Dreams of an Angel City three game win streak dashed for now.
The team suffered a 0-2 loss to Bay FC in San Jose on Saturday night. Besides Savy King who is in the process of recovering from successful heart surgery, Claire Emslie was on the availability report for an upper leg issue. This saw Canadian international Megan Reid come in at center back and Christen Press at right wing. Other than that the starting XI was composed of the usual suspects and they appeared to be in a 4-3-3 going forward rather than their typical 4-2-3-1.
I only watched part of the second half live and had to go back to watch the replay. Admittedly I wasn't doing my closest watch so this post might be a little more big picture. On paper, the performance from Angel City wasn’t horrible. They maintained a majority of the possession, completed more passes, and had more final third and box touches. They actually put up more npxG than Bay (ACFC vs. BFC, 1.0 vs. 0.5). They pushed for the full match trying to put something together but they didn’t look quite themselves and at the end of the day they looked disjointed.
This could have been due to the two necessary changes made to the starting XI, this could have been due to the emotional weight of the past week, and this could have been due to some classic Angel City inconsistency. It could have been all of the above and more. Credit to Bay FC, though, because they had a game plan that they executed to the desired effect and made it out with all three points.
Although Angel City dominated the possession a lot of the passing was between the backline. Bay FC was happy to sit back and pounce on transitional opportunities granted to them by poor turnovers through Angel City’s midfield or from clogging their own box to force the forwards into poorer chances to win a goal kick or second ball. The Penelope Hocking goal came from one of these transitional moments where Bay overloaded the left side leaving the opposite side wide open. Goalkeeper Angelina Anderson gave up a penalty by probably unnecessarily taking out Taylor Huff near the goal line after some missed tackles and disorganization within the Angel City box. Bay sort of just locked it down from there and new #1 goalkeeper Jordan Silkowitz had a good game keeping the on frame chances out of the back of the net.
It wasn’t as if Angel City wasn’t trying or didn’t have their chances. When progressive passing wasn’t turning out too well, Alyssa and Gisele Thompson carried the ball up the pitch themselves cutting through defenders but the finishing or final pass to a Kennedy Fuller, Riley Tiernan, or Christen Press wasn’t quite there. Alanna Kennedy and Katie Zelem did not have the control over the midfield that they have in the past couple of matches and they seemed to struggle more in getting up and down the field than they do when they’re in a double pivot. With Reid in for King, there was just not enough pace to manage attacking transition or to break up play. Macey Hodge coming in at the half seemed to help with this and Casey Phair got some good minutes on the night but it just wasn’t enough.
MA Vignola and Alyssa Thompson both left this game potentially with injury and I really hope that they are okay because if this and the Gotham match showed us anything, it’s that Interim Coach Sam Laity doesn’t have a ton of answers after Plan A and having Savy and Claire out already poses a problem to that and the remaining depth of the squad. Hoping that things were more so precautionary and that Claire will be back soon. Jun Endo has been in training and traveling with the team, so her removal from the SEI list seems close on the horizon. Sydney Leroux also appeared on the availability report with a lower leg injury, so even though she’s now picked up a knock, it shows that she’s making her way back after mental health leave.
My hope leading up to the international break is that Angel City is able to quickly establish chemistry and stabilize a bit with bringing Reid back in as a starter and 90 minute player. Now that Press seems ready for more significant minutes it will be good for players to continue developing their connections with her to solidify the diversity in attacking looks available to the team. Angel City has a game at home next weekend against Racing Louisville, let’s hope that they can get back on track.