Week 20 recap: Adding more tools

Gotham FC got its first ever win away at San Diego Friday night as the Bats took down the Wave 2-0 with goals from Esther González and newcomer Jaedyn Shaw. With a third straight win (for the first time this season) and some help from favorable results elsewhere in the league, Gotham has climbed from just barely hanging on to the 8th spot in standings to sitting pretty in 3rd place. 

The Bats’ newfound momentum is no accident—after a season of so much volatility and dynamicism, the team is finally getting into a rhythm and learning what to do with the pieces it has, and that stability and confidence is paying off as the team slowly adds more tools to its arsenal. Most recently, we’ve seen an ability to bounce back after conceding first that we hadn’t seen in the past 2 years; we first saw this in action against league leaders Kansas City in early June when, despite having multiple goals called back, the team showed that they were capable of fighting back and creating chances even after going down early, and then we saw actual comeback wins against Bay FC in late June and Angel City last weekend. Gotham is finding more ways to win, and we’re excited to see this growth.

And then there are the literal tools Gotham is adding to its arsenal. We spoke last week about how the team had signed USWNT star attacking midfielder Jaedyn Shaw, and this week the club announced that they had extended the contract of rookie attacker Sarah Schupansky through the 2027 season.

What exactly is Gotham’s new structure, how do Jaedyn Shaw and Rose Lavelle and Sarah Schupansky fit in it together, and what has made it so successful over the past few weeks? Let’s get into it.

The lineup and structure

This week saw a hard launch of sorts of Gotham’s new strategy. We’d seen it in action at times in weeks past, but this was the first time that the lineup explicitly included 2 attacking midfielders. 

What hasn’t changed is the personnel in Gotham’s back line—Emily Sonnett and Jess Carter started at center back with Lilly Reale and Bruninha as the fullbacks—and for good reason. Last season the Bats tied for fewest goals allowed in the NWSL (with league leaders and champions Orlando Pride), and this season Gotham is behind only the monstrous Kansas City Current in this measure. So whatever Gotham has been doing for the past 2 years at defense, it’s clearly been working. 

What has changed (a lot) is the midfield. Since the return of league play after the summer break, Jaelin Howell has gone from playing a more progressive part of a double pivot with either Nealy Martin or Taryn Torres sitting behind her to her more natural position of a lone defensive midfielder. In previous weeks, this has opened up the central midfielder spot for Josefine Hasbo (or in some cases, Rose Lavelle), but this time head coach Juan Carlos Amorós opted to instead play two attacking midfielders in Rose Lavelle and Esther González. As typical with an Amorós-led system, all three midfield roles were very fluid.  Recently we’ve been seeing Howell drop back between the two center backs while in possession at the beginning of build up play. The temporary 3-centerback structure gives fullbacks Lilly Reale and Bruninha the freedom to press up higher on the wings, and while that was happening this week, Lavelle and Esther dropped further back to offer central passing options in the space that Howell just vacated. 

The rest of the lineup was also a little novel—with Esther occupied in central midfield, Geyse filled in at the 9 and Gabi Portilho and Midge Purce played as her wingers, although this arrangement was also quite fluid. With how effective Esther is as a striker, it’s easy to imagine this forward line of primarily wingers looking like headless chickens when attempting to play a classic receive-and-shoot role, but the attacking structure and strategy adapted to the personnel. While Esther was busy in the midfield in the first half, Geyse used her speed and technical ability to play more of a receive and hold up play role while she waited for the rest of the team to catch up to her, which you can kind of see in the players’ average position chart below.

Geyse’s center forward still drifted out wide, and played in a space where she was pretty isolated while waiting for help.

At the start of the second half, Jaedyn Shaw made her debut as she came on for Gabi Portilho. She slotted in alongside Rose Lavelle at attacking midfield and freed up Esther to move to her natural striker spot, pushing Geyse to the wing where she generally prefers to play for Gotham. We’ll get into how that went in a minute. 

For now, back to the discussion of Gotham’s tools. It feels a little disingenuous to use this match specifically to illustrate Gotham’s new style, because it was halfway to a smash-and-grab victory—Gotham had way less possession (39% vs. 61%), their two (legal) goals came from a defensive error and a diving header in the box, and attack momentum charts show the game mostly being in the Wave’s control.

The Wave also had more shots (15 vs. 12) and higher pass accuracy (84% vs 76%). Part of this can be attributed to game state, but even in the first half, where Gotham didn’t score until the 45th minute, the Bats had less possession (43% vs. 57%), fewer shots (11 vs. 6), and lower pass accuracy (81% vs. 85%). What this tells us is that for all of the new tools that we’re seeing, one tool that has yet to be added is control of a game before the first goal is scored, but honestly we would be happy if every single one of Gotham’s future games ended up being a smash-and-grab win, because what matters most in the end is the 3 points 

That being said, the fact that Gotham won this game means their strategy won out, and they definitely did have more control over the game than these statistics suggest—in the second half, while trailing, the San Diego Wave could not attempt a single shot until the 3rd minute of stoppage time. That means the Wave went a whole 48 minutes without getting a single look on goal, and things like that don’t happen by accident. 

Gotham also won the battle in xG (1.10/0.95 vs. 0.50/0.37) and xG per shot (0.18/0.16 vs. 0.05/0.09) in both halves, meaning they generated higher quality chances both before and after scoring, which is also a new tool for the team. Gotham’s M.O. last season was scoring an early goal and holding onto that lead for the rest of the game by suffocating their opponent, and to their credit that strategy got them to third place with 56 points. But being willing and able to score multiple goals and add relentless attack on top of the defensive suffocation after scoring is a whole new level, and we’re optimistic about Gotham’s apparent trend towards this play style.

We’re going to look at what we can make of this shift by specifically observing the way the midfield (and the rest of the team) played both in and out of possession in the 30 minutes that we saw Jaedyn Shaw, Rose Lavelle, and Jaelin Howell all playing at the same time.

New midfield?

Jaedyn Shaw’s signing was a headscratcher across the league because Gotham already had possibly the best attacking midfielder in the league, and North Carolina had already tried and failed to put two of them on the field at the same time. But you can’t sign a player like Jaedyn Shaw and then not reorganize the rest of the team to figure out how to get the most out of her. How was Amorós able to field both Rose Lavelle and Jaedyn Shaw at the same time? Let’s look at the spaces they occupied in several key moments in the 30 minutes we saw them play together.

First, the very first moment they played together, at the kickoff of the second half.

Jaedyn Shaw immediately ran forward while Rose Lavelle stayed back. Then, once it became clear that Gotham would retain possession and have control of the ball, Shaw came back to the same line as Lavelle. We don’t get to see how the rest of this would’ve played out as Lavelle gets fouled, but this offers at the very least a small insight into what we’re about to see.

It takes about a minute and a half for Gotham to fully have the opportunity to build out an attack from the back—let’s see what they do.

Jess Carter holds onto the ball until Jaelin Howell is able to get back and act as the third center back, and only then does she pass to Sonnett. While Sonnett has the ball, Shaw and Lavelle sit back, both relatively central and occupying the same horizontal line, but with Shaw more to the right and Lavelle more to the left. Gotham loses possession on this play, and when they do the Bats reorganize into a 4-1-4-1, with Lavelle and Shaw once again falling into the same line as Purce and Geyse, with Esther pushing further up to press San Diego’s defense. 

Overall, this new midfield was very fluid. We saw Howell be the third center back in build-up possession a lot, but at times we also saw that same defensive midfielder role from Shaw.

And from Lavelle.

And in the free kick that came from that possession, we saw Jaedyn Shaw hang back and play more of a central midfield role.

And then in this next possession, we see Rose Lavelle hang back while Jaelin Howell ventures forward and Jaedyn Shaw fills in the gap between them as the 8 before pushing forward to be the 10 after Howell lets go of the ball.

So overall it seems like, for their first time playing together, this midfield group has good chemistry and a solid understanding of where the others are, and this was against a pretty tough opponent. Our understanding is that this is the midfield group and system that Juan Carlos Amorós wants to play with going forward, so we’re excited to see how well this can work, especially if they gel together this well on day one.

The goals

Finally, let’s go through what went down in the buildup to each of Gotham’s goals this match.

Goal 1: 45’

It feels silly to say this about a defensive error but this goal was quintessentially Gotham. They use their pressure to win the ball high up the pitch and find themselves in situations like this where all Esther had to do was direct the ball into an empty net, which of course she makes no mistake doing. It took a while to get there but Gotham goes into the half up 1-0.

Goal 2: 79’

Pure brilliance from both the Jaes here. Howell makes a case for NWSL player of the week for the third week in a row as she delivers an absolute dime to Shaw, and Shaw stays with the ball as she heads it home against her former team. Couldn’t have written a better ending to her first match in sky blue.

Cloud 9, Gotham’s official supporters group, said it best.

Goal 3: 81’

This one was overturned by VAR because Midge Purce was a hair offside in the buildup, but it’s still worth taking a look at.

Midge Purce is back, baby. For the second week in a row, she’s able to get around her defender out wide and pull the ball back for a simple tap in. It’s a shame that the goal was called back, but we know that she has it in her to do more of this.

Overall, this was a great performance from the Bats. Despite a multitude of recent changes, the team is really finding its stride, and we hope that this momentum continues into the final playoff push.

Looking ahead to next match

The Bats have traveled to Vancouver to face their opponent in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup as they take on the Vancouver Rise FC Academy at 10 PM ET tonight on Paramount+. Vancouver has only played one match so far in this tournament, a 0-4 loss to the Washington Spirit, and finished in 4th place in their group last year with 1 win and 3 losses. As per usual in this competition, we expect to see a lot of rotation from Gotham. We’re hoping the team can pull out a resounding win against this side and go 3-for-3 in CONCACAF competition this season.

Thumbnail courtesy of Gotham FC.