Who Gives A Hoot?

Data Dump (Ft Lauderdale Away)

Hey-oooooooooo! We won! Not only did we beat FtLCF but we beat the ref. I still can’t get over how bad the missed call was on their first goal.

They scored off of this beautifully handled build up. pic.twitter.com/DaI3qVSO4z
— Ben Turner (@Union_Omaha_Ben) October 1, 2020

My favorite part is that all three FtLCF players start walking away since they saw the handball as well. Ok, #refrant completed let’s dive in!

1) Toby in midfield

Gotta love it when Jay calls his shots. On the post game pod after the Richmond game he said that Toby would “feature” on Wednesday. Certain pundits thought this might be 15 to 30 minutes. Instead, ten days after leaving Kenya, Toby made his debut, started for us and went the full 90′ with a yellow card. He picked that card up in the 1st half and Jay made all five subs anyway. I can only imagine how impressive this young man has been in his time with the team. His stats were really impressive too.

Those are eye popping, to be honest. I didn’t include offensive stats since they were all zeros, but in terms of defensive effort, wow. Let’s compare Toby to our three fantastic midfielders.

Another effort like that and Toby could lead the team in tackles won and interceptions. I’m sold. For fun, check out this heatmap.

Maybe the most impressive heat map I’ve seen from a midfielder all year.

2) Devin in Elma’s role

Count me among those who thought adding Toby to the team was adding strength to an area we don’t need strength, our midfield. But the MOST interesting thing that came out of the addition of Toby was putting Devin up top.

I talked to Devin for 70 minutes about his career and he never mentioned if he had ever played forward. But watching him play all, he is honestly the player most similar in style to Elma. Indefatigable, all energy, all action, relentless on the press, the Elma of our midfield. With a legit midfield star on our hands in Toby (see point #1) and a slide that felt endless, Wednesday night was the perfect time to try something crazy.

Except it wasn’t that crazy, in fact, it made so much sense I was mad I didn’t think of it. Not a great sign to be starting two midfielders as your forwards, but hard to argue with the results, amiright? Evan Conway had a goal and an assist and EVD came on to score the game winner (duh, EVD4MVP). Let’s see if Devin looked on paper like Elma.

The fact that I had to triple check to see which person was which was all you need to know. I’d like to see this formation for another game to continue to evaluate whether this is the right thing for us. We could have scored 4 or 5 goals in that game and won 5-1. It is even more impressive because of some crazy…

3) Passing stats

Oh man, I do love a game where we have 30% possession, but it feels like we dominated and only didn’t win in a blowout because of bad refereeing. Look at these numbers.

An all around great performance for us. It’s a lot easy to see our refusal to quit when we score goals and win, but this time has ice in their veins. Can’t wait for Saturday!

3 Questions: Ft Lauderdale (Away)

“Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, floating in the wind, wanting to start again?” Ms. Katy Perry inadvertently summed up where Union Omaha is going into game 12 of a 16 game season. We are floating in the wind, in need of a fresh start.

1) Do we score a goal?

It’s been close to 300 minutes without scoring for Union Omaha. We’ve seen our Halloween plans reduced to trick or treating. But it would be great to close out the season strong. It would be cathartic to watch the ball arrive in the back of the opponents net. I’d like to see Jay roll out the same attacking lineup as Saturday, but…

2) Do we play like it is a midweek game?

We’ve had a two midweek games, but we’ve released lineups for three. (Remember the Lights.) Each one has been slightly different and each one has featured rotation in a few spots. I think Jay makes some changes, but for the most part is going to ride the best available folks. Something like this:

FWD: Elma, Evan
MID: Sebas, TD, Devin, EVD
DEF: Jake, Illal, Aune, Ferrety
GK: Howard

I think we’ll see some rotation in a few spots, but we’ll put out our best offensive lineup in our most successful formation. The bench is another question…

3) Does Toby make his debut?

Jay basically said he would on the pod on Saturday night. So the question is how much do we see him? Given where we are at right now, nothing would surprise me, but I’d think on between the 60th and 75th minute for TD. Can’t wait to see it tonight!

Elo Rankings: Week 10

*crying emojis*

Team		Weekly Change	Season Change
Greenville Triumph	1619	9	88
Forward Madison	1546	-3	18
Richmond Kickers	1545	27	70
North Texas	1544	-8	-31
Chattanooga Red Wolves	1528	-10	26
Fort Lauderdale CDF	1482	11	-18
Union Omaha	1480	-18	-20
South Georgia Tormenta	1474	0	-14
FC Tucson	1463	-6	-14
New England II	1449	17	-51
Orlando City B	1355	-17	-54

Data Dump: Richmond (Home)

Well that was a real Kick in the heart, huh? I put all my positive talk on this into the podcast, so if you want me to say reassuring things and add perspective, check in there. I’ll skip that and dive straight in to the data.

1) Was it that bad?

I have not rewatched the game yet, with the midweek game I wanted to get this column out. I am actually excited to watch the way we played in the game since we looked as good as we have in months. But, it was a bad time for a loss.

According to sportsclubstats we have a 0.9% chance of making the final playoffs. Two weeks ago at 11am EST (before kick-off against CRW), we had a 47.4% of making the final.

In the last two weeks, our Elo rankings have fallen by 71 points. Kickers have added 70 points this season.

Ok enough of this. Never say never, but *bleep* that hurt.

2) How about that reshuffled midfield?!

I had no evidence of it, but I was curious if Ethan played right midfield at the end of the Revs II game when we were in the diamond. Ethan’s skillset seems very well suited to a winger, but we have two great wingers. Good thing one of them can also play striker pretty well. I LOVED Jay’s choice of Evan up top, Sebas on the left, and Ethan on the right. LOVED IT. But did they actually play in different spots?

This looks pretty close to what our usual average position chart looks like, perhaps a bit more compressed. Our outside backs are up and wide, our wide midfielders are a bit pinched in, and our forwards are stacked. Here is our formation against OCB.

So, I like the way our average positions look against RVA a little better. One interesting thing to note is that Ethan still managed to be our most advanced player in the average positions.

Man that looks good. Too bad we didn’t score.

3) But we dominated though…

Yeah we did. Using FotMob, we won 30 of 36 categories losing only big chances, shots on target, long balls, tackles both attempted and succeeded, and interceptions. I’m going to build off a stat I saw on FotMob, which was that the Kickers completed 47 (said another way: forty seven) passes in our half.

UO v RVA: All Kickers’ passes attacking half

The full chart looks even worse.

The problem with soccer is that sometimes you dominate the game, you throw everything you’ve got at the goal, and you lose the game on a set piece.

In our three game scoreless streak, we’ve taken 48 shots (41 in the last two games), 19 corners (15 in the last two games), and 71 crosses (59 in the last two games). I’m looking forward to the pendulum swinging back our way and us beating Lauderdale 4-0. See you Wednesday!

3 Questions: Richmond (Home)

Welcome back to 3 Questions. Here, we’ve been nursing our wounds after getting one point from the last nine available. It has been an entire week since our last game which hopefully was good for the squad mentally and physically. Reinforcements arrived from Kenya. Our competitors got some results. And it’s GAMEDAY! Let’s dive in.

1) How badly do we need to win?

Let’s put it this way. If we lose, this will be the last game we need to ask this question. According to SportsClubStats if we lose we have a 1.3% chance of making the final. Win, it is at 18%. And if we can get some help from Madison of all teams by beating Chattanooga today, that would be ideal. We’ve now arrived at a potentially climatic “must-win” game.

2) Where does the spark come from?

We need something to snap us out of our funk. Not allowing a goal in the first 15 minutes is probably a good place to start. The last time we didn’t do that, we kept a clean sheet against Orlando City B.

Offensively, EVD’s rescinded red card is huge for us, he is the straw that stirs our drink offensively. Devin Boyce needs to be on the pitch as well since we are a more dynamic offensive team with him out there. But my hot pick for today is Evan Conway (or someone) hitting a banger. We took a lot more shots outside of the box than usual in the last game. I’d kind of like to see that continue.

3) How do we stop Emiliano Terzaghi?

The current golden boot leader is hot off of a midweek brace, and we’ll be starting a rotated back line. Will it matter? Which version of our defense will show up, the one that switches off every once in a while or the clean sheet machine from the start of the season? Join me at Werner Park tonight to see the answer for yourself!

Elo Rankings: Week 10

Pretty painful week for Union Omaha fans in the Elo rankings as our team went from +51 on the season to -2. Plus all the other stuff.

Team	Week 10	Weekly Change	Season Change
Greenville Triumph	1610	17	79
North Texas	1552	-8	-23
Forward Madison	1549	0	21
Chattanooga Red Wolves	1538	-1	36
Richmond Kickers	1518	0	43
Union Omaha	1498	-53	-2
South Georgia Tormenta	1474	21	-14
Fort Lauderdale CDF	1471	-20	-29
FC Tucson	1469	17	-8
New England II	1432	27	-68
Orlando City B	1372	0	-37

Data Dump: Revs II (Home)

It’s Wednesday morning and half the nights since the game I’ve had dreams about UO being unable to get a goal while down 1-0. I view this level of personal emotional investment as a good sign and hope that we all are feeling as strongly as ever that simply having the opportunity to be furious at a PRO referee is a pretty good win. Let’s dive in.

1) How did Jake do replacing Dami?

Going into the match one of the biggest questions I had was who is our left back? The answer was Jake Crull. Jake seemed to step into all of Dami’s duties including set pieces. Let’s see how he did:

Dami’s passing accuracy on the season is 73.9% and 58.7% while in the opponents’ half. Jake’s numbers compare favorably there. Let’s look at how Dami did vs. Tormenta in these categories.

What jumps out to me is that Dami won 2/3 of his duels and Jake won none of his. One key thing Dami provides for us is offense. How did Jake do there?

Starting with shots, Jake was 1 for 4 in this match which happens to be what Dami’s season long stats are. As for crosses, Jake’s 33% success rate on crosses compares favorably to Dami’s 36.8% rate for the season.

As for chances Dami is averaging a little more than 2 per game. So 4 chances for Jake is good production from a UO left back.

For good measure here is Jake’s heat map for the game.

If anything Jake looked to get into the final third a bit more than Dami usually does. Overall, it seems like Jake may have offered a smidge more offensive firepower at the expense of some defensive stability.

2) Daltyn in the diamond.

Instead of playing the hits here and looking at the center back play on the game, I want to talk about something I speculated could happen a few weeks ago in a column. Daltyn came on as a holding midfielder!

I was pretty sure from where I was sitting we were playing a midfield diamond, which was an interesting look for us and as a Chelsea fan who loved José Mourinho, I loved it. Dalytn’s touches look to be above the backline and through the middle, as you might expect. Coming on at the 74′ limits the amount of data available, but it was an interesting look.

3) Crosses, crosses everywhere.

If you felt like we had a lot of crosses it is probably because we did.

In case it isn’t clear, we’re the team on the right side. We had 25 crosses in the game, almost double our average of 13.8 crosses per game. We average 3.6 successful crosses per game and have a 26.10% crossing success rate on the season. In this game we completed six crosses or 24% of them.

We also took a lot of shots.

We absolutely peppered their goalmouth. And we had a number of shots from distance that were on target which seemed like a new thing for us, but this is a bangers only league, so probably the right thing for us to be doing. Let’s look at our closets shots though.

I’m always hoping to find that one chart that sums up the whole game, and for this game it is this chart. Above you will see that not one single shot we took inside the Revs II box was on target.

Anyway, Viva Buhos friends! See you Saturday night!

Owls struggle to find the back of the net against Revs II

Coming off of their first loss of the season against Chattanooga, Union Omaha looked to bounce back against bottom of the table New England Revolution II. This would not be the case as the Owls came up short in a 2-0 defeat for their second consecutive loss.

The Owls have scored only one point in three matches as the playoff push intensifies.

First team player for the Revolution, Justin Rennicks suited up as striker for the USL One side against the Owls in this match.

Rennicks slipped through the Owl defense to score the opening goal for the Revolution II side in the 11’.

The four defenders for Union Omaha had never played together before in a match this season as usual left back Damia Viader is hurt with a rib injury.

Head Coach Jason Mims is not worried though about the concession of early goals in the past few games including the one against the Revolution II.

“We gave up goals in the first 15 minutes for three or four games this year. We weren’t flat, it was just the moment we were bad on,” Mims said. “It’s hard when you have to mix up the back four, I don’t think they’re playing bad, they are just not in synch.”

Rennicks’ celebrates his goal against Union Omaha. Photo by Liam Keating

The Owls dominated possession the rest of the game earning 54% of the ball by creating chance after chance, but the ball would not find the back of the net. Union Omaha outshot the Revs 19-9.

“The stadium felt like it, we felt like it,” Mims said. “The team felt like it that we were gonna get one.”

The goals never came for the home team as frustration mounted and in the 90’ more aggravation ensued.

Owls forward Ethan Vancore-Decker was called for a straight red card for a tackle near the touchline that caused controversy and anger amongst the players, coaching staff and fans of Union Omaha.

“Its a foul, not a redcard,” Mims said. “He didn’t leave his feet. He didn’t go in with his studs, it was a foul. We will certainly if theres a procedure for that, appeal that [red card].”

Moments later the team from Boston would score a second goal with a man advantage on a breakaway in the closing moments of the game.

Union Omaha will need to bounce back quickly as they face fourth place Richmond Kickers at home on Saturday, Sept. 26 at 7pm.

“Saturday becomes big,” Mims said.

Jacob Crull whips in a cross for the Owls. Crull replaced Viader at the left back position against the Revolution II. Photo by Liam Keating

3 Questions: Revs II (Home)

1) How badly do we need to win this game?

Another game with major implications for our playoff chase. Win, we have a one in three chance of making the final. Lose, we have just a 12% chance. A shortened season raises the stakes for everything. The single point we earned from the last two games hurt us. Time to get back to our winning ways.

2) Who plays left back?

I would have made this my first question if I hadn’t committed to the making “how badly do we need to win” the first question. Dami, who is still leading the team in minutes, was injured against the Red Wolves.

My love for the game and my desire to play remain untouched. #vivabuhos pic.twitter.com/F8kJFmoYet
— Damià Viader – “DAMI” (@Damiaviader) September 17, 2020

First of all, Dami has a way with words that I love. Second, if you’ve been paying attention you will know that our backup left back happens to be our starting left center back, Jake Crull. So does Daltyn Knutson play center back and Jake play left back? Does Jake play center back and Ferrety, who is very right footed, play left back? Or does something truly crazy happen, like Luke on the left, Ferrety on the right; did one of our midfielders used to play left back?

Whatever decision is made it will be vital for the next few games. Dami is a critical part of our team, and 3 Questions hopes he is getting the rest he needs with that broken rib to make a full recovery!

3) It’s the final game of the rotation cycle, what is our lineup?

Totally predictable question I know, but the we are at the end of the second of three midweek game rotation cycles. These have been challenging for us. The good news is nobody but Tyler David played 180 minutes in the previous two games. The team has been home since Tuesday. We cannot afford to lose points, who plays?

FW: Elma, EVD
Mid: Evan, Devin, JP, Sebas
Def: Jake, Daltyn, Illal, Luke
GK: Rashid

Only JP, Daltyn, and Luke played 90 minutes on Tuesday and none of them played more than 45 minutes in the previous game. I think it works. I think that team will generate a win and some pleasing soccer. But I’ll be at Werner Park, ready to find out when we kick off tonight!

Data Dump: Chattanooga (Away)

Well, we finally lost. The streak is over, long live the streak. Jay Mims had some good perspective, instead of sulking he said he was “celebrating the almost 20 games counting pre-season and closed door matches and regular season where we have amazingly somehow never felt like this right now. It’s a strange feeling and we don’t like it!” It has been a pretty amazing run and it is hard to not be excited about what comes next. Before moving on to the next, let’s dive into the data from this game.

1) What if we’d played on August 12th?

Let’s start with the most painful part of this, that we should have played this match (or won by forfeit) on August 12th. We were coming off our away win at Tucson, we’d just given up our first goal of the season after three full games and were getting ready to play our first midweek game. The Red Wolves were in the middle of a 1-2-2 stretch and we were catching them between North Texas away and Greenville away. Here is a chart of their Elo progression for the season.

1502 to 1505 (2-2 @TRM)
1505 to 1516 (1-0 TUC)
1516 to 1522 (2-2 @NTX)
*The ill fated UO game*
1522 to 1513 (1-0 @GVL)
1513 to 1491 (1-2 TRM)
1491 to 1510 (4-0 NE2)
1510 to 1513 (1-1 @FTL)
1513 to 1528 (1-2 @NE2)
1528 to 1539 (2-1 RIC)
1539 to 1556 (2-0 UO)
note: all scores are (home team – away team)

We would have definitely been catching them on the way to rock bottom, instead of the hot, hot team we faced today. I want to take nothing away from The Red Wolves here, they clearly out played us today and they are clearly a good team. But they also are a clearly better team than they were a month ago and that did not help us. C’est la vie.

Let’s all take a cleansing breath and move on.

2) Did Illal play left back?

First of all, here is hoping Dami is OK. Without putting on a tin foil hat, I think it is safe to say: a) he took a massive and painful shot to the midsection and b) if Jay had planned to sub him off for rest purposes he would have had Jake Crull on the bench.

Second, Dami is a really important player for us. I will not turn this into a Dami appreciation post, but I do want to share this minutes chart.

Dami is leading our team in minutes played even with missing the second half of today’s game. He’s important.

Illal is important too. Since this isn’t an Illal appreciation post, I’ll spare you all that data as well. But he hasn’t played left back since his freshman year of college. But did he play left back today.

Now that you have a clear sense of where Dami roams as our left back, let’s look at Illal’s heat map.

Illal definitely played more centrally than we usually see out of Dami. Illal’s touches could indicate he was playing the left spot in a three man back line.

The first half heat map for our starting center backs look like our standard center back heat maps. Let’s check out the second half.

Kind of looks like we played three in the back, huh? Instead of showing you six more charts that proves this, I’ll just share that Jay said we were playing the same as the first half defensively, but different offensively in the second half.

3) Should Tyler David have been subbed off?

A question from Tim from the Discord who is “curious about how much impact Tyler had. Was he valuable enough to justify not subbing him out, especially after flirting with that second yellow?” Tyler’s toughness and leadership was on full display today. Had the ref been harsher on some other calls he let slide in the game, he might have sent Tyler off.

Either way, I have the same question. Let’s dig in starting with passing. On the season, Tyler has completed 78.4% of his passes. In this game, he completed *checks Opta data again* 78.4% of his passes. So certainly by that measure he was giving us Tyler David level performance.

FotMob player ratings had him at 6.4, which was the highest of our midfielders, but not as high as others on the team.

He created one chance, two tackles, one interception, one clearance, conceded three fouls, and won four of eight duels. Per game he’s averaging about one chance, one tackle won, one interception, about half a clearance, one foul conceded and I don’t have access to his duel success rate. All in all, this seems like a standard performance for Tyler David.

So nothing pops out in the data, but I would be inclined to say that we needed the on-field leadership, organization on set pieces, and general intangibles that Tyler gives the team. With better planning, I’d have asked Jay about this, but I didn’t. On that unsatisfying note, I’ll see you all on Saturday!