Las Vegas Lights FC 1 - St. Louis FC 0: Three Things

Las Vegas continues to creep ever so slowly towards the playoff line with a 1-0 home win against St. Louis. A well-taken (if somewhat fortuitous in the build-up) goal from Raul Mendiola was enough to see off a St. Louis side that looked pretty toothless in attack.

Here are some of my thoughts from the game:

1. A Welcome Clean Sheet - At Long Last

This was the first time the Lights defense has been able to shut out the opponent in 13 games. The last time we were able to keep the opponent from scoring was way back on May 1st, when we went away to the Monarchs, went down to ten men early, and bunkered for the entire game.

That is not good, you guys, especially for a team whose purported M.O. is "defend and counter." It's a two-word strategy, and when you can't do the first word, it's a problem.

In this game, not only were the Lights able to keep a clean sheet, they were able to completely negate any threat from St. Louis. The opposition were only able to get three (3!!) shots off in the entire 90+ minutes of game time - and none of those were on target.

That is awful. I don't think I've ever seen a stats line like that before in any league. I feel sorry for any St. Louis fan who bothered to tune into that game. Granted, the Lights weren't exactly a relentless attacking force, with only 6 shots and 1 on target, but hey, they got the goal to get the job done.

Hopefully this defensive solidity can continue. I've kind of accepted the fact that this particular Lights team is not going to suddenly become a free-scoring, pretty-passing, purveyor of the beautiful game (*cough* 66% passing accuracy this season *cough*). So if we aren't going to try to be pretty, let's at least be effective.

2. Time to Stop Chopping and Changing

As stated above, the Lights have not been able to keep a clean sheet for a very long time. I was curious as to why that would be the case, so I went back through the games to see if I could pick up any details from our lineups.

What I found was that there has been a whole lot of rotation going on in the backline practically since the beginning of the season.

90% of defending is organization. In an ideal world, you would have the exact same starting back four (or three, depending on system) for every game. This gives the defense time to gel, so that instead of moving up, down, and across as four individual players, they can begin to move as one solitary unit. In the top leagues, almost all of the successful teams have at the very least a pair or a trio of centerbacks that, when fit, will play every important game.

Unfortunately, that has not been the case for Las Vegas, which may go some way towards explaining why the team has found clean sheets so hard to come by. Since the start of the season, the Lights backline has consisted of four (or three) of Huiqui, Alatorre, Jaime, Torres, Herrera-Perla, Mendoza, Garduno, Guillen-Torres, and now Samoya. That gang have been put into back fours, back threes, have been rotated, chopped up, mixed up, and tossed around. Rarely have there ever been two games back-to-back that have seen the same defensive lineup as the last game.

In a game where organization, familiarity, and muscle memory is the key to outmaneuvering the opposition, that is just asking for trouble. Hopefully, based on the success of this line-up, we may see some continuity next game. But since the captain was left out of the side, I think it is probably (and unfortunately) unlikely.

3. The Loanees Look Good

The Lights front office, maybe in recognition that the season hasn't really been panning out as we would want it to be, went out into the transfer market for some reinforcements.

At the start of the season, the team really didn't dip into the loan market at all. And hey, I get it, I've played FIFA too. If you develop your own players, you can then maybe transfer them out for a fee, and pick up a decent profit that you can reinvest.

But at some point, what the team needs is results right now. And the loan market is a good way to access a level of talent that the club, at the level that they currently are, can't really afford to purchase.

So, since we are where we are, the team brought in 22-year-old right back Nicolas Samayoa from the New England Revolution and 19-year-old central midfielder James Murphy from LAFC, both of whom started this game. Tellingly, both of these youngsters played alongside some more "established" players - Samayoa next to the 33-year-old Alatorre, and Murphy alongside the 35-year-old Kobayashi.

This set-up is probably good for both parties. The young loanees get an experienced head next to them that can help them through the game, tell them what to watch for, etc. And the older veterans get a partner with speed and endurance that help to cover for legs that may be slowing down just a bit. 

That's all I got from this game. I think we have a double-game week this week (both road games).

Let's hope for another clean sheet from at least one of those.

-VSB