Week 16 recap: Bruh.

Gotham FC faced off against the Houston Dash Saturday afternoon/night and lost after scoring first for the first time in 56 games across all NWSL competitions, allowing the Dash to overcome a 0-1 deficit to win 2-1 in the dying moments of the game. The last time these two teams faced off, we urged you all not to panic after a low xG 0-0 draw against a team we thought we could beat that instead resulted in a season-ending injury to our team captain. That was week 3, when it was acceptable for Gotham to still be getting its sea legs and playoff contention concerns were still a long distance away. Now, it’s week 16, Gotham is barely hanging onto its 8th place spot in standings, and opportunities for more points are dwindling. Let’s reflect on this match, and what we should make of the rest of Gotham’s season.

Gotham dominated this match

The Houston Dash only managed two (2) shots this match (one in each half), only one of which was on target, generating a total of 0.11 xG. Gotham, meanwhile, registered 1.18 xG off of 15 shots, 5 of which were on target, shooting from the 8th minute all the way to the first minute of second-half stoppage time. Although Gotham’s xG per shot (0.08) left a little to be desired, the Bats were still in the driver’s seat this match, creating many opportunities to shoot and suffocating their opponent defensively. Gotham’s dominance can be seen in the match’s attack momentum chart.

If you look at the average positions of each of the players, Gotham had only two field players with an average position in their defensive half (the two center backs), and pushed Houston so far back that half of their field players were in their defensive half and zero of them had an average position in their attacking third.

Gotham barely allowed the Dash to get settled. Here are some other stats in which the Bats came out on top:

• Ball possession (58% vs. 42%)

• Passing accuracy (77% vs. 69%)

• Attacking third touches (156 vs. 80)

• Successful take-ons (10 vs. 1)

• Key passes (10 vs. 1)

• Passes into the final third (27 vs. 11)

• Passes into attacking penalty area (10 vs. 2)

And Gotham had some good moments. There was this Rose Lavelle nutmeg that turned into a pass that created a shot on target.

And there was this moment where Esther was able to keep the ball through defensive pressure.

And of course there was the goal that Gotham scored in the 8th minute, which was an Esther goal after a Rose Lavelle shot hit the crossbar.

But as we are seeing, it is simply not sustainable for Gotham to be the Rose Lavelle and Esther González show. Lavelle had to come off in the 63rd minute and there will come a day when 32-year-old Esther will not be able to carry the team’s offense like she does today. And most of all, soccer is a team sport! Gotham needs more goalscorers, or at the very least more players who can generate meaningful offense, and not having that has really been biting the team in the butt.

Gotham really needed these points

All in all, it’s pretty fair to say that Gotham got unlucky in this match. A very flukey own goal kept Houston in this game and gave them something to fight for, and there was one (1) defensive lapse in this game that led to Houston taking the lead at the end and leaving Gotham without any time to respond. It’s not very productive to ruminate on what could have been had the own goal never been scored, or had the weather delay never happened, because at the end of the day what we’re left with is what actually happened. What we witnessed on Sunday was all very unfortunate, but what’s even more unfortunate is the fact that Gotham has gotten itself in the position for this result to be so consequential for the team’s season. 

Let’s take a closer look at these two lapses and see what we can glean from them.

First, the own goal.

There’s not much to say here. Emily Sonnett was under a lot of pressure and committed a mistake that she will probably think about for a very very long time. No need to beat a dead horse, and also it would be a little dramatic to read into this specific mistake as an indictment of this team’s defense. This was truly a fluke, and the possibility of this will now linger in the back of the players’ minds for the rest of the season.

The goal conceded at the end was more of a defensive mistake. Michelle Alozie slips past Emily Sonnett and Lilly Reale without catching either defender’s attention, Reale is caught ball-watching a little too long, and Kayla Duran maybe keeps Alozie onside. To Reale’s credit, she manages to cover a lot of ground by the time she realizes what’s happening, but unfortunately it’s not quite enough. Alozie has the perfect finish and AKB is helpless. 

But again, these were pretty much the only 2 lapses in a 90 minute match that had a 2.5 hour weather delay in the middle. Besides the scoreline, this was one of the better performances we’ve seen from Gotham this season. Unfortunately, performance alone doesn’t get you points and Gotham walked away from this one with zero. 

Defensively, Gotham seems pretty decent—obviously if they were defensively perfect they would’ve had an extra 3 points to their name but every team makes mistakes. The difference is in the infrastructure that teams have to mitigate the effects of those mistakes, and in this case the missing piece is being able to consistently score goals. Defender Jess Carter identified after the match, “How can we be more ruthless in front of goal because we can't just rely on just getting one goal and trying to defend for the rest of the time. I think that that's something we really need to go back and look on and see how we can punish teams in the fight.” And head coach Juan Carlos Amorós recognized that, “The team did everything needed to win apart from scoring the goals.”

So anyways, to answer our earlier question, yes it may well be time to panic. Gotham is barely hanging on to its 8th place spot in standings, and has 10 more weeks to accumulate as many points as possible. It really all just depends on how Gotham is able to move forward from this match, and whether this is a positive turning point or a negative one. We don’t doubt for a second that the team is trying its hardest, and it’s really heartbreaking that it hasn’t been enough—the individual pieces on this team are too talented for the results that we are seeing. 

On Sunday’s results, head coach Juan Carlos Amorós said, “Football was a little cruel to us today. I can’t remember another game we dominated so much—so many chances, so many shots—and with one effort, the opposition managed to score twice. That’s tough to accept.” Midfielder Sarah Schupansky had a more optimistic tone, promising that, “It certainly stinks, but I guarantee that we'll come back from it stronger.”

Looking ahead to next match

The team is now turning its attention to the group stage of the 2025-26 CONCACAF W Champions Cup, which kicks off for Gotham this Wednesday against C.F. Monterrey Femenil. The match will be at 7 PM ET at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island, and will be streaming on Paramount+ and CBS Sports Golazo Network. The last meeting between these two teams ended in a 0-0 draw in last year’s CONCACAF group stage. While Gotham will be hoping for a win, the Rayadas will definitely be a tough opponent, having won 5 of their first 7 matches of the 2025-26 Apertura in the Liga MX Femenil.

Thumbnail courtesy of Gotham FC.