St. Louis City SC was handed a loss for the first time this season last night in Chester, Pennsylvania as the Philadelphia Union blanked the St. Louis side 1-0. It took just eight minutes for the hosts to find the goal, the first conceded by St. Louis this season, after an aggressive start. The Union peppered the City goal early with 4 shots inside the first eight minutes before Ian Glavinovich found the opener on their fifth shot of the match. The Union continued to control the balance of play in the opening 45’, tallying 15 total shots in the half as they entered the break with a 1-0 advantage.
Photo Courtesy: Will Bramlett
With the lead, the Union stepped back into more of a mid-block, ceding possession to St. Louis to see if the visitors could find their way through them in the second half. On a couple of occasions, City was able to find dangerous areas only to be stopped by a raised offside flag from the officials. The match shifted again in the 66th minute when Edu Löwen was sent off after receiving his second yellow card of the match.
Following the sending off, the game opened up with Philadelphia stepping up their press and St. Louis trying to push forward for an equalizer. Neither club was able to take advantage of the extra space as they combined for just .07 xG created after the 66th minute and the match ended with Union still holding a 1-0 advantage.
St. Louis falls to 2-1-2 with the loss and sit in 4th place in the West ahead of Sunday Night Soccer. City welcomes Austin to Energizer Park next Sunday.
The Search for “More Quality” Continues
St. Louis has now been held scoreless in three of five matches this season. Saturday night, the club managed to generate just .20 xG according to FBref and recorded just 10 touches in the Philadelphia defensive box according to FotMob. While fans praise the defensive stability, the ineffectiveness of the offense must be explored. Manager Olof Mellberg appears to feel the issue isn’t creating chances, it’s having the quality to finish them. “We need more quality on the ball. We had our chances today,” he said. “We had a few incredible chances. They press a lot, and they make it difficult for you; but on the occasions you manage to play through that pressure, you create really big chances which we did. Even one-man down, we had two really good opportunities to score. We had enough chances to score a goal.”
St. Louis’ best offensive opportunity of the match, at least in terms of xG, came fro Cedric Teuchert. His 34th minute effort was the only City chance with double-digits xG and was responsible for all of St. Louis’ .24 xGoT on the night. It was just one of five shots from the visitors on the evening, Mellberg is confident we can generate more chances if we look to play on the front foot instead of playing it backwards. “We gotta have more quality and confidence to find the progressive pass more often,” he reflected after the match.
It will be interesting to see how the team starts against Austin on Sunday as the week of training ahead will need to be used to improve the offensive transition and plan for a match without Löwen, since he’ll be serving a suspension for the red card.
Ben Lundt A Show Stopper in Loss
The man who has served as St. Louis’ back up keeper for three seasons showed why the club has kept him in that role. Lundt was called into action often in the first half as the Union opened the match with an intense push. Philadelphia’s offense was on the front foot from the offset as forced the St. Louis keeper into three saves inside the first 12 minutes. The barrage continued from there with Quinn Sullivan rattling the woodwork in the 21st minute before another flurry of chances between the 36th minute and end of the half. In total, Lundt faced 15 of Union’s 18 shots in the first half and conceded just once; recording an 88.9% save percentage and a 2.0 post shot expected goal (PSxG). PSxG indicates how many goals the opposition should have scored based on the likelihood of the keeper saving it; so statistically, Lundt limited the Union to half of the goals they should have had. If nothing else, St. Louis can take consolation that they have a quality shot stopper to fill in while Roman Bürki continues to recover from injury.
Taking his passion for soccer and St. Louis to the next level, Jeremy aims to provide analytical coverage of all this St. Louis City SC.
