Deconstructing Kansas City: Statistical Polarity and NWSL Playoff Architecture

What's Thor's song you've ever heard and why is it can't stop the feeling by Justin Timberlake? Hello and welcome to Expected Own Goals trolls edition. I'm your host Eric Morgan and I am Evan Davis welcome to this week's edition of What Is Kansas City? What is Kansas City not? Today we decided this was going to be the week where we really dig into it. So stay with us for that. Did we decide it was this week or had we been like waiting for like a reasonable time to talk about it and then both of us watched up in Kansas City and we're like it's time. Yeah that's that's accurate that's a little that shines a light on our process. So that's going to be our feature topic for this week. Before we get going as always if you are not member of our patreon you can click the link in the show notes to become a subscriber for only six dollars a month. You get four exclusive bonus episodes every single month access to our discord server and a lot of other cool bonus information. So do that and if you're already a patreon member think about upgrading to our new tier culture number 10 $10 a month gets you an extra bonus episode every single month xog after dark or things get a little um button get a little spicy get a little off the record a lot of tea gets spilled so that's fun and if you are patreon member and you know somebody who you think would be interested sure to pass that information along all right get the business stuff out of the way real quick whip around the league bay probably will feel hard done by they didn't walk away with at least something against their in their game against Utah. Yeah I think that's right but I also think in the case of Utah it's not like Utah didn't create quality chances and it's not like bay didn't give up a bad penalty. Sure I just sort of feel like this is an incomplete team. How I feel about bay 2027 could be quite positive. How I feel about bay 2026 will probably remain negative. Yeah and Rachel Kondinaji being injured certainly doesn't help anything. That's right. Denver on the road against San Diego was kind of impressive. You know we're gonna have a lot of long range bombs to talk about this weekend in Melanie Barcinus is among the most composed ones that goes in but yeah I felt like Denver this was a really low incident game like what both teams got recorded like half an xg-ish only one all each units per team. Yeah and that I think quality chance got finished by Yaz Ryan on the Denver side with a really beautiful header from Janine Sonas. I look if Denver's gonna make their playoff push and they're still very much within range grabbing results on the road against San Diego is kind of like the good stuff that you need to be doing on that push. Yeah what good stuff did Chicago do against Seattle. You know what the only good thing is the top line score really doesn't reflect the game and if you want to give Katie Atkinson some credit. Katie Atkinson faced what 3.3 something xg right around there and gave up only one goal on a tap in after she'd already made a save from Maddie Mercado or you know after the ball bounced around and got past her. Yeah it's a little tighter on the actual like finishing quality 2.2 post shot actually that she faced but still that means that probably she should have given up two or three goals and she only gave up one so Katie Atkinson as we have noted with interest is seems to be all the way back as a shot stopper and as for Seattle man playing Chicago really can make your attack look good doesn't it. It's just like I want to be like cautiously enthusiastic about sort of what we've seen in elements of Seattle's development of their talent but this game Seattle basically there are European bombing campaigns from World War II that were less brutal than what Seattle did to the Chicago box. Truly look at that shot cluster in that shot map Seattle's A getting all the right shots and B they just didn't capitalize on them but that was bad luck more than anything else like there's a version of this game that ends 6 nil. Combine that result and that performance with everything else that happened over the weekend there is now a little bit of separation in the projections between the playoff pack and everybody else where we've got Angel City on 40 points Seattle in eighth place on 44 so that's a meaningful difference we'll see if that keeps up but it very encouraging for Seattle's playoff prospects. I'm enthusiastic about what we're seeing from them. How do you feel about the late charging fast charging unstoppable force that is racing Louisville as they power their way toward the playoffs with a 4-1 demolition of Boston. I'll say this that was the worst defensive performance the Boston legacy has put up so far this year so credit to Louisville for running down their gut and not stopping throughout the entire throughout the entire game also says a lot about you know the continued issues that Boston's attack has racing beats Chicago at home they beat a Barbara bandaless Orlando on the road and they beat Boston at home that's the sum total of their August winning streak. I'm not convinced yet that they are going to somehow like use their fuck it fuck them attitude that they seem to be finding. I'm going to get into a playoff place. I almost titled the episode fuck it fuck them which I love from Aaron Wright. I think that's fantastic. I agree with you. I think if they beat Seattle we're recording this on Wednesday. I think if they beat Seattle tonight and then Chicago at the weekend the points total will reflect something that we will actually need to start taking seriously even if the underlying performances will be trailing it still inevitably that said racing Louisville put off it was an offensive barrage from them. Maybe three one against Orlando overstated the issue. They certainly deserved their win against the Chicago stars who scored sort of a jockey shot from distance but I think racing Louisville beats Seattle and then beat Chicago. That would put them on 26 points with nine to go. It's like not it's still a long way to go but it's suddenly like kind of an interesting place that they find themselves in. I wouldn't leapfrog them above a lot of teams there. Yeah I mean again it's it's just the amount of points that they've left on the table and also all of the things that have to go wrong for the teams in front of them in order for this to work like if the playoff line's going to be 41 points which is what the position suggests right now and if they do win those next two games they got to get 15 points from their final nine games. That's a 1.7 point per game pace. It's very difficult. That's very difficult to do and so I just don't I just don't see it. I'm I'm with you in that like the playoff line needs to drop like the the way racing gets in is A they continue putting together excellent performances B they start putting those performances up against really quality opposition and see the playoff line probably sags a little bit down to like 39 or 38 points because other things happen in other fixtures and by the way you know 41 points over 30 game season is a roughly 1.4 point for game pace which by the way has basically been the playoff line in the sticks to 18 playoff era. So don't anticipate that the playoff line's going to drop all that far. Yeah I don't think it's going to either. They'll be a little bit more in range if they win their next two games that those are those are big ifs but they are you know they put together a really solid performance against Boston and they certainly have the attacking firepower I think to threaten in most games. So we know Boston was this was this the end of it for Boston for you 20 points 20 games. I mean I yeah I don't I don't see a way forward for them for sure. This is yeah yeah I don't know I don't know if they're going to end up on 30 points the way we have them projected but I yeah it just seems like the playoffs are a bit too far off now for them. North Carolina continues their chaos back half losing to Houston very late three to two hard done by but I don't I wouldn't say that North Carolina necessarily did a whole hell of a lot to say that they were completely unlucky in this result. No I would agree with you I had I had posted in our discord during this game that I was like nothing would be more Houston then to level this game late like in the 89th plus minute I posted something from our account a couple weeks ago that described that like a huge portion of Houston's goals have come after the 89th minute and the winner in this game did but it was like a deserved winner North Carolina can rule the chances that they didn't complete earlier in the game that said you let teams hang around and sometimes this happens. The only thing that does seem to be consistent is that Eveline J scores big big big chances. Yeah and gets that gets big chances and scores them for sure but he's Houston a little bit more real in this playoff push I don't think so but I don't know they're still bad they're still the second worst team on underlying performances and again there's just to I just feel like there are too many points to make up when these situations when you start like dreaming on a come from behind push it's it's not just what you do it's what everybody else around you does too and we need to see some pretty big collapses from like Seattle Kansas City Angel City Denver Orlando that all needs to happen as well as Houston and Louisville continuing to pick up lots of points going forward. So that just seems like too many balls in the air for it to happen. Yeah for the North Carolina courage again you sort of won the XG split in this game I'm not like overly concerned about you you're still a playoff team like this is a this a brain fart in this season where like those things happen yeah and they do have enough points and they are playing at the kind of pace where it from the next 11 games they should be able to get over that line yeah before we go to late game long shot heroics back to back and then our match of the week let's talk first the late game long shot heroics from the Portland Thorns how good was that Kaya Hank's moment it was like it's kind of like why we watch sports level good I did have a thought in my head is like are we gonna get a Trinity Rodman in 2025 kind of moment and then we did which is kind of yeah kind of crazy it clearly meant a lot to her clearly meant a lot to her teammates I think Pietro Torden was more excited about it than even Hank's was yeah I think that's right so yeah I mean they they came into the league together they clearly have a pretty strong bond there's a nice moment with Olivia Mulchry who obviously is neck going through what Hank's just went through right now getting very tear to your fall and saying how proud she was if Kaya Hank's so great moment with Morgan Weaver dancing I love Morgan Weaver's and her you know like her recovery buddy yeah these are all the embattled these are all the embattled injury latent thorns attackers who now seem to be very very tightly knit and you have you know you've been calling it for basically almost a year like when Hank shows up she's gonna make a difference yeah and she did although maybe not a particularly repeatable shot that she hit she did all the things right in striking it she sort of kept them all perfectly under her feet dribbled it toward as much the middle of the box as she could to improve her angle chances and then didn't try to hit the snot out of it instead sort of went for a combination of power and placement and picked her spot and just drilled it into the corner I thought it was there were remarkably composed finish for a person who must have been like who must have had like adrenaline coursing through their veins for having not played for 400 some odd days yeah and her families in the crowd and I again her teammates are you know very much as emotionally she is and yeah it's a very emotional and fatick win a very classic kind of great night out at Providence Park kind of win but Orlando I think can feel a little bit hard done by that they didn't walk away with something yeah I think something's probably the right word for it the Dana Castellanos I think she meant it as a shot because she shoots all the time uh cross shot over Anna Morehouse it probably for me if you're just looking for like pure absurdity of it all the finish of the week we we've seen Dana Castellanos attempt lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of dumb distance shots this one at least had the cleverness of the goalkeeper not expecting it coming and then hitting it but you know the Portland Thorns created critically little in this game as far as like really dangerous chances go and converted to pre-Law XG chances on the flip side Orlando created very little and their best chances played off Jackie O'Valle's thigh I'm a Kenzie Arnold yeah for a goal so this game was I think kind of ugly Orlando they have banded coming back but are and had banded for this game banded didn't create a lot are the Orlando pride and some now real or trouble the moment you're talking about the playoff picture a couple weeks ago yeah for sure yeah I agree yeah I mean they're projected to still only be four points off the playoff line right now but they only have 10 games left to do to make up the ground and they're not playing at a playoff pace so I don't know I don't know I mean again the the biggest problem which I'm going to use as a counterpoint to some of the things we'll talk about with Kansas City is like it's what we've said like there is no attack without Barbara Banda yeah for sure so if she if she doesn't perform you are you are dead in the water and you're not going to be able to play against a goalkeeper like McKenzie Arnold who is arguably one of the worst punch and parry control rebound keepers we've ever seen it's crazy to me that like McKenzie Arnold's shot stopping ability is incredible and that the punching and parrying numbers that she puts up just like don't resemble a professional keeper and everything else resembles a world class keeper yeah I mean these events are rare enough that like a couple it yeah swing your numbers and this year we're actually in the midst of a very unusual collection of very poor punch and parry keepers but that could just be small sample flu yeah thing with Arnold is this has always been the thing with her it's never not anything yeah you've seen it before yeah and I think a lot of time when people think she's not a good shotstopper what they're doing is they're just thinking about those kinds of like punches and rebounds that end up going right in front of opposition attackers that they can then use for high-exche chances she's a remarkable shotstopper where some of those rebounds go create very real problems yeah if she doesn't catch them or put them out of bounds correct but let's go next and you know to the game you were at that will be defined by the alley sentner bomb but oh was a solid performance from angel city against the Washington spirit they had a couple of good chances would have had a third if it hadn't been chalked off i.e. alley centers initial first goal yeah which was a great chance that he's exactly the kind of chance yes the gods were like laughing in this game yes on social media i posted people at the Oscars in a very emotional standing applause break and then two minutes later had to quote post that with like oops never mind will never mind yeah yeah no it was it was good i mean i still think Washington and the aggregate were the better team yeah of course i agree but um you know these are the kinds of this was not an obvious point for angel city on their path toward attempting to play off run um and i felt like against one of the better teams in the league even if Washington's in this sort of temporary dip and maybe maybe even if the shield looks a little more gone than it should this is a very good team Washington played well and then you know they gave up a shot frankly you should be somewhat comfortable conceding yeah and i'll also say that the Washington spirit midfield is in a weird place at the moment yeah absolutely because lacey Santos is hurt and so how her felt was suddenly playing the 10 passing is not traditionally been her strong suit and it wasn't just that i mean as me morgan was on the bench for the first half Tamara bowl was in the starting eleven because they still don't have gif monday arosman kawasi available uh after they came back from waftcon so i wouldn't anticipate that this is going to be something we'll see very often going forward from the spirit uh i wish i could have asked other young Gonzalez is why morgan was on the bench in the first half and why Claudio Martinez didn't get started yeah sure whatever i mean it's it's it's a it's a three thousand mile road trip so maybe there was just some fitness stuff that they were thinking about or trying to be preventative on but this was a fluke for them generally speaking and the center chance we've come down and been critical of allysentner and evin's piecing equalizer got mentioned on samus and linby and dolos podcast their attitude was predictably good vibes e about it but they did sort of like latch on to the 102 misses of it all this was in some ways kind of the spiritually the worst outcome for allysentner in this game where like the great shot the thing she should be doing all the time driving into the box ripping shots from close distance that really force that that aren't catchable that force parries or rip past the keeper that was chalked off in favor of the thing she shouldn't be doing which is dribbling with her head down for 20 yards and then ripping an off-balance shot from distance it was an absolute thing of beauty i want to be like abundantly clear we're never like rooting against a player having a moment like that or doing well i think the thing that is harder is the glazing of of some players over other players who are more productive i was kind of devastated for allysentner when you know her first goal gets chalked off because it was so clearly a thing she needed and it was so clearly a thing her entire team wanted for her and frankly it was the thing that i wanted for her and i think that you probably wanted for her and then she gets that moment but she gets it in a way at the end of the match that like reinforces stuff that has made her like a not particularly productive attacker whenever we encounter opposition to this argument out in the wild it tends to be from people who i think must understand what we say and also what xg means xg is a measurement of probability what that means is there is no such thing as a one hundred percent one point of xg chance and there is no such thing as a zero percent zero point zero zero xg chance because every shot has been scored at some point and those kinds of outside the box shots that sent her hits generally are like point zero three chances which means on average you know over history they're scored about three percent of the time not zero percent of the time three percent of the time so what that means is that you shouldn't you shouldn't never take them it just means that you need to take them in the moments where you think i think you described it last time when it looks more like a maybe a ten percent opportunity rather or it looks maybe like a seven percent opportunity but too often players think it looks like a ten or twelve percent of what it you know it you have you have to be smarter about when you think there's a opera that when there's a chance for it to be scored and like this feels more like clock being right once every one hundred and four days kind of thing you know because it you know there's actually ref cam footage of it so we actually can see kind of what sent nurses and there's a port there is there is a window through which she can hit it she hits the shit out of it as she always does but this time she's able to send it to the corner rather than center mass and that's just enough of a curling angle that Angelina Anderson can't get to it she took that kind of shot once every three games go with god yeah fair no but that was like the fourth time she'd taken it that game exactly exactly and I and frankly like I think the thing first off what's so incredible is when you watch that go from behind the one thing I do want to give her a lot of credit for is she does dribb she does like dramatically improve the possibility of that ball going in simply by dribbling to the middle of the field if she takes that shot at an angle from that distance the amount of goal area that she can hit is diminished but the problem is that that decision making process would have been the same if she did have a good look from the middle or maybe yeah because that's often how she does it you know yeah the other thing is the way she hits the ball because it is running across her body and because of the way she sort of turns and pivots she sort of gets this banana in slice with the ball drifting from the middle of the goal away toward corner pocket and toward up her 90 actually but it is because she is off balance and because of where she's going she doesn't have her weight underneath her in the same way that allows the ball to sort of slice away like as far as repeatable shooting things are concerned that's far less repeatable as a matter of technique than like I'd be curious to know what she was aiming for because like I kind of don't think it was upper 90 away and you might be right about that and you know I saw something on social media co-postus be like hey high risk high reward as it as a justification for her doing it and high risk high reward that is technically correct well but here but this is my this is my pushback to high risk high reward applies for home runs high risk high reward applies for three point shots I don't think it applies here because the risk is extremely elevated relative to taking a shot from closer range but the reward isn't any different you know like the reward is exactly the same as if you took the shot from six yards out so how are you getting a higher reward by adding the higher risk I get what you're saying I don't disagree and then I think there's the other thing that we've talked about before when people chide us for you know hating joy or you know not wanting not good things to players it's like there are there is there is entertaining soccer and there is soccer that actually helps you win games and sometimes those things are the same thing and other times they're not the same thing yeah and thunder bastards are extremely entertaining and fun they generally don't help you win games if you take them a lot frankly I'm thrilled for her that that happened I think that that was essential to confidence I hope that there are lessons learned about frequency of attempts yeah so you know bully for Ali sent her and then this point is huge for angel city in their playoff push and they are in the hunt I mean there is now meaningful separation of the projections between them and the playoff line but they are right now projected for ninth place in on 40 points and their their pace their 1.4 point per game pace will allow them to stay in the mix and so yeah all they need is for one team to fall back and Seattle can do that so angel cities very much in the conversation for playoffs yeah absolutely also great to see said LaRue return I mean not I mean there were three big returns in this game actually hatch said LaRue savvy king it was kind of trippy all right let's get to the let's get to the meeting potatoes though the whole thing Kansas City man listen I mean this all got triggered because well I mean if you're if you're a weekly listener of the show you know that this has been like essentially a debate between the two of us for most of the year to what extent is Kansas City actually good despite the results and to what extent is that Chris armistice fault to what extent is it an absence of 10 which wing is fault to what extent is it an absence of Claire Hutton's fault like where does this all fall and we realize that it was probably time to have this conversation for two reasons one they got 20 games another belt so that's a lot of games to talk about too I don't think it's unfair to say that that was the worst performance that they've had all year against Gotham it was one of them if you look at the are adjusted XG metrics which adjust for quality of your opposition home away effects game state within the game all that good stuff this is tied for their second worst performance but their worst performance was in week three against Portland and that's two hundredths of an XG differential margin off so let's just call it let's just call it even so while the score margin it was worse than that game against Portland the quality of the performance against Gotham equaled it's Nadir and there's maybe more to talk about because Gotham's an actually good team and not a lucky team the way that Portland has been and it happened on the road which is something that we will discuss and what that means so yeah I mean there are no ifsans are about to they played quite poorly and despite Correba Foon having that magical that is the right now I'm sure I'm forgetting something but that's the best pass I've seen in I don't know how long it's incredible it's and and it's really like when you put you know we're gonna talk a lot about what doesn't work with Kansas City or moves that haven't panned out or just availability issues the one constant this season that really has worked for Kansas City is Correba Foon and too is she it's performance and its availability yeah of course but like Correba Foon has been the best midfielder in the league this year yeah and I mean and arguably that close if you're looking at if you're looking at net G plus and you're setting your minutes threshold to you know about 90950 minutes which given a number of games we've played totally reasonable is reasonable like she she's right there with Barbara Benda to be the MVP you know she whether she agitated the trader the trade was something that had to happen because Washington could not afford to resign her or whatever it was Correba Foon Kansas City edition is the best edition of Correba Foon we've seen so far and that's a that's a really good player right now you know for talking October camp and if Correba Foon's not there especially like without Olivia Mulchery available like if Correba Foon's not there like a grave injustice I would be very surprised if she doesn't get a call up yeah but it would be like a legit like between Ashley Sanchez and Correba Foon if Correba Foon's not there that's a legit injustice that said you know they score in the first minute against Gotham on our on a great chance a pass so good that it even sets Anne Cretron burger off she she can't quite sort of properly read the distance she's gonna need to cover and gets caught in no man's land all of it from a 40 yard diagonal rocket weed killing pass and then you know other than a sort of point blank I believe Haley Hopkins chance Kansas City didn't really create anything and certainly when they went down they created nothing in this game and defensively they were pretty frail Gabby Robinson played the ball basically dropped the ball on a dime for Mitch Purse on that opening goal and no one marked Sam Kerr for a free shot from the edge of the six for the second goal but then Gotham started pouring it on even further in Kansas City didn't really have a lot to answer with yeah no yeah I you know it's not often that you look at a two one result and say like definitively this is the worst a team has played all season but like that's a little bit of compliment to Kansas City and also this could have been much worse for Kansas City like there's a version of this game I don't know I don't know by how much worse I don't know if we're talking like four or five one I mean three one yes for sure like it probably should have been three one but even merissa Jordan was like palming balls off her own post and saving them it was you know there were chances for Gotham so Gotham let's just wrap Gotham on this game before we go deeper into the Kansas City of it all Gotham are absolutely shield favorites at this point again with the points in the bank plus the performances that they're putting up it just all adds up to a very real separation and the projections now between them and second place Washington where Gotham's projected for like 61 points I mean they are already on 43 which means if they lost every single game for the rest of the year they still probably would go to the playoffs all this is certainly so they are in great shape both on results and peripherals yeah and and this performance we've been waiting for Gotham's offense to really come alive and the addition of Sam Kerr looks like it's really working so far really working for sure I mean she gives them an entirely different look as a number nine then what a status was offering and you've got players like Jaden Shaw and Jordan Dudley to do your running for you so you don't really need Kerr dropping deep to collect and get involved like let her be off the shoulder let her be a fox in the box that's what she's been for the last couple years anyway it's you know everybody seems to understand that this is the way to optimize her and yeah I mean all signs all signs point yes here mm-hmm yeah let's get back to kids to eat and talk what do you see is the number one culprit for Kansas City's decline this year well the first thing that probably should be mentioned is that there is there is just some level of regression to the mean that is happening set aside the players who are not here either because of the front office or because of injury or international duty set aside whatever feelings you may have about the tactics that Chris Armist is or is not applying to this group shield winners just regress the following year this is not this is not unique to the NWSL it's not unique to any sport like in order to have the kind of season that Kansas City had in the regular season last year you have to basically hit on like a 90th percentile outcome like as good as we thought they were going to be at the beginning of the year we didn't think they were going to be that good and that is also the story for just any team that performs at such an extremely high level I looked at a bunch of things with the shield winners over the course of the history of this league and how they perform the next year and things that change about the team from one season to the next there has been a 40 percent drop off in results from last year to this year for Kansas City that feels high I mean it certainly feels high to most outsiders who think that maybe last year was the new normal or at least close to it but the thing is Orlando last year relative to their shield and title winning campaign dropped their results by a third San Diego 2024 when they won the shield they dropped their results by more than 40 percent yeah and I think like you know not all shield winners were created equally you know the 2023 San Diego team sneaks it on the last day in a really level field like is not necessarily a shield winning team every year but Kansas City and Orlando over the last two years are absolutely shield winning teams running away with it both what whatever you may want to say about the uniqueness of San Diego's shield win they fit a pattern yeah they call it the pre-worked established and you know Seattle the following year they won the shield in 2022 they make it to the NWSL championship but they make it as a lower seed had to play the play in round and their results dropped by 20 percent less than some of these teams we've already mentioned but now I want to fold in the other part of what I have observed which is a roster continuity and this actually like correlates fairly well and it'll be a pretty small sample when we go all the way back to the Western New York flash in their shield defense in 2014 like the more players change in your starting 11 from your shield campaign to the next year the larger that drop off in points per game becomes and we have not seen such a severe drop off from one year to the next until very recently but also the last three years have been the biggest swings in that continuity and I don't think that's an accident like we live in a different world in the in the CBA era in terms of freedom of player movement in terms of also like behind the scenes continuity like head coaches GM's owners didn't really change much before 2021 and those were the years where like if you won the shield you were keeping most of your starting 11 for the next year and you either didn't drop off very much in your results or you actually improved on your results so meanwhile we've had Portland in 2022 change their head coach change their GM Seattle in 2023 change their GM and go into their ownership flux that lasted for quite some time San Diego 2024 lost their GM also went through began the ownership transition process and fired their head coach midseason Kansas City changed their GM changed their head coach the only one who didn't do any of that was Orlando but Orlando also functionally lost half their starting 11 from their shield campaign to 2025 you know and and also lost and I think this is most crucial because this transition so it's nicely to another topic here lost Barbara band of the second half of last season and that's actually what I'm including here like in terms of like functional roster continuity like Barbara band is part of that and missing her for the stretch run and and then you look at like where they finish you know what I call their playoff finish which is if you don't make the playoffs it's just your table position and then if you do make the playoffs it's like you're whatever rounds you you go out in whoever is the highest in their regular season you know you know affects that this is all to say that like again you know San Diego lost seven table positions in their shield defense Orlando ultimately ended up losing three because they went out in the semifinal we don't know what is going to happen to Kansas City but like the in the modern CBA era of the league it's just really really hard to keep your players and to stay really really good in the way that you were when you were a shield team so that needs to be said first and foremost that like regression was inevitable and you can see historically that regression was inevitable then when you fold in that Kansas City has lost so many players some through the front offices design but a lot not through the front offices design and then with the behind-the-scenes transitions of a lot of people in leadership positions it doesn't surprise me that this is this has occurred um let's talk about Tim Wichowenga. Yeah again the 40% drop off is what second worst by this metric you know in terms of like drop off from shield but also their points per game last season was the highest of all time and just the nature of a 310 point distribution for wins draws and losses you could have reasonably expected like a more severe drop off from a team that had more points because the cost of going from a win to a draw is far more painful than when you have a cluster of draws and wins adding some losses in there. Yeah and similarly like you lose a player of Tim Wichowenga's caliber for the amount of time she's been gone what a shock to think that maybe your attack is worse without her and could be considerably worse without her totally but I wanted to try and put her in the context of everybody else in the league losing their best attacker everybody's worse when they lose their best attacker for sure it's just a question of like by how much and how much their small sample noise affecting that like for example like Gotham's actually been better without a stator who still sits at your top I love it doesn't acknowledge that they added Sam Kerr in the same way yeah that's right no that's what I mean like there are there are flukes surrounding that that is clearly affecting that figure you know and it's five games you know that's that's on the higher side relative to the league of how many games you've been without your top XG generator but it's still only five games and it's five games that are all happening in a row in a very specific period of time as you say related to other roster changes so let's maybe put a pin in that same thing with like Denver being better without Melissa Kusler is that because Melissa Kusler was dragging them down or is it because right now they're just going through a period of like decent attacking performances now that she's been benched you know that's tough to detangle what is really important to not acknowledge is that Temu Chowinga has been missing for half the season in terms of games where she's either started or at least played for a full 45 minutes half the season that is by far the largest percentage of games missed for a team to not have their best attacker in the lineup that's obviously going to have some kind of repercussion you know and it's something that Kansas City's never had to deal with since she joined the team she's never missed more than three four games I think in either of her previous seasons with the current so for her to miss 10 games out of a possible 20 is remarkable and then there's also the other stuff which is out of Kansas City's control which is like injury to Lorena injuries to Dubinia injuries to Michelle Cooper like there's only been one game all year where you've had Chowinga Cooper bethune Dubinia and Lorena in the starting 11 at the same time only one that's kind of amazing yeah it's it's tough in isolation the points per game without Temu Chowinga is a brutal brutal drop off it's a point to game basically that's that takes you from a very serious team you know they're baseline being what 1.9 points per game with their you know with Chowinga in the lineup without showing in the lineup of a 1.1 predicted points per game player that's I mean that is legitimately the difference between a team that competes for the shield and a team that is worried about making the playoffs and maybe isn't making the playoffs it's it's huge but yeah you're right there have been compound problems here which is like when Chowinga has not been available you know Michelle Cooper's also often not been available or Dubinia's also not been available and and so there is a certain amount of if we can assess maybe you know when we're talking about sort of like what an expected drop off would have been for this Kansas City team we're probably talking historically like 20 25 percent maybe so like this 40 percent drop off is given the other things that have happened maybe not that surprising in you know like and so it's a lot of things at once yeah that are contributing to this but like if we're ranking them I think element one is Timow Chowinga I think element two of their drop off is what we could reasonably expect a drop off to be you know like if they have Chowinga this whole season the drop off is certainly not as bad as this most likely not yeah and I think also just to continue with this expected drop off or with me which is some like fluke or some luck that is not going their way I also kind of peeled away the underlying performances in this wither without you kind of set up and yeah they are by our again our adjusted XG which accounts for home away accounts for quality of opponent game state the whole bit they are much better in attack with Chowinga they are also much better in defense with Chowinga what I think is also key to acknowledge is that even when they are without Chowinga they are better than the field in terms of attack and probably roughly league average in terms of defense and if you split it even further which again it's small sample so it's not necessarily much signal you can take out of this but I want to bring it up to say like there may be more explanation here than just like they're a bad team now if you split the Chowinga list periods between those first four weeks at the beginning of the season and the most recent five games since she's been at Wafcon they are much better generally speaking these last five games on peripherals than they were in those first four games at the beginning of the year and you can even see it in the player like Croix Bethune's performance where like Croix Bethune has been better on her XG and XA data when Chowinga has been in the lineup but then you split out that March period in that July August period that March period with the crazy weather for Chicago the three game week that was all on the road the game in Spokane the whole bit Bethune was kind of unplayable but also Ali Center was in the lineup they think they were still all kind of getting used to each other they were in their three tens era which was a big problem yeah and then in July and then in the last five games while she's still not been as good as she has been with Chowinga she's still been very good you know the assist against Gotham being a great example of that so there's you know they're they're they're complicated I think there are mixed and complicated stories here to tell just about like to what extent is it the players and the coaches fault that this is all going the way that it's going and I don't know if I'm like super convinced that it is always as much the fault of the players and the coaches another thing that you raised when we were having an argument about this in another episode was like their press is worse without Chowinga and so by the way I wanted to look at like the data that we're in yeah dig up about pressing which is basically like what position value are you giving up or are you preventing in your attacking half and to be fair about it I stripped out you know kind of the outlier poor teams up to this point this season which is Chicago, Houston, Louisville, BFC and Seattle you know Seattle's record is much better than their underlying performances so I decided to look at like how the league does against those against everybody else both in terms of like their on-ball defensive action value in the attacking half and also just like what general offensive value are they preventing off the ball and they've had nine games against good sides with Chowinga and their on-ball and off-wall pressing has been excellent in the five games they've played against good sides without Chowinga their off-ball pressing is still actually quite good like their pressing structure in the attacking half is still preventing like generally speaking high quality offense when you compare them to the rest of the league their on-ball pressing is worse it's significantly worse but it is also essentially like meeting or slightly beating the league average in terms of like attacking half on-ball defensive value so it is this other like kind of confounding thing of like yeah they are worse without Chowinga but are they worse than everybody else you know I you know it's I think so much of like how we've looked at Kansas City season is a matter of degree rather than sort of like absolute value because I think you and I are both an agreement that they are a playoff team that they they've not only racked up the points to be a playoff team but they've also performed on the hood like a playoff team throughout the entire year it's just like should we be thinking about them as a shield contender or a top four contender or just a general in the mix playoff group and I think that's where sort of our paths have diverged where like it feels to me that no they're not a shield contender and never have been but they do feel like they should be contending for the top four whereas you have been feeling more like they're probably in like that six place seventh place right well yeah I think that's some of it and it shouldn't actually come as a surprise I think the big revelation in all of this conversation is that Kansas City probably has enough firepower on some level and enough balanced offense on some level to still be like a relatively productive attacking team without Timowchowinga what they can't handle and some of which is represented in their on ball pressing but some of which just sort of makes intuitive senses when a team has a weapon that is that threatening other teams have to play differently and in that way have to be less attacking without Timowchowinga other teams feel less concerned about what Kansas City might do on offense and are able to like free up their right back to contribute into the attacking play free up an extra number because Timowchowinga is not there it's it's the other part also it's just like generally when Chowinga hasn't been there one of Cooper or Debenia and sometimes both haven't I've also not been there and so like yeah yeah it's not just that they like gets to maybe play more the way that they want because they don't think about Chowinga but they also don't have to think about Cooper or they don't have to think about Debenia and suddenly like a four deep fire breathing attack becomes a two deep fire breathing attack and that's just more manageable you know absolutely and it in the games without Timowchowinga initially in the season I think it would be fair to say that Chris Armas if you want to give him a grace period on this was deploying tactics that were actively hurting the team whether it was the three ten or just like the whether you want to just call it like new coach just doesn't have exactly a grasp on his team yet now I think it's probably fair to say that when Kansas City's performance are diminished without Timowchowinga it's it's really just about not having Timowchowinga or Michelle Cooper Chris Armas has settled into like something that looks like what the best version of Kansas City is and understands that and deploys that is that team a little more limited because they are without Chowinga and also some players are older some roster turnover whatever like is Chris Armas doing a bang average job post his sort of entry five six games I think I think the answer is yes I don't think he's like adding to this team but I also don't think he's hurting this team in the way he probably was to start the season without Timowchowinga the hurt is other teams can attack you more other teams are less worried about what you're going to do on the counter and that unweights what a game looks like and you saw that against Gotham like how does Gotham handle playing that game with Timowchowinga particularly if they go down that goal in the first minute it's a real question because they open themselves up to the most dangerous counter attacking player probably in the world in Timowchowinga and aren't able to press for a leveler and then to press to go forward and I still also want to really underline that the injury absences in the attack haven't been the only places where there have maybe been some knock on effects due to players getting hurt like they have just in the absence of Hayley Mace never just have never solved their right back problem and we looked I looked at the amount of like offense quality measured by G that they were given up down their right flank in the period the where they had Shwinga in the period where they didn't have Shwinga and for those three months when Shwinga was around like they were starting Laney Rouse young player not much end to be a excel experience before this year and they're doing fairly good job of making sure that teams left backs and left wingers couldn't create a lot of offense in the five games since Rouse has gotten into some games but Katie Scott has also been playing it right back a fair bit and against Gotham Elizabeth Ball played right back for the first 80 minutes not a player who has played much fullback in recent times that is going to have a negative impact and we see that like now just in the last like five weeks they are one of the worst teams in giving up offense in their own defensive third on the right flank and then the other part is the goalkeeper Lorraine was back now she's not back again and Marissa Jordan has basically been the number one for the last like two and a half months and you can tell you know you can really tell that like they are giving up chances that they probably and I don't mean really chances I mean they're giving up they're giving up goals where they probably shouldn't be giving up goals because Lorraine isn't the shot stopper right now and that is really going to affect you when that happens what can you do about that you can't really do much if you're if your number one is certain like that yeah if we're going to sort of like explain Kansas City and where they are and and I you know Evan and I as is off in the case on this probably aren't actually that far apart on our reads even down to Evan thinks there may be a top four team and I think they're maybe the sixth best team in the league yes it's not very far apart matters of degree not of kind yet but the first set of underlying numbers where you just are taking a look at like what they what they create and what they allow suggest that Kansas City is probably a slightly better team in their table position has them to definitely a better team than their table position has them at when you start sort of like peeling away at well let's look at how these points came to be let's look at what the factors were as we break down the schedule there there comes a more reasonable explanation for Kansas City's table position based on all of these factors that don't necessarily align with just what they've created what they've conceded because it hasn't come in this even distribution of every game they're sort of bossing an opponent by half a goal or more because there have been plenty of games where they have demolished usually with chewinga an opponent like Louisville they've been quite good in the chewinga part of the season at beating up on bad teams or teams they should be and then you have this early stretch without chewinga where they were quite bad or and by quite bad I mean dropping from clear shield winners to cuspi playoff team and then they've sort of with chewinga returned to if not in that upper echelon near that upper echelon of teams in the lead and then they lose her again for wafcon and they are sort of that halfway between those two things like a six feet place team and and so I think that if we're looking at primary factors causing the slide that Kansas City has gone under it it is chewinga one it is probably natural regression two when I say chewinga one is that also means Cooper's performance that also means Bethune's performance that also means Dubini's performance because chewinga makes all of those players better well Cooper there's an asterisk on Cooper just because the sample size is so small so small so small with Binyan Bethun sure and then you have like probably third factor injuries and enough injuries that have really like forced a look at their depth and then you end up with a lot of the criticisms that we had out of Kansas City last year which is like they're a little old if they do get exposed for depth they there is there is some substantial drop off and then I think probably right below that you could say some of the departures that were never replaced so like Fia losing Bia was big yeah but losing Hayley Mace is probably number one I think it is yeah I mean the Bia thing let me be as such a special and unique player but when you have an opportunity to use Dubini as your nine which is a position that she's played before that should have been mitigated to some extent but then Dubini got hurt and so she wasn't available for a lot of it whereas the Mace thing really does stick out like a sore thumb because yes Elie Bravo Young has had some injuries but she's also been benched and Laney Rouse is flash quality but now but then Katie Scott owns with ball taking minutes like there was never a plan and then the Claire Hutton lack of replacements you know Vanessa D Bernardo is back and I wonder if they were just like biting their time until she was back and we won't really know because it's only been like a game or two where she's had substantial minutes whether or not that will be an effective defensive partnership with Lola Bonta I regret to say that I didn't split this out between whether without you chewing a stuff or like try and filter out good teams or as bad teams but I will say that overall across the entire season the amount of offensive value that they have allowed in their central defensive midfielder zones as measured by G plus is essentially league average their time Utah in that spot so yeah which is a precipitous fall from last year sure but not offensive right yeah whereas whereas the main thing is is worth raising your eyebrows no I think you got the order right in terms of priority there is maybe just one other thing to kind of discuss and we'll be very interested to hear your opinion on to what extent this is it in the team's hands or not is the home road stuff because it's been brought up it's been brought up just how bad they've been on the road in terms of results but I pulled some data to illustrate just how out of sync this team is in terms of said home road splits and before we get into that I should also say that I ran multiple correlation tests on home record away record home expected points away expected points the split the percentage difference between your home and and road record and and expected record and there is essentially no correlation in where you finish after the playoffs between how many points you got on the road in the regular season and your final playoff position none in terms whereas there actually is like a pretty substantial and sticky correlation between your home record and where you finish in the playoffs elsewhere there is a lot of stickiness between your home expected record your away expected record but there's actually no difference in correlation like it's not better for you to be good on the road good you know good at home but like very few teams who are good at home are also bad on the road and vice versa that's actually a very rare thing and I'm now I'm going to tell you just how extremely rare a thing it is when it comes to the 2026 Kansas City current their home record of but basically 2.6 points per game is the third best in league history since 2016 third best out of 116 team seasons yeah fortress yeah literal fortress their away record of 0.6 points per game is a hundred and first out of 116 team seasons since 2016 that accounts for the largest home road points split ever ever and the two teams who are like close to them are we're like Washington 2018 Kansas City 2021 like bad teams you know like there has never been a team who is probably going to put the playoffs with this extremist split in their home record and their away record and if you look at the expected points split there are 11th all time on home expected points and that's ties them for 11th with or land a pride in 2024 so things worked out pretty well for the Orlando pride that year they're a way expected points record however it's worse but it's tied for 35th all time with the 2024 Washington spirit and things up until that last game also worked out pretty well for that for that club so the difference in what they're doing on the road in terms of their results and what they're doing on the road in terms of their performances he's also the second biggest gap by that particular metric tied for 115th place there's basically never been a team who's probably going to the playoffs who's had worse luck by this measurement on the road than the Kansas City current have again this is sort of unprecedented no I take the sort of back it's unprecedented yeah and what do you do with that other than maybe throw up your hands and say pretty fluky essentially guys like yeah there's been a lot of starting 11 turnover but a lot of the core of the team has remained from last year and crow the food knows the thing or two about playing for winners and playing on the road I personally cannot really account for anything that the team is probably doing wrong when they are on the road versus what they are doing at home other than like some weird rolls the dice I'll offer this because I think that this is actually and I think this gets you a long way or at least chips a nice piece of stone off in explaining things the opening of Kansas cities season where they were bad they win their opener home against Utah where they're not particularly impressive turns out Utah is pretty good that game is telling in both directions on some level then they go and lose it Chicago then they go and lose and spoke and then they go and lose in Portland yeah all in the span of what six days seven days yeah in the span of March yeah from Sunday to Saturday in six days in a week they lose three road fixtures by a combined score of seven to one then they beat Gotham at home but then they get drilled by the by Washington on the road yeah which is I think it's fair to say game playing more than 45 minutes I think it's yeah all of that without chewing yeah I think it's fair to say that if you want to knock the armus of it all or at least attribute some of it it's that he genuinely had bad ideas that set this team up not to perform well and then those games almost exclusively happened on the road and they happened on the road with some performances that were maybe that overstate things and in the case of the Portland Kansas City game probably don't overstate thing yeah I mean I don't know if I I totally align or just I don't think this is all of it I'm just saying yeah yeah yeah you're looking for a big chunk yeah no I mean that that that week that week is the worst week they've had probably since 10 what chewing go arrived but also just those first four road games yeah like on their own yeah and they lose all of them yeah and they aren't the better and they aren't the better team and basically any of them yeah I mean they were against Chicago and then the weather did what it did but yes I mean and you know the Spokane game is also weird because it was the midweek one and they had to fly to Spokane it was fucking awful I'm sure they were not in the peak physical form but Portland's whatever you want to say about like how tired they were from that road trip Portland played them off the park and a month later when they were at out at Raudi Audi they got played off the park again no denying it and if you want to give Chris or miss some credit here I think that the center trade but also just the redistribution of talent everyone getting healthy and him figuring out that I can't play all of these tens at once that really does explain a lot of quote unquote their improvement or at least them positively regressing they had a bad plan for a substantial enough portion of this season that coincided with a lot of road fixtures and then they adjusted for that yeah and now they're playing kind of like the team you'd expect them to be yeah and again you know talking about getting healthy like I mentioned that there's only been one game all year where Chihuenga Cooper Bethune to being in Lorraine started together Chihuenga's played in 10 games played at least 45 minutes in nine of them if you just drop if you just dropped to being out of that and so games there are Chihuenga Cooper Bethune and Lorraine have all been together the seven of those 10 games and that's that's a base on which you can build you know so yeah I mean by the time you start getting to like their road losses the loss against angel city the loss away the loss away at the Orlando pride you're starting to talk about games in which like the XG doesn't reflect necessarily the result and that like Kansas City is doing better things some of it's a little game steady some of it's a little fluky but I think you can say some of the bad luck can be attributed to turnover personnel and coaching decisions that if you're generous you can call growing pains and if you're not generous you can say they just they didn't hire someone who like has the possibility of making a meaningful difference they hired like a neutral to net negative coach but now they've corrected like Chris Armist has corrected for this and like we always want to be fair to people on this program there are still problems that I see with them tactically but it is not like watching them in the first month of the season or the first six weeks of the season like Chris Armist also is a professional coach who is like doing his job he got run out of the building over the weekend to get scoff them but that that's okay like that does happen from time to time especially when you're missing your best player like coaches get those things wrong all the time yeah flakko last year had performances with Kansas City that weren't always great and they still just got result it just happens yeah so I think at this point like Chris Armist is for me like a neutral to like uninspired coach but he's not doing anything wrong and also that you just described like 85% of all head coaches yeah no total by the way Chris Armist gets to leave what he was in those first six weeks which look like a real disaster of a coach and the results reflect that and it's hard to it's hard to chop a four game like in a 20 game season it is hard to chop four games at the beginning of the season and just lance them from your record it's 20 it's 20% of your season and but now the home road split stuff is just weird but it's not if you if you if you say that like there are real causes in the first half of the road game as we played the second half of road games that we've played just look like normal like a normal good soccer team just going through the ups and downs of the season in a league with a lot of parodies I think the Gotham game is actually illustrative of like trying to find that because trying to hit Gotham in the mouth so quickly is a tactic that is available to you would you have a player as complete as quibbathoon is the problem was that they just couldn't defensively manage the rest of the encounter truth and that again I think comes down some extent to personnel and I don't know how much financial wiggle room that they have like every team in the league right now quite frankly except for some who claim they don't but probably do I think they might be close to maxed out and so like who do they'll get it's it's it's it's tricky and like and what and the funny thing about all of this is that they get showing a back and as we've been joking like the all-time irony would be if they finished in eighth and they won the title which by the way that's gonna absolutely happen yeah the thing that makes Kansas City so dangerous here is I think over the regular season I think they're probably the fifth or sixth best team in the league and and to be before you continue I just I'm going to share just two things to illustrate why that's probably a pretty reasonable position to take their underlying metrics are much well depends on which one you look at I mean if you look at our adjusted xg differential table they are in fifth place but they're in a very very tight grouping with two through five same thing with expected points they are in fourth but in a very very tight grouping with Utah and Washington just underneath them so you take those two factors and you look at the season that they are about to have for the rest of the year projections put them basically tied for fourth place with Utah and like maybe just a hair behind Utah if you're going to a certain decimal place so if you want to say that they're projected for fifth that's fine but all of this is adding up to a picture of the data saying cuspi home playoff team in the first round but probably no worse than sixth and if you want to say sixth you you can't be really faulted for saying that yeah that that and this basically comes down to it is not unreasonable for a team to have numbers that are roughly aligned but not exactly aligned with their placement in the standings a team that is somewhere between the fourth or fifth best team in underlying numbers finishing sixth is like super normal especially in this league especially in this lead but like frankly it wouldn't be that weird if it was eight like Gotham was roughly the third best team in the league last year in the finish date right and what makes Kansas City so dangerous and what makes the NWSELS format of going to playoffs such a problem for a lot of teams is like Kansas City finishing eighth isn't crazy it would require them to be yet more unlucky probably on some level and also just under perform a little but they'd be the most devastating eighth seed you can basically draw up and the other most devastating eighth seed you can draw up one the league last year we've had we've had low seeds the Chicago stars 2024 we've had low seeds that are like should not be in the playoffs like this team is actively bad not all eighth seeds were created equally if Kansas City falls and ends up in a bottom seed they're going to be one of the most dangerous low seeded teams to ever enter the playoffs and like that shouldn't be lost now if they don't have temo chowinga they are significantly neutered but if they go into the playoffs with temo chowinga and a lot temo chowinga and at least some of bathoon dubinia Lorena available they're going to be a force to be reckoned with and they're going to be a very unfortunate draw for opposition in the way that a team like I don't know Seattle or maybe even North Carolina or Portland aren't going to be yeah what could also happen because it's three playoff games is they might not have chowinga they still could win the whole thing and also true there will be there will be an ex post facto argument about like you know the mentality they found to like come together and win and to like go back to the racing will will fuck it fuck thing is like that's a story because they won three in a row they could have been saying all of that all season and no one would have known about it because they weren't good or they weren't winning you know winning winning breeds mentality monsters mentality monsters don't always breed winning at least in the sense of like the way that we often think about is like oh it just took this one attitude change in the locker room and suddenly we started winning like that doesn't really pan out so it will be very funny that like if they lose swing or if they don't and they do finish in seventh or eighth and they go and they go all the way just how many stories will be about the fact that like it just took like this change in like mentality and and intangible mental toughness to to bring them over the line whereas like we've got the receipts guys you always had the ability to do it you know so that's just something to bear in mind anyway the best thing that Kansas City can do because temo chewing it has either been injured or played an extraordinary number of minutes including with waft con under an extraordinary amount of travel is unlike last season where I think you can criticize blocko for this is do not run her into the ground yeah like manage her minutes like manage all of your attackers minutes down the stretch because meaningfully it does not matter whether you finish like six or third beyond an opening playoff game yeah agree and and like and your full roster on the road and I know the home road split thing is scary right now well like your best roster on the road it's better than basically any opponent you're going to be drawn against at home yeah wrong and yeah what are you the home road split it's just weird right it's it's it's just fucking weird man and like we can explain we can explain maybe a third of it yeah and even I don't really like have a whole lot of like confidence in explaining a third of it because it's also like happened when chewing has been there it's happened when she hasn't been there it's no no it's it's the third of it I feel we can explain is actually just a game block I can't explain what's right it's just weird now yeah the same you get smaller there's just there is just it's just never happened before for a team to be this good at home and this poor on the road it's just like it's totally unprecedented so anyway we will keep an eye out for how things evolved with Kansas City for the rest of the year thank you so much for listening be sure to rate us five stars drops a kind review in your pod catcher of choice until only of your friends about us follow us on social media at ex-owned goals that's the letter ex-owned goals on all platforms youtube instagram and tiktok are the places where you can find anatomy of and talking radar is in a lot of exclusive video content that does not live in the normal podcast realm so like and subscribe to us there as well if you think we've made an own goal please email us at exo g at ex-owned goals.com that's the letter exo g at the letter ex-owned goals.com we already gave you our patreon episode this week we will be back next week with some low lift because I am going off the grid for the next few days so enjoy the weekend everyone I will catch up with that shit later