SO GLAD THE SEASON IS ON! The lack of things to write about was starting to wear me thin, y’all. Now I have boring statistics and observations to convey to you, the uncaring and easily distracted public! It’s the small things in life.

SO, about that game. My initial observations about the match were these: one, WTF was this:

There was almost no time during the game that the team was set out that way. Hats off to LouCity’s Twitter for the misdirection, I guess, but I’m not sure that’s a great way to engage our own fans. Morados lined up in their now-traditional 3-4-3 with McMahon playing left centerback and Kyle Smith playing central midfield with Paolo. I wasn’t sure going into the season whether O’Connor would keep the three at the back look that was so successful in 2018 just because of possible personnel issues, but I’m glad he did.

Kyle Smith played great in the middle. I’ve been critical of McMahon’s signing since he got here, but he looked like he’s been playing in the City defense since he was born. I was really happy with both performances, is what I’m trying to say. I admit to being surprised that Speedy Williams didn’t start or play, but honestly, the way Kyle played makes me giddy over the idea of a real competition for those two spots going forward. I still think Speedy is one of the best central mids in the entire USL, and I wonder if he might be carrying a knock or an illness or something. That said, Kyle left absolutely zero to be desired last weekend.

I was concerned at halftime about the fact that City hadn’t generated many scoring chances, but those concerns were quickly allayed after the second half began. The team passed the ball okay as a whole, but not great – 409 attempts, 68.5% completions, 57.6% in Nashville’s half. Part of that is down to wearing off some offseason rust, but some credit should go to Nashville for doing a good job disrupting passing lanes and trying to gum up the midfield a bit.

For their part, Nashville actually passed the ball better from a statistical standpoint, but check out completions near the final third:

Ok, that picture is a bit of a mess but look at Louisville City’s 18 yard box. It’s practically empty. NSC had five “key passes” all game, and all but one or two were from set pieces. Great, great job from Louisville City’s defense basically keeping Nashville out of the 18. Confirmation via heat map, incoming:

Moving back to Louisville City for a moment more, Oscar resumed his role as leading chance creator on the team with two, one of which included his assist on Niall McCabe’s goal to put Morados up 2-0. Flipping sides of the field had no effect on Oscar, and none was expected.

Final thoughts:

  • Paco put in a MOTM performance marking out Nashville’s attackers, including hanging in there with man-mountain Tucker Hume when the striker came on late in the second half
  • Niall McCabe put in his best game ever, probably, in purple and was justly rewarded for it.
  • Totsch did what he does, and did it well
  • Shaun Francis didn’t do much on the stat sheet, but he had a solid opening outing defensively. Kosuke Kimura might as well have been a ghost out there.

We won! On to the next one.