Angel City RLFC -1

Photo by Elizabeth Shaw

Racing will try to recover from a disappointing loss at home against Seattle this Saturday on the road against Angel City. This matchup has been a fairly even one in its history (2W/2D/2L). This could be a matchup to get the press back on track. Angel City is not overly skilled as possessing the ball (49% over the season so far) but they aren’t a possession conceding team like the 4 teams at the bottom (Seattle/KC/Louisville/Chicago). At home I think the plan for Angel City will probably be to control the possession.

The only match when Racing had more possession than their opponents this season was the most recent one against Seattle in which they demonstrated virtually zero ability to construct a goal against a team determined to sit back and defend. I don’t get why virtually every team talks about playing to its strengths and never about attacking the weakness of their opponent. Maybe they don’t talk about but actually plan for it and maybe that is the point. Either way, Racing’s ability to win with Plan B has been virtually nonexistent in their history. Racing’s best recipe for winning a match at the moment appears to be scoring first (but not too early) or have some weird weather thing disrupt the action (Houston/Chicago). The Gotham win formula seems to me to be the way to go. The bad part about that is that you can’t expect Taylor Flint to score a worldie every time.

Angel City may be the definition of mid, so you always have a chance against them. They score enough but give up more. You do kind of know where the goals are going to come from (Tiernan/a Thompson) but that doesn’t make it easy to stop. I do fear that one of these days, teams are going to smarten up when they get a lead on Racing and basically dare them to score against an organized back line. I don’t think Angel City will necessarily play that way with a lead, so Racing will probably be in this match to the end unless they go down by multiple goals.