The Lights Remind Las Vegas How Expansion Teams Usually Work

This season, Las Vegas picked up three new professional sports teams. One of them has completely broken the curve for how an expansion team should be judged, playing way above the expectations, and overall been an enthralling team to watch.

That team is not Las Vegas Lights FC.

If any of us soccer fans were holding out hope that the Lights could replicate the Golden Knights, this week (really these last two months) have been like a cold bucket of reality being dumped over our heads.

Last night the Lights went to Golden State Force FC - an amateur team playing in effectively the fourth division of U.S. Soccer - and lost 2-1. That is bad.

To emphasize how bad - only three amateur teams have made it through this round of the Open Cup, Golden State and two others. The other two only made it because they were drawn against other amateur teams. In every other USL-amateur match-up this week, the USL team managed to get the job done. The Lights were the sole exception.

Now look, upsets happen in cup competitions. Every once in a while even a Manchester United loses to a championship team. However, it's hard to look at the Lights' recent form and think that last night's poor performance was just a blip in an otherwise upward trend. Let's look at some concerning numbers:

- Over the past five league games, the Lights are rock bottom of the Western Conference with only 2 points.
- Over the past six league games, the Lights have the same amount of red cards as they have goals (3).
- Over the past past eight games in all competitions, we have only won once, against a lower division side.
- We are dead last in the league in terms of attempted passes (2,482). And not by a small margin, the next lowest has almost 500 more attempted passes than we do.
- We are dead last in the league in terms of passing accuracy (63%). And again, not by a small margin, the next lowest is at 70%.
- This almost means we are dead last in the league in terms of completed passes (1,559).
- We are first in the league for yellow cards (33). The next closest team has 26. (We're also third in terms of total fouls and tied for second for red cards).

Now that all of that is out of the way, let me point out some green shoots that may give us some hope for the rest of the season.

First, the team probably isn't as bad as this most recent run makes them look. There are some green shoots to be seen - for example, we are above-average in terms of how many shots we've gotten off (12th, with 129) and about average in terms of goals conceded (tied for 19th with 12).

Second, our weekend league game is against LA Galaxy II. And while Los Dos has some exciting prospects (Efrain Alvarez clips have been making the rounds on twitter over the past few weeks), they are actually below us in the table having played more games. So we have a real chance to stop the rot and get some points on the board.

Third, the club seem to realize that the team needs work, as they just brought in a new defender, midfielder, and forward. You don't bring in players for all three of those positions if you are just tweaking a few things here and there. That kind of action means that the hierarchy knows that the Lights need work in multiple areas.

And finally, let's all just take a moment for a bit of perspective.

Sometimes expansion teams just click, and manage to put together a really special season. The Golden Knights of course are the example that spring to mind, but there's also the Chicago Fire, who won the MLS Cup and Open Cup double in their first season. Or even Atlanta United, who made the playoffs in their first season and really captivated the city of Atlanta (and many neutrals) by playing a really exciting brand of soccer.

But the reason those stories are so memorable is because in most cases, expansion teams struggle. For every Golden Knights, you have expansion teams like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who went 0-14 for the season), Minnesota United (who conceded 18 goals in their first four games) and Orlando City (who despite spending all of the money on Kaka, still haven't made the playoffs).

You don't even have to go that far afield - the other new Vegas professional team, the WNBA's Las Vegas Aces, have began their life by losing their first three games (one of the them by almost a 40-point margin).

The point is, to be honest, the Lights have been outright bad over the past two months. But that is how soccer works, you go through bad runs and good runs, and most of the time expansion teams get handed more bad than good. But they don't last forever. And hopefully these transfer moves are a sign that the team is seeing the same stats we are, and have an idea of how to turn the ship around.

Here's to three points this weekend.

-VSB