For the first time in club history, Angel City opens a season with two wins in a row. The team comes home from PayPal Park with all three points from their 3-1 win over their upstate rivals.

Emily Sams saw the captain's armband for the first time in an Angel City kit as Sarah Gorden sat the bench to give Savy King her first start since her cardiac event. Besides that, Head Coach Alex Straus kept the starting XI the same as their home opener.

Tactically, they looked fairly similar. Fluid, aggressive going forward, relentless in the press.

This can be observed in the passing networks for the game. Similar to the previous weekend, outside backs Evelyn Shores and Gisele Thompson were pushed up high, while Kennedy Fuller, Maiara Niehues, and Sveindís Jónsdóttir wrecked havoc with their combinations on the right.

They did well to neutralize Bay's Alex Pfieffer, who had two goal contributions in their win over Denver the weekend before. Numbers in the midfield stifled Claire Hutton's ability to consistently impact the game.

Bay gave Angel City a lot of space to exploit in behind, which they did. Twice. The attack generated 5 good-great chances on Saturday and converted 3 of them. Much of that is thanks for Icelandic international Jónsdóttir, seemingly getting her NWSL sea legs under her during the offseason. The attack is so much more fluid and smooth with her playing centrally this season. Twice she beats her defender high on the pitch, once for a goal and another time to serve a great cutback ball to Thompson.

It's great to see Jónsdóttir becoming the version of herself fans probably hoped she would be when the club signed her. The relationships she's built with Niehues, Fuller, and Thompsok in particular seem to be paying off in dividends so far. In two games she has three goal contributions. Not a bad start to 2026 for her at all. The g+ ratings from the game show that she was not just the best player on Angel City, but had the strongest performance of everyone on the pitch.

Defensively Angel City was alright. Solid and organized for the most part. They gave up 13 shots, none of them good-great, but Bay managed to score. Overall, it looked like the partnership between King and Sams is just not fully fleshed out yet, which is understandable. Against a better team, Angel City may have been punished for their errant passes out of the back or bobbling balls in the midfield. Positively, though, Angel City did not crumble after the Taylor Huff goal and locked back in to keep the scoreline 3-1.

Overall, another good, cohesive performance from Angel City. They won against opposition that they should beat, and they left without leaving anything on the table. Hopefully this shows a positive shift in mentality as Angel City starts to approach the point in their schedule where they'll be facing more challenging opponents.

Next up is Houston on Friday. Three weeks in, this match has actually become a battle for the top of the table. Probably not the two teams anyone expected, but here we are, and excitedly so!

The Dash throttled the Boston Legacy last weekend despite losing Yazmeen Ryan and Delanie Sheehan to the Denver Summit. Is that more to do with them or their opposition? I think we'll have to see in what's now become a big match up on Friday. If nothing else, Angel City will have to contend with Jane Campbell who seems to have returned to her starting position in goal with a vengeance after a rare off season for her in 2025. Angel City's chance creation has taken a step forward from last season, and they'll have to bring that along with their finishing boots to BMO Stadium on Friday to come out on top.

**Images courtesy of Angel City