Week 5.5 recap: What now?

Gotham FC continued its long road trip with a 4-1 loss to the Portland Thorns late Tuesday night. The Bats conceded early on in the seventh minute before striking back a minute later when Gabi Portilho connected with a wide open Esther for an easy tap-in. The half ended tied at 1-1, and in the second half the Thorns scored in the 61st minute, in the 73rd minute via penalty, and in the 80th minute.

This loss marked Gotham’s first time conceding four goals in a game since August 14, 2022, and its first time doing so under head coach Juan Carlos Amorós. This result feels like a huge setback for a team that seemed to be finally finding its groove, having scored 7 goals in 2 matches after only finding the back of the net once in its first 3 games. 

How much should we be reading into this result as an indictment of Gotham’s performance? Let’s take a look at some facts.

Gotham is injured in all the wrong places

Last week, Gotham embarked on the most tiring road trip in history, playing three games away from home in eight days. Ahead of this match, Juan Carlos Amorós had the tough task of coming up with a starting lineup that balanced continuity, rotation, and just straight up having a player at each position. He described this task, and planning out substitutions, as a “puzzle”—let’s take a look at why.

First, on the forward line: Amorós mentioned in the post-match press conference that Ella Stevens, Jéssica Silva, Geyse, and Midge Purce are all on minutes restrictions right now. Those four make up four of the six wingers that Gotham has on its roster right now. The other two wingers are Gabi Portilho and Khyah Harper. Portilho has been getting regular minutes, and Harper is a rookie who has played around 20 minutes in the two matches that she’s made an appearance in, including last night’s game where she subbed in at the 84th minute for Esther. Gotham’s dire attacking winger situation forced Juan Carlos Amorós to slot in Bruninha at the right wing position, in a different role than the fullback position she typically assumes, and to sub in the wingers on minutes restrictions as they became available in the second half. 

Then, on the backline: with Tierna Davidson’s season-ending ACL injury and Mandy Freeman’s hip injury (timeline unknown), Gotham is down to four rostered defenders + short-term signing Emerson Elgin out of the University of North Carolina. Center back pairing Emily Sonnett and Jess Carter are pretty much written into stone, and for good reason. Ordinarily, the fullback pairing would consist of Lilly Reale on the left and Mandy Freeman or Bruninha on the right, but Freeman was injured and Bruninha was busy working an attacking winger shift. So, Amorós opted to play defensive midfielder Nealy Martin at right back and have Taryn Torres fill in at defensive midfielder—this worked against Angel City on Friday where Gotham won 4-0 and clearly did not work out this time around, but more on that later. In addition to players playing out of position, this also meant that Gotham had zero subs to make on the back line unless they put a ton of faith in Elgin, who has no professional experience.

Finally, the subs (four of whom were on minutes restrictions): Gotham subbed in Ella Stevens for Bruninha at the start of the second half, Geyse for Taryn Torres in the 62nd minute, Jéssica Silva and Midge Purce for Gabi Portilho and Nealy Martin in the 74th minute, and Khyah Harper for Esther in the 84th. A lot of this was motivated by game state. Gotham was tied 1-1 at the half and desperate for a go-ahead goal, and saw Ella Stevens as the solution there. In the 62nd minute, Taryn Torres—who was already on a yellow card—received a warning after an iffy tackle that she might be booked again if she kept it up, so she was the one subbed out for Geyse, who was about to enter a 1-1 tie but ended up entering right after Gotham had gone down 2-1. Jéssica Silva and Midge Purce were pure Hail Marys—the former being subbed on as fresh legs to replace Portilho, and the latter an attacking player who could also theoretically play as fullback as Gotham looked to recover from a 3-1 deficit. Finally, Khyah Harper came on for Esther with 6 minutes plus stoppage time left in the game, presumably to let Esther rest a bit after the game had long slipped from Gotham’s grasp, now at 4-1. Individually, the subs were all explainable, but collectively, read as Gotham continuing to sub in attacking players and continuing to concede goals as a result, and this is where the lack of defensive substitutions comes into play.

Gotham’s injury situation is pretty bad right now—it’s hard to focus on winning when you can barely string together a starting XI. If we look at the starting XI from the lens of natural positions, we had 1 center back (Reale), 2 defensive midfielders (Martin, and Howell), and 1 fullback (Bruninha) playing out of position, although you could argue that this is a non-issue for Reale, and perhaps even for Howell.

Gotham’s current solution at defense is not working and not sustainable

Nealy Martin played her second straight stint at right back this game, for the reasons we listed above. This worked out against Angel City because Alyssa Thompson, the left winger that our right back would ordinarily be defending, was out with an injury and inexplicably replaced with her sister Gisele, who normally plays as a right back. So the threat that she had to handle was a player who was playing on a different line and a different side of the pitch than she was used to, and Martin handled it very well. 

This week, she had the tough task of defending Thorns winger Caiya Hanks, who was both incredibly speedy and playing in a position she found very comfortable. Gotham was able to keep her fairly at bay in the first half of the match, as Bruninha, a natural fullback, constantly found herself tracking back to help defensively on the right side. However, Bruninha was subbed off at the start of the second half and suddenly Gotham’s defense was a lot more leaky, letting in three goals.

As mentioned above, we understand why JCA played the lineup that he did. But it is clearly not working. Let’s take a look at each of the goals Gotham conceded, and see if we can find any common themes of defensive errors.

Goal 1: 7’

Build up to the goal

This goal starts with Portland switching the ball into wide space, followed by a quick forward pass by Thorns left back Reyna Reyes to left winger Caiya Hanks. Right back Nealy Martin has a lot of ground to cover, is unable to intercept that forward pass, and Bruninha takes over as the 1v1 defender against Hanks by the endline. Bruninha hesitates for a step and Hanks is able to dribble past her and send a cross into a lot of space in front of goal, and ultimately Mimi Alidou has approximately a mile and a half of open space all the way to the far post to tap the ball in.

1v1 with “fullback”

Nothing much to say here. Bruninha has a moment of hesitation that allows Caiya Hanks to get by. Defending is hard.

Finish

Mimi Alidou is able to lose her mark and create space for herself for the finish.

Goal 2: 61’

Build up

Portland is able to beat Gotham in transition. Sam Coffey beats Nealy Martin to get the end of a really good long ball. The defense seems caught off guard by Coffey’s decision to pass the ball back. Caiya Hanks has space to shoot and also has a brilliant finish. Gotham’s defense looks fatigued.

Finish

Beautiful shot. Too bad it wasn’t for our team. Not much we could do by the time the shot was taken.

Goal 3: 73’

Build up to penalty decision

I dunno, it kinda looks like she chose to run into Lilly Reale and just fell? We’re obviously biased, but feels like a very soft penalty call that can feel like it decided the game.

Goal 4: 80’

Midge Purce—who might we remind you is playing out of position as right back—attempts to clear the ball. Poor communication leads to it going off of Jaelin Howell instead and landing right at Portland’s feet. They score.

Speaking on the second half, center back Jess Carter mentioned, “I think we lost pretty much every duel, every first, second, third ball, which isn’t something that we do here at Gotham so there were a lot of things that happened in the second half that weren’t to our standards.” 

Not only is this back line not working, but it is also not sustainable. Emily Sonnett, Jess Carter, and Lilly Reale have been playing full 90s this entire week thus far, and there is no one on the bench that can come in for them. Gotham’s defense this game was running on an unfortunate combination of low chemistry and high fatigue, and it showed in the goals they let in. Unfortunately, this is on track to get even worse in Gotham’s game against a much better rested Spirit on Saturday.

Gotham is still a good team

It’s hard to feel this way right now but our players will heal. We will one day be able to field a starting XI where everyone feels comfortable in their role. Someday we’ll even have Rose Lavelle.

And with pretty much this exact lineup, and a pretty similar injury situation, Gotham was able to log their highest away win in club history just last week. One could argue that the league has more toothless attacks than dangerous attacks at this point that we still have yet to face, and generally our defense has done an excellent job holding it down against any opponent. 

Gotham is a club with so much talent and a great coaching team—one abysmal result does not define them. 

Looking ahead to next game

Gotham plays the Washington Spirit tomorrow (4/26) at Audi Field at 1 PM ET. The Spirit, like Gotham, are very injured right now but are finding favorable results despite it. They have also had a whole week between games and are playing at home—this will be a tough challenge for the Bats. Gotham has a lot of cards stacked against them this game, so while a win would be incredible, we don’t think a loss against this very tough side would define this team’s season.

Thumbnail courtesy of Gotham FC.