Midterm Review: Taking Stock of 2024 so Far

With a successful Summer Cup run—one that saw Angel City win all three group-stage games, scoring four goals and winning a penalty shootout—in the rearview, we can start looking ahead to the return of the regular season on August 24.

The first half of ACFC’s season has been lackluster results-wise, as the team sits in 11th place. But with the eighth-place team, Bay FC, on just 18 points, the playoffs are still well within reach, especially if the team is able to carry their Summer-Cup momentum forward into August.

Results aside, there have been plenty of bright spots on the field, and there’s good reason for optimism heading into the final 10 games of 2024. AngelCity.com spoke with First Assistant Coach Eleri Earnshaw about those bright spots—as well as the areas the team is working on improving.

The Highlights

The first positive Earnshaw highlights is the team’s possession numbers—or, viewed another way, their opponents’ possession numbers. According to league statistics provider Opta, Angel City is fourth in the league in average possession, having controlled the ball 53% of the time across the regular season to date. “That shows that we can control an opponent to some degree,” said Earnshaw.

“The other piece is that we’ve been able to limit opposition dribbles,” she continued. When it comes to the style ACFC plays—where they aim to possess the ball, play out of the back, and draw opponents out—those are both numbers that gauge the team’s ability to dictate the flow of the game.

Offensively, while Angel City has just 16 goals in the regular season, there are indications beyond even the four goals scored in the Summer Cup that the team is close to finding their scoring form. Namely, the team’s xG, or expected goals—a statistic that measures how likely a shot is to be converted based on factors like the location it was taken from—is quite a bit higher than their goals scored. The group’s xG per 90 minutes is 1.27, compared with their goals per game of .87. That means that Opta’s model would have “expected” Angel City to score 1.27 goals per game, based on the quality of chances generated.

“We’re getting the ball into some good areas,” Earnshaw explains, “but we’ve got to be more clinical.”

Another positive number in terms of chance creation is through balls. ACFC has the third most in the league, with 20, indicating that the midfield is succeeding in regularly breaking their opponents’ crucial final line of defense. 

“We're getting into some really good areas,” says Earnshaw. “Our build-up play is attractive, and we’ve been able to get in behind opponents. Now it’s a matter of the decision-making on the final pass, the quality of that pass, and then the finish.”

This season has also seen excellent individual performances from a number of players. One example has been rookie Madison Curry, who the club picked up in the fourth round of the NWSL Draft. Curry, the only draftee to make the final roster, had a trial by fire when a teammate’s late scratch meant she made an unexpected first start in Kansas City in March. That game ended with a disappointing 2–4 loss to the now-second-ranked Current, but Curry soon found her stride, and is shaping up to be not just a top rookie defender, but a top defender in the league, period. According to Opta, the 23-year-old Orange County native is ranked in the top six in the league in both tackles (50) and interceptions (29).

“She has incredible defensive instincts,” says Earnshaw. “When you look at her tackle map, she tackles all over the pitch, and that's something that we need everyone to be willing to do—to end things early.

“And she's had to rely on instincts,” the coach continues. “She's had very little time to settle in, but she's done exceptionally well, and she's got all the qualities to become one of the best defenders in the league. What we're seeing from Madison Curry right now is nowhere near the final product that she could be.”

Nor is Curry, as fans know well, the only promising young player on the team. Angel City’s roster has four teenagers (Alyssa and Gisele Thompson, Kennedy Fuller, and Casey Phair) as well as three in their 20s (Curry, Angelina Anderson, and Messiah Bright), who are in their first two seasons as professionals. That’s good news for the team’s future; Earnshaw also sees it as a positive that the team has been able to get many of those players quality professional minutes in the first half of the season.

“We've been able to play these players, unfortunately, because of other players’ injuries,” she says. “It's been a massive experience, an experience that is necessary going into the second half of the season when we’ll have to count on some of these players. If we hadn't had this experience early this season we'd be asking a lot of them going into this really important stretch.”

The roster’s youth has also been a double-edged sword, though—more on that below.

Room for Improvement

Earnshaw says that the biggest thing the team is working on is consistency.

“You can do nine things out of ten well, and that one thing you don't do well can lead to a goal,” says Earnshaw. “And that kind of negates what you've done well up until then.”

One less-than-positive stat is that Angel City leads the league in errors leading to a shot—something the players and the coaching staff all know they need to clean up.

“I think there's context to every stat,” explains Earnshaw, “and I think the context of that particular one is how young our team is. The game is very different [from the youth and college levels]. It's a completely different level. They are quality players, but it's inevitable that at some point they're going to make errors.”

The group is also working on consistency when it comes to the positives. They’re aiming to push their possession numbers even higher, as well as working on finishing the quality chances they’ve been creating more consistently.

That work, says Earnshaw, isn’t limited to the player taking the shot; it’s collective. “It's not just the person that's not finishing that chance,” she says. “It's up to us as a staff to make sure that when they're in those positions they're more likely to score the goal. That starts with training and how many opportunities we give players to finish throughout the week. Something we've been really intentional about is sprinkling in a lot more opportunities for people to score in training, to just get a feel for it, so it becomes habitual.

“We’ve got a responsibility to put players in those positions every day in training,” she concludes.

Defensively, Earnshaw says the team is working on more consistent counterpressing—where the team works as a group to try to win the ball back as soon as they lose possession.

“Our ask of every player going into the second half of the season is to end things earlier,” she says. “As soon as we lose the ball, we want to squeeze and suppress and eliminate the space in front of us, so that if the opponent is going to play anywhere, it has to be rushed, it has to be hurried, and it has to be over us, because we know that we'll win that race 99 percent of the time.”

She adds that a strong counterpress has been one of the team’s principles since the beginning of the season, but that “we're getting a lot more deliberate in how we bring that out in sessions and what we're asking our players to do. I think going into the second half of the season, that part should be a lot more distinct.”

Looking Ahead

If you’ve been under a rock, you may have missed the news that forward Christen Press—two-time World Cup winner, Olympic bronze medalist, and Angel City’s first-ever signing—was removed from the season-ending injury list last week, earning her first minutes after more than two years away from the game.

While she’s careful not to put too much responsibility on any individual player, Earnshaw says Press’s return can only give the team a boost. “Her quality is inevitable,” she says. “Last week in training, she scored a couple of goals that we haven't seen anyone else do yet this season in training.”

In addition to Press’s return, with the secondary transfer window now open through the end of August, look out for the club to finalize and announce new player signings. According to Earnshaw, that’s a process that Technical Director Mark Wilson, who joined the team in May, has been instrumental in.

“Mark has done an exceptional job so far,” she says. “He’s developed a really specific plan and he’s been building out buckets of really quality, world-class players and going out there and talking to agents.”

Wilson’s strategic vision is long-term and extends beyond this window, says Earnshaw, adding that when thinking about the first half of Angel City’s season, context is key.

“If you want to make any comparison at all, look at a team like Orlando,” she says. The Pride are currently undefeated and in first place in the regular season, but the team they field now is the culmination of a longer project. “They've taken three and a half years to get to this point—just grinding, and every transfer window they've added something.”

Building a team is always an ongoing project, but Angel City has a promising foundation in place as it looks toward the future.