Early Preseason Thoughts and Storylines
Racing had another busy offseason, and as the offseason transitions into preseason here are some thoughts and storylines to watch for in the preseason and the early part of the 2024 season.
Defensive depth: Even after the departure of Julia Lester, Racing has a fairly experienced defensive roster. The club is still carrying 6 signed defenders on its roster (although they are now missing Monaghan who could be deployed there), so I think that is a number that works for them. One thing to look for early in the year (and maybe in the preseason as an indicator) is fullback rotation and substitution. Lauren Milliet played 2789 minutes last year which was the most for any fullback in the league. In spite of being unavailable for 4 league matches and 2 cup matches, Carson Pickett had the 8th most minutes for a fullback last year with 2496. Look for the addition of Arin Wright to greatly reduce thr number of matches where both fullbacks play the full 90 minutes. Ideally, each starting fullback should be playing a 90 minute match followed by a 60-70 minute match. Right back may be open to full competition, but Arin Wright can play both sides. Regardless of how the defense lines up to start, expect more in-match changes this season.
Scoring goals: Here is a quick, but ultimately meaningless tidbit. Racing and Gotham (the “Champions”) had the exact same number of goals scored and conceded in the league last season. This yielded a championship for Gotham and 9th place for Racing. I consider Gotham rather “weak” champions and their form directly preceding the playoffs was frankly awful. Nevertheless, they ended up a champions which demonstrates either parity or general mediocrity depending on your perspective. I wouldn't plan on the “champions” having a plus one goal differential very often and my personal champion (Shield winners the Wave) topped the league table with a plus 9 goal difference scoring 31 and allowing 22. Even 31 scoring goals isn't a great return (the 2022 season had six teams score more than 31). I have a hunch that the league might have some truly dreadful teams this season and that means more goals will likely be scored per match.
All of this is to say that for Racing to be considered a real threat to enter the upper echelon of the league, they need to score more goals. I did a quick analysis of last year’s goals+assists in league and cup matches and came up with an average of G+A/90 minutes for each position group. I used the data and position assignments from the American Soccer Analysis website to do the analysis and then split each position group into thirds based on each players relative distance from the position average. Of note, and probably to nobody's surprise, Sophia Smith was the best performing striker, Megan Rapinoe was the best performing winger, Debinha was the best performing attacking midfielder, and Savannah DeMelo was the best performing central midfielder. There could be some debate about how players were classified, but regardless of that classification the analysis pretty clearly identified the high overperformers and underperformers. Based on each players performance I split each position group into thirds and classified players into either “Top Third”, “Middle Third”, and “Bottom Third”. Unfortunately for Racing they only has DeMelo and Erceg in the “Top Third” category for players that had over 1000 minutes. If you expand that to all players, Rebecca Holloway, Parker Goins, and Thembi Kgatlana are in the top third. The real problem for Racing is that their strikers and wingers underperformed in G+A/90 minutes when compared to the rest of the league. While the 3 players that had at least 1000 minutes were in the middle third, only Kirsten (Davis) Wright was in the top 50th percentile for her position group. Monaghan and Shuang were slightly above average when compared to the mean, but the winger category had so many low performers that the average was dragged down relative to the 50th percentile. That's a lot of numbers to throw out, but essentially my takeaway was that Racing simply didn't have enough of its key players in the Top Third of the league when it came down to goal contributions. Their offseason additions aren't NWSL proven goalscorers, so any additional goals this year are going to have to come from unproven players, or improvement in goal contribution rates from NWSL veterans.
For me, Kirsten Wright will need to be the key player to step up her goal contributions. Ary Borges could benefit by a change in position too. There is a spotty record for seeing goal production from other leagues translate into goal production in the NWSL, so while I don't think you can count it out, you definitely can't rely on it. Reilyn Turner might chip in a few, but even Messiah Bright for Orlando last year was just average compared to the striker group as a whole and I don't think saddling Turner with a 7 goal expectation is fair.
Goals need to come from somewhere which leads me to…
Scoring with possession in open play: This is just an assertion with no real data or evidence to back it up, but I believe that you can tell how effective a team is as an attacking entity based on how they score in open play. There is a way of thinking in some circles that says you can “steal” goals from being more effective than your opponents at set pieces and corners. Racing was pretty good at those last season in my opinion (I am unaware of a way to check their number of set piece goals compared to other teams). However, Racing seemed deficient in breaking down other teams when they had extended possession (again just a feeling that I wish I had a way to verify). What I can demonstrate (although this is done through my own coding system) is that Racing had 10 goals in transition last year compared to 6 in 2022, but only 6 with sustained possession compared to 12 in 2022. Set pieces combined with corners were about the same, but 2022 definitely had more set pieces and 2023 had more corners. Racing won and scored 5 penalties in 2023 compared to 2 in 2022.
The clear room for improvement in my mind is the slice labeled “with sustained possession”.
Managing Great Expectations: Everyone is allowed great expectations, but nobody is promised results. I get the feeling from players, Racing staff, and fans that they expect better things this season. It’s hard to argue with those expectations based on what has happened so far this offseason. Everybody loves Bev. Racing signed some “name” free agents and it appears that nearly everyone is healthy at the start of the season with only Clegg managing an injury and she could be ready early in the season. It’s a great way to start of the preseason.
However…
The fact of the matter is that Racing enters the 2024 with an unproven coach. “Unproven” is not meant by me to be used in a pejorative sense, just that we simply don’t have much evidence of what kind of a head coach Bev will be. Knowing this, I would like to say that “patience” should be the watch word with her. She may come out of the gate and be fantastic, and she might not. Neither is cause for overreaction. She must be given time whether she knocks it out of the park, strikes out or something in between.
Preseason is all about Plan A. The regular season is all about Plan B. In some extremely rare cases, Plan A works all of the time, and you never have to worry about Plan B. If you are Barcelona, you often get to march through large sections of a league season undefeated and mercilessly beating your opponents with Plan A. There is no “Barcelona” in the NWSL and really not even a Chelsea or Lyon. You are going to have to switch tactics to win sometimes, and that is likely the best measure of a head coach. The early indications on Bev are good, but everyone needs to remember that is all that they are. She isn’t always going to get it right. If we give her the grace to make some mistakes, we will all be better off.
As to the players, we really don’t know what we are going to get from them either. A very good early indication is that Bev told me after the first practice that she had to remind the players to ramp it down sometimes versus ramping it up. All of the players seem anxious to get going. There will be competition in some spots that there hasn’t been before. All of this is good for the team. The defense and midfield look solid, and the attack looks promising, but they still need to learn Bev’s system AND to learn to play cohesively inside of it. This preseason is shorter than last season so it will be interesting to watch how ready the players are by March 16th.
