderdale	-0.6055
New England	-0.9165
South Georgia	-1.1665
North Carolina	-1.4405

This might be unnecessary, but this observation makes it a little easier to spot the noticeable gaps at the top and bottom of the table. It also might support rethinking at what point do we start seeing teams as being mediocre. Madison’s rating is the closest rating to zero here, and being a team that has only one more win than they have losses, a whole bunch of draws, and a goal difference of -1, this view might actually be a more accurate representation of how they stand.

We have a few matchups this week that might give us some hints as to which teams are ready for the midseason grind. We may have the answer to that for a couple of teams, but the jury is still out for many. We’ll see how these ratings adjust from that next week.

Well, I have to admit, I liked that more than other games in the last month. Is that because I watched from home and therefore gave the game my undivided attention? No, it’s because we won and scored two goals. Duh, let’s dive in.

1) Soccer is a game with a lot of randomness

Game A: Owls xG: 1.21, best chance not resulting in a goal: 0.44, opponent xG: 0.40
Game B: Owls xG: 1.22, best chance not resulting in a goal: 0.41, opponent xG: 0.40

You’d want to guess that these games had the same result. We all WISH these games had the same result. But, they didn’t. Game A is our draw on 7/16/2021 against Madison at home. Game B is our win over Tucson on 7/24/2021.

What’s even crazier to me is that when measured by opponent’s xG those are two of our three best games ever. Number 1 on the list? Our first game ever, aka, The “Gary Green’s Instagram” game.

2) What formation did we line up in?

Let’s review what we know.
A) Jay only plays a 4-4-2.
B) The announcer and pre-game graphic said we were playing a 4-1-4-1.
C) The game summary says we played a 4-2-3-1.
D) When Blake “Ba-Lock-A Muh-Loan” Malone game on, he clearly indicated with his hands we were going to play a 5-4-1.

Let’s start with #D. I definitely saw us play a 5-4-1 with Blake on the field.

So how about the rest of the game?

Here is how the league has us lined up.

So I’m not going to lie, I love that formation for that lineup. Maybe not the best lineup we have if everyone is healthy, but that’s not our life at the moment. (Brief aside on health, EVD looked like himself again and he was responsible for our big chance early in the game, before going down. I’m hoping that it is not as serious as it looked.) But what did we actually play?

Oh wow. We actually sort of a played a 4-2-3-1!

Given that we ended up winning when we’ve been drawing games, I’d like to see this formation again.

3) *very Owen Godberson voice* DAMIIIIIIIIIA VIAAADER

What a goal. Let’s watch it again real quick. (Goal is at 0:42)

First off, good for Dami for scoring this screamer. You could tell he loved it and it was a much needed change of pace from the Greg and Devin show (although they were back on their BS shortly after).

Second, he does more than score for us and he is having a better season than last year.
2020: 13 games, 1172 minutes, 1 goal, 1 assist, 1.05 xG, 2.33 xA, 21 Key Passes
2021: 13 games, 1272 minutes, 2 goals, 2 assists, 0.79 xG, 3.22 xA, 32 Key Passes

Third, he’s one of the best players in the league by many critical metrics. He is tied for first on Key Passes and is second in Crosses. His chief rival in these categories has 100 more minutes of game time than Dami does. Oh and he is the starting left back for the best defense in the league (see endnote). There are no other defenders in the top 5 for these categories.

He is tied for 2nd in goals and 2nd in assists for defenders. His xG+xA mark tops the league for defenders as well. Even though the league values duels won extremely highly for Team of the Week honors, it is not sortable in a public database that I am aware of, so I will not be comparing his defensive stats. It is also worth noting he has not been carded on the year. Did I mention that he did all of this while being the starting left back for the best defense in the league.

The only remaining question is: he is the MVP in addition to the Defender of the Year?

Brief endnote: We are the best defense in the league by the only metric that matters, goals allowed. We’ve let in 10. Sitting in a three-way tie for 2nd on 16 goals allowed is: Greenville, Chattanooga, and Madison. Madison has scored 6 fewer goals than Greenville and Chattanooga, which may help explain why they are in 8th place not somewhere between 2nd and 4th.

Last week was just an incredible, topsy-turvy week with the WGaH predictions competition. If that would have been a decision day for us, it would have probably led to violence. But instead, we can marvel at Rich’s comeback and Ben’s ascension, and worry about the following week.

	Ben	Jon	Liam	Luke	Rich	Riley	Ryan
Chattanooga 2-1 Tormenta	1	1	3	0	3	1	3
Omaha 1-1 Madison	3	0	0	0	0	0	0
Richmond 1-1 Fort Lauderdale	2	0	0	0	3	0	0
Greenville 2-3 Tormenta	3	0	0	0	0	0	0
North Texas 1-1 Chattanooga	0	0	0	2	3	0	2
Tucson 4-2 New England	0	0	0	1	1	1	0
North Carolina 2-4 Toronto	1	0	0	0	0	1	0
	10 pts	1 pt	3 pts	3 pts	10 pts	3 pts	5 pts

	Record	Points
Rich	30-49	47
Ben	30-49	47
Ryan	29-50	46
Liam	24-55	46
Jon	31-48	45
Riley	26-53	42
Luke	28-51	36

	Ben	Jon	Liam	Luke	Rich	Riley	Ryan
North Carolina FC v. Richmond Kickers (Wednesday, 18:00)	0-2	2-2	2-3	0-2	0-1	1-1	1-1
New England Revolution II v. Toronto FC II (Friday, 18:00)	3-3 🏝	1-0	1-0	2-1	1-0	1-2 🏝	2-0
Chattanooga Red Wolves v. Greenville Triumph (Saturday, 18:00)	1-1	2-1	1-0	1-3 🏝	1-1	0-0	2-1
Forward Madison v. Fort Lauderdale CF (Saturday, 19:00)	1-0	1-0	2-1	1-2 🏝	1-1	2-2	2-0
South Georgia Tormenta v. Richmond Kickers (Saturday, 19:00)	2-2	0-1 🏝	1-1	2-2	1-1	2-0	2-0
FC Tucson v. Union Omaha (Saturday, 21:00)	1-1 🏝	2-1 🏝	1-2	2-3	0-1	0-3	0-2

This week’s ratings saw an unexpected seismic shift, as well as the introduction of an overall general look that I was expecting we’d see around this time. Here’s a quick look before I expand:

Rank	Team	Rating
1	Union Omaha (6-5-1)	1.975
2	Chattanooga Red Wolves (6-5-1)	1.579
3	Greenville Triumph (6-4-3)	0.958
4	Forward Madison (4-5-3)	0.793
5	FC Tucson (4-4-4)	0.507
6	Richmond Kickers (4-4-4)	0.492
7	Toronto FC II (5-4-5)	0.396
8	North Texas SC (4-3-5)	0.102
9	Fort Lauderdale CF (5-3-7)	-0.074
10	New England Revolution II (5-1-7)	-0.408
11	South Georgia Tormenta (6-1-9)	-0.578
12	North Carolina FC (1-3-7)	-1.049

Rank Δ	Team	Result(s)	Rating Δ
7 ↔	Toronto	W 4-2 @ NC	🔼 .269
12 → 11	Tormenta	L 1-2 @ CRW W 3-2 @ GVL	🔼 .256
6 → 5	Tucson	W 4-2 v. NE	🔼 .212
10 → 9	Fort Lauderdale	D 1-1 @ RVA	🔼 .155
4 ↔	Madison	D 1-1 @ OMA	🔼 .146
8 ↔	North Texas	D 1-1 v. CRW	🔼 .109
5 → 6	Richmond	D 1-1 v. FTL	🔼 .028
2 ↔	Chattanooga	W 2-1 v. TRM D 1-1 @ NTX	🔽 .019
1 ↔	Omaha	D 1-1 v. MAD	🔽 .152
9 → 10	New England	L 2-4 @ TUC	🔽 .274
11 → 12	North Carolina	L 2-4 v. TFC	🔽 .384
3 ↔	Greenville	L 2-3 @ GVL	🔽 .388

So, while it isn’t a change of ranking, the seismic shift is obviously Greenville. We’re officially in the territory now of them being considered a team in the upper-half of the middle tier, they need to get back in the habit of drawing tough games and winning at least 75% of the games their expected to win before they’ll be considered an elite team again. Here is to hoping they can get through their injury issues, because this year’s team has been a fun one to watch when their healthy. Some might argue this is fun to watch, but watching them concede three goals in 19 minutes to Tormenta is like not being able to look at a car accident.

Another thing you’ll notice is that now a full two-thirds of the teams in the league have a rating above zero. This was expected to happen eventually as more draws occur, because teams can’t score a negative rating for a match that ends in a draw. This was slightly delayed because, as you may remember, it took us until the fourteenth game of the season to have our first draw (we’re up to over 27% of matches ending in draws). This is also why we likely have what looks like this large tier of mediocrity.

For my predictive analysis, I’ve been using a method where I look at what proportion each team’s rating is from the range of the best and worst rated teams. While this won’t replace the current rating system, it may very well become a regular inclusion to these articles when I have more time to write these, and we don’t have to worry about pumping these out before midweek games begin. So, maybe almost never!

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.

We here at Who Gives A Hoot Media hope you all had a wonderful bye week.  Whatever it is you did, wherever you went, we hope you were safe and had fun.  Now let’s get back to business.

            Tonight, Union Omaha welcomes Forward Madison into Werner Park for the first time since August 19^th, 2020.  Kickoff is slated for 8 PM (CST) and ESPN+ will carry the televised coverage.  At the moment, Union Omaha remains in first place, while Forward Madison fell two places to eighth place after last week’s loss to North Texas SC.  The two clubs have already faced each other twice this season, both matches in Madison, Wisconsin. The first match, back in Week 8, was a 1-0 win for the Flamingos.  The very next week, Union Omaha exacted revenge and left Madison with a 2-1 win.  Overall, the clubs have played one another four times, with each team winning once, losing once, and drawing twice.

            The Flamingos come to Omaha having only earned one win in the months of June and July combined.  In those seven matches, the club let in 12 goals and tallied only one clean sheet.  Sitting in eighth place, Forward Madison is on the outside of the playoffs, so tonight will be a key moment in their attempt to rejuvenate their playoff chances.  A win, and its three points, would launch them up the table and back into the playoffs.  A loss would only create more space between themselves and the teams racing towards November.

            Union Omaha had a bye week last week and hopes to keep their momentum going at the top of the table.  The Owls last match, at home against Chattanooga, ended in a 1-1 draw.  During the match, JP Scearce earned a red card, so he will not be available to for tonight’s match.  With the surplus of options to replace him, Union Omaha shouldn’t lose their midfield integrity and experience.

            Stylistically, both clubs are balanced from the back to the top line, so this will be a very close competition once again.  The most collective goals scored during the previous matches was three and neither team has ever won by more than one goal.  Look for a close scoreline and intense matchups.  Forward Madison will certainly keep the ball for long stretches and look to pick apart Union Omaha.  Their defense has shown the rare ability of absorbing Union Omaha attacks.  The Flamingos are also very strong passers, especially combining their central midfielders with the wings to advance up the field.  Those matchups could very well be the decider for the match.  Union Omaha will have a greater chance of success if they are able to move personnel from side to side, overload their players, limit their touches between passes, and cut off access to their key goal scorer, Jake Keegan.

            Just because tonight’s match is at the end of the work week, doesn’t mean there won’t be a tailgate.  Make sure to join the great crowd of people in the parking lot between 5:30 – 7.  There will be plenty of games, music, food, and drinks for all to enjoy.  The tailgate is free, but Omaha Parliament always accepts donations, as well as volunteering to help set up and/or take down the tents and such.  Everyone is welcome to the tailgate, so bring your friends and prepare to make new friends while you’re enjoying yourself.

Luke’s undeterred hatred of Chattanooga, and my totally independent decision to include last weekend’s continental finals has bunched up our table considerably. Let’s take a look at what it actually did:

	Ben	Jon	Liam	Luke	Rich	Riley	Ryan
New England 1-0 Toronto	1	0	0	1	0	0	0
Chattanooga 2-2 Tucson	0	0	0	2	0	0	0
Greenville 0-0 North Carolina	0	0	0	2	0	0	0
North Texas 4-1 Madison	0	1	0	1	1	1	1
Brazil 0-1 Argentina	0	0	0	1	0	1	0
England 1-1 Italy	3	0	3	0	0	0	0
Total	4 pt	1 pt	3 pts	7 pts	1 pt	2 pts	1 pt

	Record	Points
Jon	30-42	44
Liam	23-49	43
Ryan	27-45	41
Riley	23-49	39
Rich	26-46	37
Ben	25-47	37
Luke	26-46	33

	Ben	Jon	Liam	Luke	Rich	Riley	Ryan
Chattanooga Red Wolves v. South Georgia Tormenta (Wednesday, 18:00)	1-0	3-1	2-1	1-1 🏝	2-1	1-0	2-1
Union Omaha v. Forward Madison (Friday, 20:00)	1-1 🏝	2-1	1-0	2-1	1-0	2-0	3-0
Richmond Kickers v. Fort Lauderdale CF (Saturday, 17:30)	2-2	2-0	2-1	3-1	1-1	2-1	2-1
Greenville Triumph v. South Georgia Tormenta (Saturday, 18:00)	2-3 🏝	1-0	0-0	2-0	1-1	1-0	2-0
North Texas SC v. Chattanooga Red Wolves (Saturday, 20:00)	2-1	3-2	2-1	2-2	1-1	1-2 🏝	2-2
FC Tucson v. New England Revolution II (Saturday, 21:00)	1-2	2-2	0-1	2-0	1-0	2-0	1-1
North Carolina FC v. Toronto FC II (Sunday, 17:00)	1-3	1-0	1-0	1-0	1-1 🏝	0-1	2-1

We had our lightest schedule by far since I’ve started publishing my ratings. Let’s see how much movement there was with a third of the league sitting idle this past weekend:

Rank	Team	Rating
1	Union Omaha (6-4-1)	2.127
2	Chattanooga Red Wolves (5-4-1)	1.598
3	Greenville Triumph (6-4-2)	1.346
4	Forward Madison (4-4-3)	0.647
5	Richmond Kickers (4-3-4)	0.386
6	FC Tucson (3-4-4)	0.295
7	Toronto FC II (4-4-5)	0.127
8	North Texas SC (4-2-5)	-0.007
9	New England Revolution II (5-1-6)	-0.134
10	Fort Lauderdale CF (5-2-7)	-0.229
11	North Carolina FC (1-3-6)	-0.665
12	South Georgia Tormenta (5-1-8)	-0.834

Rank Δ	Team	Result(s)	Rating Δ
10 → 8	North Texas	W 4-1 v. MAD	🔼 .349
12 → 11	North Carolina	D 0-0 @ GVL	🔼 .277
7 → 6	Tucson	D 2-2 @ CRW	🔼 .250
9 ↔	New England	W 1-0 v. TFC	🔼 .154
8 → 10	Fort Lauderdale	Idle	🔼 .016
5 ↔	Richmond	Idle	🔼 .014
1 ↔	Omaha	Idle	🔼 .001
11 → 12	Tormenta	Idle	🔽 .041
3 ↔	Greenville	D 0-0 v. NCFC	🔽 .048
2 ↔	Chattanooga	D 2-2 v. TUC	🔽 .054
6 → 7	Toronto	L 0-1 @ NE	🔽 .139
4 ↔	Madison	L 1-4 @ NTX	🔽 .443

So, poor Tormenta now has the worst rating and they didn’t even play last weekend. A draw in Greenville is an admirable result for North Carolina, and the environment was ripe for a move like this to happen. As I mentioned last week, North Carolina are not only getting more games under their belt as they catch up with the rest of the league, but the results are improving (three results in a row), and all of their losses are by single goals. By contrast, Tormenta have played in six matches decided by more than one goal, and have lost four of them. Tormenta are also struggling with a .500 record at home, and don’t have the away results to pad the gap.

We had an interesting dynamic last weekend, as for the most part the weaker teams in the league had the more favorable results. With the exception of New England beating Toronto at home 1-0, most of the favored teams had poor results. This might explain why Fort Lauderdale was idle, saw their rating increase (even if slightly), but their rating suddenly became the 10th best out of 12, compared to 8th last week. Not only did the teams around Fort Lauderdale have positive results allowing them jump them, but the teams they got those results against were too far ahead to drop down. It’s like the middle of the table kinda shifted up, and Fort Lauderdale were kinda shuffled to the back of it as a result.

The analysis above kinda matches up with what I’ve been noticing the last few weeks, that the middle is still bunching up, and unless any of those teams between 5-10 either go on a run or a drought, that tier is still going to be large and volatile. It would also likely mean an exciting run to the finish once we’re at the final third of the season, and teams are jockeying for playoff position. Do I plan to have predictions for playoff chances? Hell no I ain’t sportsclubstats.com. But I will be back next week, and every week!

Last week was an interesting one; multiple matchups where teams highly rated were pitted against each other, and a couple of teams with multiple matches that led to equally poor results. Here are the current USL League One ratings, followed by a summary from the previous week:

Rank	Team	Rating
1	Union Omaha (6-4-1)	2.126
2	Chattanooga Red Wolves (5-3-1)	1.652
3	Greenville Triumph (6-3-2)	1.394
4	Forward Madison (4-4-2)	1.090
5	Richmond Kickers (4-3-4)	0.372
6	Toronto FC II (4-4-4)	0.266
7	FC Tucson (3-3-4)	0.045
8	Fort Lauderdale CF (5-2-7)	-0.245
9	New England Revolution II (4-1-6)	-0.288
10	North Texas SC (3-2-5)	-0.356
11	South Georgia Tormenta (5-1-8)	-0.793
12	North Carolina FC (1-2-6)	-0.942

Rank Δ	Team	Result(s)	Rating Δ
12 ↔	North Carolina	D 0-0 @ TRM	🔼 .448
3 ↔	Greenville	W 3-0 @ NE	🔼 .205
9 → 7	Tucson	W 2-1 v. FTL	🔼 .176
2 ↔	Chattanooga	D 1-1 @ OMA	🔼 .139
7 → 6	Toronto	W 2-1 @ TRM	🔼 .127
4 ↔	Madison	W 1-0 v. NE	🔼 .096
6 → 5	Richmond	W 3-2 v. NTX	🔼 .092
8 ↔	Fort Lauderdale	L 1-2 @ TUC	🔽 .123
11 ↔	Tormenta	L 1-2 v. TFC D 0-0 v. NCFC	🔽 .126
10 ↔	North Texas	L 2-3 v. @ RIC	🔽 .196
1 ↔	Omaha	D 1-1 v. OMA	🔽 .206
5 → 9	New England	L 0-1 @ MAD L 0-3 v. GVL	🔽 .780

So, some very unexpected results based on what transpired last week. North Carolina with the biggest rise after a draw at Tormenta? Omaha with almost the largest drop after drawing their best competition at home? Well, both of these scenarios can basically be explained in the same way: Union Omaha started their season so well, that a draw at home to Chattanooga not only is below average for them, it’s VERY below average for them. The same can be said about NCFC, only in the inverse. We’ll continue looking at Union Omaha as an example. Here are Union Omaha’s top and bottom three rated matches so far this season:

Date	Opponent	Result	Rating
05.07.2021	@ Fort Lauderdale	W 2-0	4.144
6.06.2021	@ Forward Madison	W 2-1	3.964
05.12.2021	@ New England II	W 1-0	3.084

Date	Opponent	Result	Rating
06.02.2021	@ Toronto FC II	D 1-1	1.455
07.02.2021	Chattanooga Red Wolves	D 1-1	1.131
05.26.2021	@ Forward Madison	L 0-1	-1.346

Seeing individual game scores visually probably helps a good deal. Here are a couple individual points you can make from it:

• The draw against Chattanooga is now the match with the lowest rating being counted towards Union Omaha’s average, replacing the away draw against Toronto that was almost 0.35 points higher
• The match rating of 1.131 is slightly less than 50% of Union Omaha’s overall (average) rating at the beginning of last week

So, as I’ve been saying for the past few weeks, Union Omaha’s performance during their road trip to begin the season is nothing to sneeze at. It was so good that admirable performances at home are considered, as far as these ratings are concerned, as barely treading water, or even as slightly poor. This was bound to happen without some superhuman stretch, but we’ve likely seen the last of these kinds of games having these kinds of affects. The same can be said of North Carolina FC, as I briefly mentioned above. The start to their season was cumulatively so poor, that any semblance of success will probably alter their overall rating significantly, and possibly for the next couple weeks for them since they’ve still only played nine games.

I still plan on publishing weekly updates to these ratings, but I’m thinking we’ve reached the end of the stretch where we can expect seeing significant fluctuation week in and week out, not without some dramatic results like the one in Foxborough last Sunday. I’m interested to see how different the ratings are when you’re comparing them several weeks, or even a month apart. That might be the direction my next set of observations are going. Also, as promised, I’m also tracking exactly how predictive these ratings might be. You may have heard evidence of this during a recent episode of the pod! More to come on that potentially, but until then I hope you enjoy your week of not living and dying by a Union Omaha result as much as I hope to.

Wow, there are ways to suck, and there are ways to really suck. The entire team cumulatively blanked nearly half the slate. It would have been more than half had Riley not been bold and predicted Madison with a quick turnaround rematch win against New England, a club that let most of the pod down last week.

	Ben	Jon	Liam	Luke	Rich	Riley	Ryan
Madison 1-0 New England	0	0	0	0	0	3	0
Tormenta 1-2 Toronto	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Richmond 3-2 North Texas	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Tormenta 0-0 North Carolina	2	0	0	0	0	0	0
Omaha 1-1 Chattanooga	3	2	0	0	0	0	0
Tucson 2-1 Fort Lauderdale	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
New England 0-3 Greenville	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total	6 pts	3 pts	1 pt	1 pt	1 pt	4 pts	1 pt

	Record	Poionts
Jon	29-37	43
Ryan	26-40	40
Liam	22-44	40
Riley	21-45	37
Rich	25-41	36
Ben	23-43	33
Luke	21-45	26