PBP: 2019 NWSL Week 4 Discussion

87' 1-0 Orlando subs in (3 of 3) #23 Marisa Viggiano for #17 Dani Weatherholt.

88' 1-0 Viggiano crosses from ~5m wide left to 6m center, Campbell comes out and catches.

89' 1-0 Houston subs in (3 of 3) #12 Veronica Latsko for #14 Nichelle Prince.

 

90+2' (of +5') 1-0 Latsko dribbles to right corner, Pickett digs ball away. Latsko challenges Marta, foul.

90+2' (of +5') 1-0 Daly stands over ball at right corner arc. Marta runs up from behind, gives a gentle two-handed shove to the back, Daly trips over flag and stays down. Foul, yellow card on Marta. Afterward, a bit of comedy: Marta is holding the corner flag (which got uprooted), pantomines stabbing it into the ground -- then does stab it roughly into the correct spot.

90+4' (of +5') 1-0 Huerta fk at 1m wide right, short to Daly, she stands over it again. Orlando send 3 and dig ball out to Huerta, she tries to backshield and gets bumped down. Foul on Daly

90+5' (of +5') 1-0 Boyles shoots from ~arc top mid-right, sails it high.

FT 1-0. Houston 17(9)-(0)9 shots(sog), 5-3 corners.

 

Wow, zero shots on goal for Orlando... Thought they had done better than that, but I guess not.

 

*Jerry Seinfeld voice* Orlando Pride are so bad, even their coach is rooting for the other team!

 

Sure looks like it there, don't it?

 

Yep

 

And as another stats bonus this week, here's a table showing the # of goals scored by teams for the last full season's worth of games:

 

Hey, now that I think about it, having a full match-day of 4 matches across the week-end with just 2 goals scored (two 1-0s and two 0-0s) has to be a very rare occurrence, hasn't it?

 

I feel like we've come close before, but yeah I think two goals in four games is likely a record low (maybe a tie for record low, but IDK).

 

Despite the fact that HOU is now 3rd in the table, both 538 and SCS still project them to finish 6th in the league. They also agree on the bottom 2, but are different otherwise... Especially in disagreement with the comparison between CHI and DC. The big difference between the two systems is that SCS only considers games played this season, while 538 has memory of previous years.

 

When you look at Houston's goal differential, they do seem to be an outlier. So one would expect if their GD stays negative they won't make it to the playoffs. Though Washington did make it to 4th place with a -7 GD in 2014, so stranger things have happened.

 

To be fair, that GD is also from just one very lopsided loss. Even though their wins have been against weak opposition, you could also fairly easily argue that the NC loss was a bit of an outlier. And no other current playoff-placed teams have faced NC yet.