In the comments on the last match report PDX Phil wondered if this wouldn’t be a good opportunity to revisit the “Jamie from H.R.” midseason player discussions we had a couple years back.
I’m not averse to the idea. They were a fun series of posts, though I won’t pretend that the mcguffin – Rob Gale as the Wise Leader who would unlock the rosters’ hidden potential – doesn’t feel pretty naive in hindsight.
There is one big difference, and I wanted to put that out front before taking a poll of the readership about this.
In 2024 we still had actual statistical information beyond the rockiest of rock-bottom basic stuff like shots and goals.
This season OPTA has flipped us the money-colored finger, removing almost all the detailed player stats (and effectively all the defensive player stats; I think “tackles won”, “blocks”, and “interceptions” are all we have left.) so where in 2024 we knew this about, say, Jessie Fleming…
…the information inside the red outline boxes is gone this season, and many of the other comp stats will be hard to track because it looks like there’s no way to sort the data. Sofascore has some but doesn’t allow table-sorting. Statsbomb doesn’t carry stats for the NWSL.
Meaning that doing this sort of post for 2026 will be a fair bit more subjective.
How does everyone feel about that? To be blunt, would it be preferable to have a more “opinion” sort of midterm piece that nothing at all? Or any other suggestions for how to approach it?
While we’re on the subject…any other thoughts or preferences for a topic?
Another that did come up in last post’s comments was Jeff Creel wondering if the “Coffey out/Wilson back in” moves had a measurable impact on the squad’s xG.
Richard Hamje and I discussed that a bit in the comments, noting that it would be difficult to gauge across seasons and schedules, and one big problem that I didn’t mention was that the xG stats are completely gone. If OPTA is still recording them (and I’m guessing that are) the data is only available to customers who have the four-figure disposable income to buy the OPTA packages. Which is…not me.
We’ve still got another couple of weeks worth of time to kill, so let me know how you feel about the idea, or any other ideas you have for some World Cup break pastimes…
- Question from H.R. - June 17, 2026
- Thorns FC: Kiss - June 3, 2026
- Thorns FC: Rough Road - May 29, 2026
