Week 9 recap: Back down to Earth

Gotham FC’s star-studded night ended in disappointment, as the team dropped points in a 1-1 draw in front of the club’s fourth-largest regular season crowd which included NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and USWNT Head Coach Emma Hayes. The Bats struck first against Boston Legacy, with a goal from Jaedyn Shaw giving them the lead. Less than four minutes later, the Legacy answered with one of their own, and after a long battle the teams ended up settling for a point each. This result was certainly a disappointing one against the last-placed team in the league, especially after the Bats won three out of three games in the previous week. What exactly prevented them from extending that streak to four?

Trying to play a specific game

Before the dam finally broke in the 37th minute, Gotham spent much of their time in the first half just figuring out how to get into the attacking half. We spoke a lot last season about how as good as Gotham is at executing a press, the team just can’t handle being tasked with defending one. Since these two teams’ opening weekend matchup, Boston Legacy has established itself as a team that plays an aggressive and disruptive style. Once again, it took the Bats far too long to figure out how to manage and play through that this weekend. 

Midfielder Savannah McCaskill diagnosed the problem by noting that, “a lot of the times that we broke the press, we took a little too long on the ball and allowed them to break up play or slow it down again.” McCaskill described Gotham as wanting to “play pretty football” which bled through to the way the Bats attempted to break Boston’s press. At first, it kind of worked.

The Bats move forward through their defensive half with a bunch of pretty passes and keep possession of the ball. And although they retain possession after getting fouled on their way up, Boston still manages to disrupt the play and give themselves time to get reorganized.

Here we start to see the problem that McCaskill was describing. Midge Purce does a good job of keeping possession through pressure, but Gotham is ultimately the loser in this situation as Boston’s press does its job of disrupting build-up play.

And then finally, Gotham’s attack goes absolutely nowhere here as the Bats fight just to retain possession. The play ends with the Bats giving up with a long ball forward to no one, since clearly their beautiful passing wasn’t getting them anywhere. 

This inability to break Boston’s press showed in the passing network and average positions of players in the first half. Gotham’s ball movement is heavily concentrated on the right side that they were trying to pass through. Meanwhile, Jaelin Howell, Savannah McCaskill, Jaedyn Shaw, and Sarah Schupansky are all occupying the same space in the midfield as Gotham struggles to actually execute their game plan . Finally, Jordynn Dudley, the only forward outlet on the right side, is isolated out wide as very few balls actually get to her (Dudley finished the half with the fewest touches of anyone on the field). 

McCaskill described Boston’s disruptive playing style as “always a challenge when you want to play pretty football, connect passes and play with rhythm.” And she correctly identified that, “when a team slows the game down or breaks the rhythm, that’s something we have to learn to adjust to as we go along.” The second half of the game was definitely an improvement for the Bats, with the team’s field tilt (a measure of each team’s share of touches in the attacking third) jumping from 52% to 85%. But they still had nothing to show for it.

A disconnected attack

We talked last week about the chemistry that we’ve been seeing in Gotham’s attack after the team scored six goals in a three-game week. That chemistry took a huge hit this weekend as attacking midfielder Rose Lavelle was ruled out of the game against Boston with a hamstring injury. The significance of Lavelle’s absence cannot be understated, as the midfielder led the team in g+ and non-penalty xG in that three-game stretch. 

Lavelle’s absence was the only change made to the XI that started every single game in the three-game week, with attacking midfielder Sarah Schupansky taking her place in a like-for-like swap. Schupansky made her mark on the team last year with one goal and five assists in her rookie season, but her most recent start for the Bats had come in the team’s March 29th match against the Orlando Pride. Because of this, the midfielder came into this game with the unique challenge of both having very big shoes to fill and not being a part of the chemistry that the team developed over the past few games.

She had both a poor idea of where her teammates would be…

... and where her teammates expected her to be.

Gotham’s attacking woes were certainly not all on Schupansky, however, as the Bats generated only 1.08 xG in outside of the shots in the buildup to Gotham’s goal for an average of 0.07 xG per shot. The team was disjointed and struggled to get into the final third, and when they did they still couldn’t connect enough to create a sufficient number of decent chances. 

There were still some good moments though. In particular, the team put their foot on the gas in the last 30 minutes of the game—the last shot from Boston came in the 67th minute and after that the Bats created 0.97 xG from 11 shots. The highest quality chance in this period came in the 88th minute of the game, with a value of 0.46 xG.

This was mostly due to a terrible goalkeeping error from Boston’s Casey Murphy, but Gotham’s tenacity is what caused the first shot to happen in the first place. Jorelyn Carabalí gets to the loose ball in front of goal before Katie Lampson can, and there’s not much more to say about that.

In that same period, Gotham won eight corner kicks, opting to go with outswinging deliveries from Jaedyn Shaw and Guro Reiten for seven of them (the eighth was a short corner). Though there were some shots that came from these corners, Gotham didn’t score from any of them, so it might be time to go back to the drawing board.

Finally, Gotham had some good moments in the first half too. Of course, they scored this goal.

This was a Gotham classic, coming from winning the ball in the midfield. In the box, Jaelin Howell has a brilliant ball across to Esther, whose shot is deflected into the reach of Casey Murphy. Murphy fumbles the ball and Jaedyn Shaw is there.

Here, we see some individual brilliance from Jordynn Dudley as she gets past her defender on the wing and delivers a near-perfect ball to Jaedyn Shaw. It’s a game of inches as the Boston defender is able to clear the ball just before Shaw can get a touch on it.

And Shaw returns the favor here, with nearly another goal coming from these two players. Dudley’s reception itself has a 0.19 g+ value, but she unfortunately can’t get herself into shooting position before Boston’s defense has a chance to react.

Conceding a goal

Ultimately, the difference between this game and last week’s 1-0 win over Racing Louisville was that Gotham conceded a goal.

Gotham succumbs to the Legacy’s press as Savannah McCaskill has an errant pass make its way to a Boston player. In scrambling in defense, the Bats allow the eventual goalscorer to go undetected in the middle of the box, leaving no one but AKB to protect the goal.

Gotham could have easily walked away from this one with zero points as Boston almost scored another.

This was an almost identical build-up to the actual goal, as the Legacy beat a defender on the endline to get inside and then pass to a player who is somehow wide open in the middle of the box. Emily Sonnett, in her first minutes since early April, saves the team’s butts here with her crucial block to keep the game level.

This match certainly exposed some of Gotham’s weaknesses. We’re looking forward to seeing how they bounce back from this one as they head into a busy stretch of domestic and international games.

Looking ahead to next match

Gotham FC is traveling to the West Coast this weekend as the Bats face Seattle Reign FC on Friday, May 15th at 10 PM ET, broadcast nationally on Victory+. The teams are meeting for the first time this season after splitting the points in both regular season matchups last year. The Reign currently sit in 8th in league standings, with three wins, two draws, and three losses coming from their eight games so far. The Reign haven’t won a game or scored a goal since March, so they will certainly come into this matchup hungry for goals. Gotham’s defense must stay disciplined, while its attack desperately needs to find chemistry again no matter which group of players is up top. 

Thumbnail courtesy of Gotham FC.