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Scoot McNairy is just draining logo threes and every scene he's in. Man, Scoot McNairy has picked up the mantle of John Hawks. He's like TV John Hawks. That's the right comp. Hello and welcome to expected own goals. Why are needs addition? I am your host, Eric Morgan and I am Evan Davis. This will time stamp on recording this literally 40 minutes ago. We found out that Olivia Maltry injured her ACL and will be out for the rest of the season. So great note to start on this week and not a foreign's focused episode. But boy, oh boy, maybe we quickly just discuss that news. Pretty, pretty significant to say the least. Yeah. Now the one thing that wasn't specified in the news brief was whether she had torn her ACL or whether she had damaged her sort of the extent of the injury itself. The idea that she's been put on the SEI list is bad and suggests that they don't expect her to be playing again for three months at least. And so one has to hope that Maltry's the level of damage here is not a full tear, but is severe enough and that the Portland Thorns have looked upon their prospects for the rest of the season and thought not worth risking it. That would be the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is it is a race against time for her to get back in shape for the World Cup and probably her World Cup is over. Yeah, but you're right to parse the language. If it's not a tear, then maybe she's ready in the spring. So everybody just has to kind of cross their fingers. But yeah, for the next three months in our average projections taken Maltry out of the Thorns lineup, they drop from in the mix for the top four to lower playoff spot in our estimations, our best guess estimations. So that certainly feels more realistic based on how we feel about their defense. And so if you just take one of those attacking weapons, it's really boosting one of those projection models in our average, then yeah, sixth, seventh place feels right. I mean, yeah, six seventh place feels spiritually correct. And if you look at the table, it's not that far off correct anyway, but I think it's worth saying that Maltry really is that impactful that you take her out and you cost your team meaningful points. And I certainly think that any version of the Portland Thorns this year that got into the playoffs and won a title was probably going to need Olivia Maltry pulling strings at the center of it. And the plus side for the Thorns is Morgan Weaver and Kaya Hanks returning. At least allows, though from a different place on the field, the same kind of attacking production. It's just Maltry was kind of the only thing linking that midfield to that forward line. Yeah. And Dana Castellanos is not only not going to give you that ability, but also probably isn't going to help you defend the middle of the park very well, which is a big, big price point for how the Thorns get out of this again. I suppose that the Thorns, assuming they still have some wiggle room, you know, there's still time in the transfer window for them to do something, but I, I'm not holding my breath for that. This is actually like bizarrely an appropriate conversation to have to lead off this episode that we're going to while focusing on North Carolina, talk about what happens when you lose a superstar and like how you adjust and losing Olivia Maltry is, you know, based on position weighted netchy plus this year is basically like losing lots of good. These are roughly equivalent attackers. And we thought it was going to be a huge problem when North Carolina lost Manaka and, you know, we'll get into it and mixed results. But before we get there, let's talk about what else happened this weekend. Yeah. Well, there's another game involving the absence of a superstar that did not go their way against the team. Probably still should have beaten and that's Orlando losing the big perp Derby three to one at home against race in the world boy that team without without Barbara band is a really, really bad team. Yeah. I mean, it's not just band. It's like, you know, Carrie Bellow has been missing due to injury and it's just getting her way back. Haley Mace had been missing and is only just kind of getting back into the starting lineup. They still don't have way on Hernandez back. So there are defensive spots where they could really use some reinforcement and also on a more house's shot stopping is turning to look less impressive by the day. In fact, she is at the bottom of the leaderboard in the end of the cell in that particular category. So she's having a rough year. It's a rough year. And so like you are losing your main attacking weapon, but also you are losing a lot of your really significant defensive pieces, which I think is more the story, especially just in the last few weeks of Orlando's recent form because it's not that they're like losing games one nil. They're losing games three one five one like they're getting blown out like it's it's really dire. And this is a team whose identity was built on their defensive tactical structure. But without the personnel to make it all sing, it kind of looks like this. Yeah, I think that this is such an interesting game because it ended up being the story of two teams trending in completely opposite directions. Louisville who here two four had been left for dead have picked up 10 points from their last five fixtures, which puts them on the form table in a really interesting place. And their next three fixtures are against Boston, Seattle and Chicago. So if you squint and Louisville were to keep this up even a little bit, suddenly and do we need to talk about racing Louisville in the playoff picture? I think the answer remains. I don't know. 1000% no. I'm sorry. Well, this whole form thing is is a nice story that they can like hang there, you know, hold their heads high on. But like they're just it's them coming back to what they actually are like, yeah, but it's too late. I mean, they on points per game. They're what's still 15th place. They have 18 games played in 17 points. It's very bad. I suppose that I will eat my hat if they rip off nine points from the next three. And we can talk about them, you know, still being probably outside the playoff line at that point. But until then, they are just putting in some interesting performances, sandwiched with a game against Kansas City that was bludgeoning. And MS years still has a transfer request out there. It doesn't stop her from pumping them in. I love that. I love that. I love that when we talked to MS years earlier this year, she talked about like her preferential shooting location on the field, and like really described it exactly. And then pumped in two goals, one with the left, one with the right from roughly the same spot, yeah, that is her preferential shooting location. It's very useful if you are quote unquote so predictable and like where you want to take a chance from that you can do with both feet, yeah, please get, you know, you throw in some wrinkle of unpredictability and I mean, she cooked off LA for the left-footed shot. And then I feel like when she gets that right-footed shot off, it's because she's already cooked her defender. It's, it's very impressive. But Louisville put together a result that, you know, they probably deserve that. All things considered. Another silly Darby, the Rocky Mountain Honey Darby, the John Denver to, there's nobody named Salt Lake Darby. Yeah, that was not much of a game until the end at which point the wheels came off, take a Milozo with a screamer and then Jeanine Sonis with a counter screamer free kick. Honestly, one of my favorite kinds of free kicks to the goalie side, corner pocket, basically instead of trying to go over the wall or around the wall, you pick the spot and you dare the goalie to, to basically stop the thing you're putting where they've said they'll cover. And it was, I mean, it was impressive. This is, this is exactly the kind of result that Denver need to pull out if they're going to make this playoff charge. And I think for Utah, you can just look at the, you look at the top line here. This is just a deeply unfortunate result, you know, the DXG was very close to 2 to 1 in Utah's favor and they lose the game 2 to 1 to Denver. Yeah. And even after you adjust for game state, they still work decidedly the better side. And Milozo, I mean, it's a screamer in that she just kicks the shit out of it, but yes, you know, at the top of the six yard box, that's one that's not going to miss pretty much any time. If you hit it like that on frame, nobody's stopping it. That's, yeah, correct. We have two, four, three fixtures this weekend, yeah, we'll save one of them for the end, which is wild, but the first one, which we sort of alluded to, Boston 3, Portland 4. I don't even know what to make of this game because Portland was up three nothing in record speed in 13 minutes and then caught a, it's like which of Portland's three goals do you like the best? I believe that's the fastest hat trick by any player in league history. Certainly the fastest. There have not been very many thorns at tricks, but definitely the fastest at trick in thorns history. It, Pietro Torden put on a show and now leads the league in goal contributions. A couple of those goals were a little bit fortunate in that they were long distance bombs. That just got caught in the right spot. I don't know if I feel like the free kick, I think Casey Murphy who gets a full hand to it probably could have done better on that, but it's a really well struck free kick from the edge of the box. The second one, I think of that is, I know that the XG on that is not high because it's from 30 yards, but if you get a ball sitting up at that distance with the goalie off their line, all you really have to do is just put the thing anywhere on frame. And I think for pros that half, that little bouncing volley is a lot more achievable. I mean, that one, the XG on that shot is what? It's still rated higher than you'd think for that distance, probably because there's not a lot of defensive cover in front of her and the goalie is out of position. Yeah, exactly, but you know, whether you want to classify this as fast break, I kind of look at it as fast break. It's a direct ball at the top. For the second weekend in a row, a goalkeeper assist. This time, Casey Murphy, not the distributor, but the punished party, but it's that we kind of alluded to when we guested on the row city breakdown last week that might have to be the attacking approach going forward, which is have Mackenzie Arnold or a center back, just hoof it over the top to get it to your forward line. And that's basically what happened in that. And now with Olivia Moultrie out, it really might be, have to become Lann A, you know. But the hatred toward him is a really good, you know, he's a really good distributor and she's also a really good direct goal. And this game was like a, I loved her quotes about being like, you know, just sort of about her halftime interview where she seems like really loopy. And she's like, yeah, man, it's like I'm watching myself out there. Like I'm not even there. She's very, very quickly developing an interview performance style, shall we say? You know, it's, it's very Bill Walton. Yeah, she's got a, she's got a sort of space cadet thing, which is, yeah, plenty for a Princeton grad or for a Princeton student. But yeah, it's just like really elite. And then Portland's defense on the other end of this really collapsed per use. So in the end of the first half, I mean, they managed it a little bit better in the second half until the amount of good. I mean, they gave up over an XG in the second half alone. So it was not, I don't know how well managed it was, it was McKenzie Arnold making it. Boston not finishing in McKenzie Arnold making some pretty decent saves. But yeah, I mean, close to that XG is from the Isatya chance, which isn't a great chance. But they just didn't let, they didn't let Boston really come into the game except for a couple of really bad mistakes. But that's always Portland's defensive problem this year is that you can manage the game fairly well until you just collapse in a handful of moments, you know, and it's just, I mean, it's ugly. It's their defensive collapse is a really ugly looking without mulchery now. It was, it just got a lot harder to beat teams for three. They did it this weekend without mulchery. Boston is going to be one of the easier teams that they face. I mean, they still got a pretty, you know, they still have a soft schedule, but yeah, it would be downhill schedule, but yeah. Let's go on. We'll say, right, the other four, three crazy that we had two of those this weekend. Let's go Kansas City, Houston, boy, do Kansas City need 10 more back. They got unlucky if you want to use that term. I kind of think that they got the result that was not that far from what they deserved because the pen was felt fair, but one, one to Houston, after not really capitalizing on the vast majority of their chances, all of which, I mean, their, their shot cluster is great looking. They just didn't finish. And you think that's their fault? I think that, I mean, I think that a lot of the XG that gets assessed to them in this game, there are some like headers that were contested that I don't think were particularly good head. Like, I think that the XG slightly overstates the individual chances in this particular instance. Again, XG is just much better at a season level, but yeah, I don't know. I wasn't, they dominated stretches of this game. Troy Bethune still looks great, but they don't have anybody to get on the end of these balls in really effective ways. And in the second half, they created half an XG. So you know, with the lead, they sort of invited Houston back into the game. I'm not, I'm not like crazy about it as a performance again. I, I still would love to see like the Kansas City with and without Tim was splits. And I think that that's, I think that this team is like still a playoff team, but without Tim was not particularly impressive, which is a bummer, but they'll have her back, you know, when she stops qualifying for things like the World Cup, what was your read on this game? I think we can move on. Why not? Because I just, I, it's just, it feels like you just always are looking for a way to say that Kansas City was bad. And I just don't understand what I mean. Like before the penalty, the quality chance split in this game is five to two in Kansas City's favor. Yeah. And yet I still felt like as I was, I like, I would love Kansas City to be better than this. Look, it's a bad Houston team. It's a bad Houston team that they didn't put away and then gave a penalty to. And I feel like that's not, at some point like you do actually have to execute on this game. And I felt like they kind of didn't, they had a great first half and they didn't punish from there. I don't know. Do you not? Do you feel like, I mean, I suppose it just comes down to do you believe that this sport should always be won by the team that has higher XG or do you recognize that this sport is like home to lots and lots of different kinds of variants and that on the grand, in the grand scheme of things, the underlying number suggests Kansas City is a good team, a very good team. And I think that as we watch these performances, I see little cracks in here and I see inconsistency. And frankly, without Tema Chuinga, I see a team that is not, you know, sure they can dunk on Louisville in a midweek with Louisville traveling. But I see a team that like is consistently coughing up points to sometimes better teams, but also this is like a precipitous fall from who they were last year on some level, which is not repeatable. I mean, we have, of course, but even still, it was never going to be repeatable, but it's still a team that has 30 points from 19 fixtures. Like you can't see what doesn't work with them. I think that the use of the word should is a very loaded one in the way that you're using it because no, it's not, it's never, it's not nor is it ever possible in any sport for the team that quote unquote played better to win all the time. But the idea that like the better team wins most of the time is just as equally absurd an idea. And I mean, the better team wins a lot of the time, I just feel like Kansas City have not been putting in the performances that like they are good at taking apart a bad team. And this is also why I've spent so much time trying to develop a way to look at these underlying numbers that accounts for opponent quality, game state, home field advantage. And they're still in second place on that adjusted XG differential leader board behind San Diego. So like I just, I've tried to parse the numbers every single which way to see like where I mean, it's a question is lie outside of the very small sample of games where they didn't have chewing a playing with them. And what are they putting up without chewing that's just the thing. Like it's a massive drop off. But removing chewing for many buddies lineup is a massive drop off. By the way, this is it. This is all I'm like, yes, I agree that it's a massive drop off without the player that is definitively a problem and that causes matchup problems for you across the field. And that Kansas City hasn't found like, I mean, Croyd the Thune is creating, but that they haven't found another option is a problem. I just, I don't, I think that you think that these numbers are always gospel. And I don't think that it's just that like, we have 19 games of sample to look at. And if you add it all up, they look like they're still quite, quite good. And even the, even by the points total, like they're still a playoff team, like for all of the Heming and Mowing, like, Oh, for sure. And Marissa Jordan has been bad. That also needs to be stated. It's, it's been, and that's the other thing, like how can we really judge the last three games, three, four games in shawingas and Cooper's absence without accounting for the fact that they've also been missing Lorraine. I mean, Lorraine also is coming off this season that nobody expected her to repeat. But yeah, Marissa Jordan has made some blunders. I just, I look at that team and, you know, like the home road split of it all, I, I don't care that much for it, but what is their record on the road now? It's two, one, seven because they got a draw at the weekend. They just struck me as a team with a lot of like very real vulnerabilities with chewinga. Very good team. Second, third best team in the league without chewinga. Seventh best team in the league, sixth best team in the league. And you don't see any of the similar or a similar volume or even close to a similar volume of vulnerabilities in San Diego, North Carolina, Gotham, Washington, or Utah. No, no, no, because the teams have so much more balanced talent. Because like the outsized influence of temo chewinga is so extreme that like, I mean, look, she's the best position-weighted NetGee plus player again this year. You go and look at the individuals beyond that, you know, Croyba Thune is doing great stuff. But the rest of the team is like not particularly standout in that regard. And, you know, top to bottom, I feel like Gotham is a better built team, Washington's a better built team, San Diego's a better built team. At this point, like in terms of their performances, yeah, I mean, do you not? I don't think that we are going to be able to persuade each other on this. So I'm not sure what the value isn't going to hammer out the same idea. Like it's because it's not just Bethune. I mean, Dubini is on point one, one NetGee plus Cooper's on point one, one is well. Like it's not just chewinga. And you can put the drop offs between chewinga and the rest. We should isolate chewinga games and see what happens to everybody else's stuff because I think that this is the era team that continue to fiddle to impress, at least me. And they are a team that Evan seems to have to defend every week. Look, I'm the asshole. I know that everybody else thinks his team isn't good without chewing in it. I've got nothing to stand on. I get it. So what's the point in arguing about it? I don't think you're the asshole. I think that you should be making the argument that you're making. I think that's what's a value here. It's just the same thing every single week. There are times in which you watch a team and then you look at the underlying performances and it's usually in relation to overperformance, where you're like in the case of Portland earlier this year. It's like they just can't keep getting away with this. The flip side scenario, which is what Kansas City is, where the underlying numbers are really good. And then the performances are very mediocre. You can say that they're getting unlucky or you can start actually watching what isn't working. And I feel like with Kansas City, there are particularly when you take chewing get out of the equation, there are like very real systemic problems that exist in their ability to create chances, defend and transition, didn't make them again, still a good team, but a team that I'm not surprised isn't seven. Even if I just don't know how it all comes down to that is when also they've been missing Cooper and they've been missing Lorraine and earlier in the season, they missed it being you for a chunk of time. Like, and then also they had the alley center problem to deal with. Like there have just been, there's never been really any moment when they've had the correct version of the starting 11 in place. You know, agreed, that I agree with. And when they do, hopefully soon, maybe they'll make a stretch run and kill it in the playoffs, I would welcome that. Let's move on, talk Chicago stars, BFC. What's there to talk about? It was a mill nail. Oh, that's a game I wish I didn't watch all of. I'll tell you that. No, shit. That's a game that I can't have back. I feel bad for Bay. They created more than enough opportunities. Katie Atkinson's numbers will continue to look stellar. Yeah, she's been the best shotstopper in the league up to this point. Yeah, yeah, some goals were talked off in this game, but I believe this puts Chicago at, I'm going to double check this. But I believe Chicago has failed to score in one, two, three, four, 12, 13 games this season. It's incredible. Chicago, I mean, like this is the question at this point is, is this version of the Chicago stars the worst team to ever play in this league? I mean, that's what that's how they have been tracking for the last couple of months. I don't think there's really much to change that, especially because Swanson got subged on and then got subbed off. Also, also a knee. Yeah. And if Swanson is all of a sudden going to be out for like significant chunks of time, you add that to add that to the height of absence. And they, it's very possible. They may not score a goal again for the rest of the year. I mean, it's, it's you laugh because it's like kind of true. There are crazier statements than Chicago might not score again this year. They have 12 games to go. I would set the over underlined it goals. They score at five and a half. Like, I think that they are, I'm taking the under. Yeah, I think that five or below, let's make that bet. And in some sort of meaningful way, if Chicago, God, that's a really low line, five and a half, five and a half is the line. We'll figure out the bet five and a half is the line 12 games to go. If Chicago managed six goals, I win. If they don't, I'm going to be doing something stupid. It's just madness to consider that like I could very easily win this bet. Yeah, I mean, they got nine for me. Teen, I don't know why we would expect them to do a lot. Like, and those were games with Swanson in them. Yeah. And who knows how long she'll be out for. It's, it's truly, it's truly one of the worst teams I've ever watched. Yeah. So much so that Emma Coates seem to believe that Martin Hugren did not act with gentlemanly decorum at the end of the game. And she seemed pretty pissed off at him during the post-match handshakes. So that's a perfect transition to another Scandinavian coach, potentially pissing off a British woman on the touch line. Let's talk about Seattle to Angel City to the actual post game blowup of the weekend. Yeah, what happened there? I think it's because of the, the, the rash not called or not correctly called tackle that Emily Sam's puts in like right at the end of the game. Like, she kind of like goes over the top. It looks like a rugby tackle. And I'm sure that Laura Harvey was pretty upset about that. But Harvey reacted as though life Schmerud like, like, like, clenched her hand like really, really hard during the handshake. And that's what pissed her off. And then Scott Parkinson, who's the assistant like stepped in to make sure she didn't go over the line. But then he went a little crazy. Yeah, it was a fucking mess. I mean, this was a back and forth game. Like, there was the tensions were high. Both teams pumped a lot of chances in both teams traded leads in and come from behinds. Angel City had the lead and then Seattle got the lead within two minutes of equalizing and then Preske Chalifia. Preske Chalifia, God bless you for playing this game after just getting eliminated from Lafcon like a week ago, managed to equalize again. So it was just very back and forth and very, very catchy. And so, yeah, the tensions seemed to boil over for Laura Harvey. And maybe Lafcon Schmerud also did not comport himself. Well, I did not see him offer comment on what happened. But I did see that Laura Harvey was like, he, like, clenched my hand as we shook it and that was not okay. So it was all weird. Yeah, I feel like, first off, I keep thinking about that Emma Hayes interview where she says that women recover faster than men. Because that is the only explanation for Preske Chalifia catching a flight from Morocco to Seattle and showing up and being able to play like near days later, what an incredible substitute performance. I still have no idea what part of her foot she hit that goal with. But it's a perfect chip. It kind of looked like she hit it with the ankle bone. It was, who cares? It was perfect. All the same. I feel a little bad for Seattle in this game because they did feel like for, you know, they scored two really high quality goals in terms of just like the creation. This is one of their attacking performances of the season. Absolutely. And it was paired with a pretty good defensive performance. Should you let Giselle Thompson in on her left foot and probably not. But it was a good finish. And then Chalifia just had a moment of magic and what Seattle, this felt like Seattle receiving what they often dish out, which is a result that you're kind of like, how is this a draw? And this was also as we set up in last week's episode, the most consequential game of the weekend as far as playoff implications are concerned. And then neither of their positions really changed a lot much. Yeah. And I think you could say advantage angel city only because this was Seattle's hum game to sort of take the win and they didn't. And they didn't and there's another reason Harvey was running hot at the end because she knew that. Yeah. And and Angel city still sits, you know, he goals in goal differential above Seattle in the table, but tied on points. I do think that goal differential, like with, you know, 13 games to play for both of them, that is a huge issue for Seattle. If it goes down to the wire, yeah, they need to find ways to pump them in. Speaking of pre sketch coming back, we didn't shut out that I set to try already also came back and played for boss off the bench. Yeah. And created a huge chance as well. It's, yeah, that's nuts. What else do we have? San Diego and Gotham man, I wanted this to just be like such a great game. And it was, but it's that thing, right? Like these are two of the best teams in the league who kind of play similarly. It a lot of ways, just kind of canceling each other out. That's right. And I knew that when it really felt like when Jaden Charles scored at the end of the first half, we were looking at a game that was not going to open back up a lot. Well, I mean, it's not for lack of trying by Gotham. Like they, they put it away, but they weren't always like the highest of quality chances. No, they did not create it. They did not create a volume of good chances in the second half. They created a volume of shots and San Diego, it did a really great job limiting San Diego for the vast majority of the second half. I think you leave this feeling pretty confident in Gotham's ascent to, I mean, at this point, the models have them 50% likely to win the shield. Yeah, they're at the top of our projection board on 58 or 59 points. Wouldn't it be something if Gotham won the shield and then got bounced by the eight seed? I mean, it would be chickens coming home to roost on Friday of all's case. He didn't do himself a whole lot of favors by, you know, not starting Ken Zadali until she had to like come in as an injury replacement for Kimiaskanio and then Ludmila never got off the bench. So his best progression and his best chance taking weapons were not in this contest from first whistle. So that might help to explain a little bit why Gotham was able to contain them pretty well. It strikes me if he was fine with a nil nil from the jump, especially getting the result against Washington the week or two before. The weekend before that's right. But, you know, San Diego's still a good team Gotham. There is a very funny scenario now that we've talked about Kansas City where Kansas City falls to the eight seed and knocks out Gotham, even though they are as underlying numbers suggest, no worse than a third or fourth, that would be an exact come upence. That would be divine retribution for Kansas City a year after being hands down the best team in the league, getting bounced by a trap game, tough eight seed to become the trap eight team and knock out the shield winners. Soccer gods don't always like to balance the scales, but sometimes they do. I just don't think Kansas City can drop enough points for Angel City or Seattle to catch them. That would require both that would require Angel City and Seattle being different teams than who they are. And let's let's finish this weekend up with the other four three arguably the game of the season. Certainly in terms of entertainment value. Yeah, North Carolina for the Washington spirit three. Yeah, this is going to be a lead into us talking about what North Carolina has become in the wake of Monaco, Monsucuba leaving, which has been pretty skitzoid, a pretty chaotic organization when it comes to weak by weak results at the very least, but the team that's trending in the right direction quite quite emphatically in the right direction. As a matter of fact, you know, under the hood, they even after you adjust for game state and opposition quality, like they were, they were still probably the worst team against Washington at the weekend, but you know, game state went back and forth quite a bit throughout the entire contest. And it just is a symbol of like how well built North Carolina is counter attacking approach has become, especially when you don't have a facilitator at Monaco's level anymore that the creation is being put in different pockets of the field, namely in pockets of the field where Ashley Sanchez is already hanging out. So you look at like they're expected assists spread between the games they played before the international break and the games they played after the international break, all of a sudden moving Felly Rauk back into the starting 11 and having her be the progression node between those two fullbacks is a pretty advantageous because it means that Rauk is feeding Sanchez rather than Ryan Wan's feeding Allie Schlagel. And that feels like a good place to try and create an overload. Agreed. I think that as we looked at this game, Washington came out of the shoot and held the record for fastest three goals scored an NWS history for all of, I don't know, 46 hours, 40 hours somewhere in there until Portland snatched it away from them, but it was Washington looked shell shocked for the entire first and this is sort of also been North Carolina's MO since losing Manaka, which is instead of becoming a more balanced or more defensive team, becoming a team that just like has doubled and tripled down on, oppressing the opponents with their attack and jam essentially brute forcing goals and chances in and being open to counter punches. Yeah. And that has worked like it did against Orlando or midweek last week against Denver and it should have worked against Utah. It also worked really, really well against Utah, even though they lost that game, but even after adjusting for the game state and the fact that Washington, you know, North Carolina was going to pour it on after going behind, they still kicked the ever living daylight set of Utah. But then you also could get a game like the one a few weeks ago against Bay, where they lost three nil, they lost the XG split quite definitively, but they were trying to be the protagonist on the road and take it to BFC and it did not work at all. And Bay and Bay of C went out and had one of their best games this season and it was purely playing route one balls over the top to Carly Lima to catch this over committed North Carolina team on the break. And so it does seem like what was interesting about this weekend's fixture and then we'll sort of get to the broader stakes of this is that North Carolina, a little bit let off the gas, but really, really exposed themselves and let Washington back into this game. And once Washington had a toe hold in this game, really had little in the way of countermeasures to Washington taking this from zero, three to three, three. And then literally within five minutes, they got it to within a goal and then extra time, a stoppage time happened. Yeah, it was, it was a, you know, the stoppage time of this game, Bernal levels this thing. And then of all people, Navalee Jacobs on a bombing run forward, catches a felly route ball and clips it perfectly, past Sandy MacIver. Yeah, what do what do we even make of this team? Is it like first off, how good are the North Carolina courage right now? Where do you rank them is the in terms of just not just in a recent form, but like if you're power ranking these teams, where are they in the end to be a self for you? Yeah, well, they offer a really weird spot for themselves because of like good teams, especially in the last several weeks, like since we came back from the summer break, there hasn't really hasn't been any good team that has yo-yoed so extremely in their results and occasionally in their performances. So that does give one pause, but like the, the performances have been so dominant. And again, even after you adjust for opponent quality, have remained so dominant that it's hard not to think that they are pretty definitively top four. I remember saying, I don't know, like a month into the season that they were the one team that I really couldn't get a handle on. And that was because those performances may be a little bit more conservative because they were like feeling their way through Maklin's new tactical approach and trying to work Evelyn E.J. into the system. Well, E.J. has worked in now. And when you drop so severely in the whole in terms of production from a player like Menaka to somebody like Erica Parkinson, who franted is just getting her sea legs, but hasn't like been particularly impressive. It seems as though Lynn has been able to find different places to shift progression responsibility without losing any, any downturn in production at the end of the day. So they look like they are just interested in being a front footed counter attack monster. And like it's small sample, but like the split in Ashley Sanchez is dribbling numbers from before the break to after the break are quite astonishing. You know, I mean, her expected goal production is also quite astonishing. She's nearly doubled her SG per 96 over the last seven weeks compared to the first part of the season. She and E.J. are finding this very, very interesting rhythm where like they're getting more creation from wide rather than from the center. And maybe opponents will start adjusting to that. And they're just not used to seeing North Carolina play this way, at least in the sense that like in order to like pay attention to wide channels, you had to know like where Sanchez and Menaka were moving, which one was going into out, which one was going out to end. And having Raoq and to a certain extent, Ryan Williams, now being the main foci, and also having Riley Jackson, also coming back to, yeah, to give you that central progression, but not doing it in the whole. She's doing it from the age she's playing the eight now. Like that's just giving, just giving opponents more to think about because they just not used to seeing it in the way that it's being deployed. And they are, they are pressing their advantage when the opportunities arise as we saw against Orlando and Denver and to a certain extent in the second Washington game and in the Utah game. So it's incredibly impressive. And because those results have been so dominant, like they're sitting in second place right now on like adjusted XG differential. That doesn't feel too far off, especially when you look at how clustered second through fifth is on that leaderboard, like they feel like they should be competing for a home game in the quarter finals. You know, I'd power ranked them four or five right now, just in this league. I think the only thing that drops them out of that elite elite class for me is just a the defense is just not as elite as everyone else's that you would sort of put above them. But if the question is, how do you replace losing Manaka Matsukubo? The answer, very clearly for McLint has been you lean even further into your biggest other superstar and you make them the focal point. And I really think that sort of the attack has a handful of the, the architects of why this works. You have a handful of different things going. You have really high volume possession by Ashley Sanchez. Get the ball to Sanchez Sanchez is almost always, if not always, the highest player up the pitch. And she sets the tone on the break. And she uses her dribbling not only to beat opponents, but to let the rest of the attack catch up and fill the channels so that she can pick passes or pick seems to dribble into and shoot. And then you have Evlyn E.J., who is becoming one of the most productive strikers in the league at a getting in really good shooting locations and be doing well with their opportunities inside good shooting locations. The knock on her in the first half of this season was that she wasn't finishing her chances, which was a little bit true. And it leveled out toward the end, but she had a long dry spell to start this season where she was racking up XG and not scoring. Now she's pumping them in. She's overperforming her XG, but not in a crazy way. It's just all of these shots. Her post break shot map is just like a dream cluster. Yeah, central just inside the six yard box. Yeah, it's where in hockey, you stick a forward to redirect everything. And I think I think thinking about her as like a big hockey forward unit is not a bad thought here because she finds herself in these locations. She is so smart with her body and with the way she sort of shields and creates chances from these places that she is creating from 10 yards and closer good shooting chances constantly. Like not just not just like quality chances as we define them by like 0.15. She's creating 0.3 and 0.4 and 0.5 chances like on the regular in front of goal at this point. And it's really impressive. I mean, she's got 14 shots since the break with 4.2 to XG. That is ridiculous, ridiculous quality per shot. Yeah. And even though she is overperforming to a certain extent, like she is creating more XG these last seven games than she was in the first 11. Question for you, her XG and her receiving G plus were pretty well aligned in the first part of the season. And that is usually to be expected, especially with a striker because you need to get yourself into good positions in order to take high quality chances. And so you're receiving G plus should match that. Whereas these last seven games, the XG is great, but her receiving G plus is actually below average relative to other number 9s. Anything anything any interesting signal there or is it just small sample noise? That feels like really small sample noise to me. I think that what we've watched her do, some of these chances have been defined as quote unquote individual play. I don't know how we are. I think some of that is picking up garbage in the box and converting it. You have to be, which doesn't count toward your receiving score, but you have to be in the right place to pick up the garbage. I think that's probably right. Yeah. And you know, so whether it is second phase of a corner kick, the bounces around and ends up at your feet, even though it wasn't a pass rebounds. Yeah, rebounds, we don't, those aren't factors in this. And yet Evelyn E.J., I think the thing that you look at, and I'll put this in, you know, you'll be looking at it on, if you're watching the show right now, when you pair these two shot maps with each other, the thing that doesn't change is the cluster from where she's shooting. So it means that the positioning she's getting herself in, herself in is always really good for shots. And whether she is on the end of a progressive pass or whether she's cleaning up some garbage that landed at her feet, she is staking the most valuable real estate on the pitch for a striker as her own and not really being bullied out of it. Yeah. So that paired with, it's funny because that paired with Ashley Sanchez is what you think of when you think of like a target guy, dribbly guy, striker tandem. It just so happens that that the Ashley Sanchez role is coming from out wide as opposed to playing underneath Ashley Sanchez. I think at this point, there are players who are putting up more production wise than her. And there's a lot of noise about Trinity, Rodman MVP. But if you're going to make a non MVP, if you're going to make a non G plus MVP argument, you'd be pretty hard pressed to take a look at Ashley Sanchez and not consider it because what she did in the first half of the season was overperformed her XG. She was getting lucky. What she's doing in the second half of the season is completely altering her game to satisfy the absence of Monaco Matsukubo. Still effective, but now she's dribbling more, taking on more, winning those chances and creating. And now she is basically scoring in line with her XG. She's creating good chances for herself and finishing them. It's, it's a remarkable, we'll, we'll get to this later. But like, I think at this point, if you wanted to take a look at the first half of the season and say that was Ashley Sanchez noise and she's coming back down to earth, yada, yada, yada, fine. What she's done in the second half and it's 640 minutes. So it's a small sample and it can change has been utterly dominant and utterly dominant doing basically anything that is asked of her to create chances. So I, for me, like, she is the engine that runs this whole thing. I think EJ is diminished without her. I think she is. We can't. And every team, huh? We can't know exactly chicken or egg there. But like, I think that it is really, really hard to imagine an effective North Carolina courage franchise right now without the Sanchez to borrow somebody else with that last name's nickname without her being like the focal point. She looked at the manaka absence and sort of picked up all that work, shut a little, a little bit to Riley Jackson, but the rest of it she's done. And, and, and really don't discount route here. Like the difference between having any weather hold as you're left back in the first part of the year to Raoq, like you have Jackson coming from center, center, right to try and find combinations. But with the way that Sanchez does her out to in level of movement, the place that she's getting the ball from is from those attacking actions on the over or underlapped from Raoq. And weather hold wasn't giving her that in the first part of the year. Like she was finding combinations with manaka and there is allowing the team to stretch and make opposing right backs and right-sided center backs have to make a choice about whether they're going to go touch line or they're going to stay compact closer to the middle. And Raoq is really forcing since them into some bad decisions, like once she and Sanchez link up, you know. So it's, it's the fact that like you take manaka away and then you spread equivalent levels of chance creation across two, maybe even three players and they all play in different parts of the field. You know, so you just can't box, you can't box them in. You know, yeah. And again, like there, there may be countermeasures here, like once oppositions get more tape on how they're doing it. And we probably won't see as garish a series of XG splits, the way that we did in those games against Denver or Utah or Orlando. But still reducing those kinds of numbers significantly still means that North Carolina will probably be consistently outplaying their opponents. So it's, it's, it was, it's a couple of things. It's Moclin being smart enough to know how to like adjust tactical responsibility in the absence of a really strong player. But it's also very not insignificantly key players coming back from injury, like, yeah, you didn't have route for a lot of the first part of the year. And now you do or having Natalie Jacobs looks like she and Macy Bell are going to be the primary center back partnership that they both stay healthy rather than you know, Shiragaki, like that has knock on effects as well. So I think that you get key contributors coming back from injury and really smart tactical adjustments on top of having really good players already. And you are forever defeating the Sean Neha's principles that made this North Carolina tech look the way it did across those three plus years. Yeah, yeah, it's hard to believe that this version of the North Carolina courage is made up largely of the players that played in this team last year and two years ago, because they're being deployed in completely different ways. You bring up Felirau and I think one of the things that we were excited about when she joined North Carolina years ago is that we were going to get this like really dynamic attacking wide fullback. And only now are we sort of seeing like Felirau being asked to do all the things that Felirau profile when she came over suggested that she was excellent and I think Moclin deserves a lot of credit for. Putting a bunch of players in position that they are well suited for to succeed and in the case of Ashley Sanchez changing her role to take on some of what Monaca did and trusting that she can also do that and she can and she has I also would love to shout out Shinomi Koyama who has been an utter metronome at the base of this midfield who is doing who is doing all of the things in a side that is attempting to. Attack consistently and directly is doing that counterweight stuff, which is play that past that opens the next pass up that play that pastor Ellie Jackson that opens her to play a vertical ball play that past to Felirau that opens them to break down a sideline. I think it's been she's been very very consistent there and defensively never really getting out of shape so that when North Carolina do get broken against. There is like a defensive structure that looks okay yeah I mean like when they play with two center backs over these last several games there is a literally perfectly symmetrical spot in between Bell and Jacob's or Bell and Uno whatever the combination may be for Koyama to fill either when they're playing out in a rest defense although Koyama is often pushed ahead of the center backs to try and. You know make Jackson's progressions work but then out of possession she's dropping in between them or playing tight to their line to shield them and Shinomi was not the. Defense first central midfielder upon entering the league that wasn't necessarily her profile but like. This is what mocklands asking her to do and their defensive performance is like a hair worse after the break than it was before it but barely. That feels noisy yeah yeah 1000% and then like if you look across the whole season as you mentioned at the top of the segment like they are smack dab in the middle of the leaderboard in terms of actually allowed per game. So it's not you know North Carolina defenses of all necessarily but like the trade off has been you are still organizing your defense to give you enough cover. That Kaelin Sheridan's not going to have an overwhelming amount of work to do and then what you're getting on the other end is goals goals goals goals and so you're you're actually splits your goal differential and more often than not your results are in fatically going in the right direction. You know the other yeah the other thing that I think is also worth mentioning here and you know if the question is how do you replace a superstar the answer is. You get better performances out of so many different pieces and then you you take whatever your second best player wasn't you craft them into that superstar the other person whose performances she still underwater. I've gotten better even if the score lines don't necessarily reflect that is Kaelin Sheridan shot stopping is like coming back a lot closer toward what an average shot stopper looks like which is not where she was two months ago yeah she was. A lot of what you could attribute under perfect like as North Carolina under performance was simply her just not being that good for the first half of the season and now she's sort of resembling a Kaelin Sheridan of all and if she continues to have a strong second half. I think you know again this is not going to be the best team in the league but this is going to be a team that come playoff time with a good seeding can really fuck some people up. And she generally remains under exposed which is good like the shot the difficulty of the shots that she faces is basically league average but there's certainly not more difficult in the average goalkeeper and she faces among the fewest shots in the league she only faces four shots a game so like she. Yeah she struggled in a very, very, very small sample in the first handful of games and now she's doing very, very, very, very well in a small sample and you add it up is like you're probably pound pound for pound your league average keeper but like that's fine and there's going to be maybe a little bit more XG that you know that your defense is going to allow then maybe you as Kaelin Sheridan legendary goalkeeper would prefer. But it's still a manageable amount that still aren't isn't leading to a large amount of like difficult shots for you to deal with so as long as like this as long as the sample noise is going in the right direction then you don't have too much distress about and so far these last several games she's looked really really good like really really good not just on her shot stopping but like in every aspect of the game. Yeah, I will say that if Ashley Sanchez is able to continue keeping up her 0.55 non penalty XG for 96 that she's been doing in the second half of the season and is able to continue generating 0.17 XG per shot Ashley Sanchez and Ashley Sanchez from a wing position it's Ashley Sanchez yeah it's going to be hard she got a big old XG bump from. Her opener one of the better goals you'll see this year which was initially attributed as an Ashley Sanchez assist to an Ashley Sanchez goal which I thought was not that generous but the touches so good that you could consider it that not so generous to the ball in but if Ashley Sanchez continues creating high quality shots constantly and if Evelyn E.J. continues just raking from the center of the box this North Carolina team is going to continue scoring a lot of goals Ashley Sanchez you know to go back to a thing that we were talking about in her guard style he sent her in the second half of the season Ashley Sanchez is taking what four shots from outside the box five total she's taking sub a game that's not what you expect from a winger who is dribbling around the box a lot and is being tasked with creating offense so it means she's making good decisions a lot of the time and it's just I mean it's so impressive it's what's what's happening here and not what between the two of them and not what the first 11 games would have indicated that no like you said like it seems like she was going to come back down to earth instead she's just turned on the jets and will she she like one goal off of the Golden Boot lead now something like that yeah what does she have now she has 10 11 I think she's got 11 she's going to do it. She's got 11 so that would put her 12 is that right or is band on 11 is she tied this is so funny we we do this all the time wearing we are so familiar with the underlying numbers that we sometimes forget who's just like leading the Golden Boot race yeah it's band it with 12 but it's like we are paying so much more attention to like I was surprised to find out the pH are talking with 15 gold contributions is leading the lead I was like oh interesting I guess that makes sense now yeah Ashley Sanchez is second in the Golden Boot race and if the first half was luck this second half is anything but that but we also then need to raise the specter of sample size because totally we didn't we didn't get a remaining strength of schedule projections for this week but based on last week and we'd only be removing one game granted would be a difficult one but they had the third hardest remaining schedule as of right before the the Denver game the midweek Denver game but even after you remove that Denver game on the road and and the Washington and like it's still not the gentlest of schedules you know I mean at least in the in the immediate term over the next three games like they're all at home and they're playing what they're playing at home against Houston boss in an angel city there's probably seven maybe even nine points there to get which will be awesome for their top four hopes but after that it's Kansas City on the road two weeks later it's San Diego on the road then they got Gotham at home Utah on the road Seattle on the road which could be winnable but that's never going to be fun then they got the return fixture at home against San Diego those are a lot of tough games now in front of them yeah I think if I'm I think if I'm game planning to play against North Carolina at this point I'm going and looking at the second half of the spirit game and also the big game it's not that this team doesn't have places that you can't attack them so much of last year when you were playing the North Carolina courage was let anyone but Monaca beat you and this year I think the answer is let anyone but Ashley Sanchez beat you whether that means at this point it's really just making sure she doesn't get free runs and when she steps inside you have a defensive midfielder there to pick her up in addition to a center back that is well placed to cut down this sort of the channel of the past to Evelineja like what makes that difficult also is that like even Ali Schlagel's had a good like run a game yeah and Ali Schlagel while not like generating whole lot of shots or key passes like what do we always say about Ali Schlagel user sparingly and user correctly and so far McLean has been doing that these last handful of weeks where like she's getting great looks on goal she's having opportunities to like feed other players and it's not like Ryan Williams just because Feli Rauck is back is going to stop being Ryan William you know so it seems like the what you have to do is also in order to like answer North Carolina's charge is to beat that press like win the ball and then try and beat the press quickly since they're often pushed pretty high up like I that's easier said than done based on the last four the last few weeks have been going but then again it's a really hard run after we get these these three software home games out of the way so they might they might come back to earth but by that point maybe they will have just gotten enough of a collection of bank points that they'll be just in a very very comfortable position by for November we'll see yeah yeah that is all of that's correct which is you do have to shut down Ashley Sanchez in whatever way you can and you have to hope that she reverts to a version of herself that hasn't really shown up this year and makes less than stellar decisions but you're right I also think that Riley Jackson filling the channel is another option for Ashley Sanchez Ali Schlagel has been a good option Ryan Williams continues to be one of the best fullbacks in this league it's this team is solid it's just so weird to be able to talk about a North Carolina courage team that we find not only good but interesting yeah you know we've had we think they've been at times good and not interesting they've been at times not good and also not interesting rarely have we been treated it's been approaching half a decade that it that we could say this North Carolina courage team is both good and interesting and like they're their decision to finally like market their goddamn games and get people to show up to wake med is working it continues to work it hasn't been an early season flu they didn't sell up their last home game but I mean they've got yeah I mean an average of 8,000 to game in a 10,000 cedar are numbers that North Carolina has just never achieved in their long long history even during the years where they were the best team in the world like on the field and off the field right now everything just seems to be working which like during the summer break when Manaka got moved who would have thought you know so we'll see if they can keep it up yeah credit I mean credit to the credit here to the crew that put this team together and decided to hire McLean yeah but Kerry Bally is not necessarily a friend of the show but like the two things that he does seem to have gotten right is bringing EJ in and hiring lint you know yeah I look I am here to we are here to give flowers where flowers are due this team seems really pretty well built and has endured a loss with a plan and frankly probably has room to spend if they want to maybe not even a plan maybe was a plan that they had to improvise on the fly but they were smart about how they did that yeah you know I think both of us picked them to finish fifth or sixth I think I picked them fifth maybe we're staring at a team that if you told us that they were losing Manaka that we would have both dropped them down a peg or two now and again it's small sample without her I am not dropping them yeah I mean they're they're projected for six right now in our average of the ASA and Learner Elon models but that was before Portland lost Olivia Mulchry and in Mulchry's absence Portland probably slides down in North Carolina bumps up so but that also means like you're basically in a mix with Kansas City in San Diego for three four five and there's really no daylight between you in those projects so randomness parity 30 game season chaos potential injuries you 20 world cup effects a whole litany of things that could allow the bounces to go their way and they could be playing the quarterfinals at Wake Med yeah absolutely when you sell Manaka and you are still in contention for a home playoff game you solved your problem pretty well outside of Craybatoon I don't think anybody is pushing the Emma Hayes envelope quite like Ashley Sanchez like you have to you have to start asking questions well we guys know a few things I mean it's it's awful to say but Makarios continued injury problems and Mulchries potential long-term injury problems could open up some spots in the depth chart or an attacking mid-winger swing player and depending on what happened to mouse wants that if you think mouse wants in the mix and so it's just a matter of does Sanchez keep playing the way that she's been playing the last couple months and if the answers yes I guess we'll see what Emma Hayes does in October yeah Ashley Sanchez couldn't be doing more right now to to force the question yes as players like to say I can only control what I can control and Ashley Sanchez is really controlling what she can control it's really controlling so that's right anything else you got nope thank you so much for listening is always if you have not joined our patreon yet please click the link in the show notes six dollars a month gets you four exclusive bonus episodes every single month plus access to discord and a bunch of other cool stuff we've also got our 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