Sacramento Republic Has A Tactical Problem
Republic’s on-field struggles have continued, and they don’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.
It’s no secret that the Republic season is not going to plan. General Manager Todd Dunivant and Chairman Kevin Nagle parted ways with Mark Briggs on November 4th and hired Neill Collins as Sacramento’s head coach just over a month later on December 21st - a signing that USL called a “Statement of Intent.” And they weren’t wrong; Collins came to Sacramento with the second-highest win percentage among tenured coaches in USL history and had led the Rowdies to three trophies. To add to it, Sacramento paid to acquire Collins, who had just been appointed the manager of Scottish side Raith Rovers F.C. 109 days prior. Raith’s CEO Andrew Barrowman resoundingly responded “yes, absolutely, yes… fair for the club” when asked if Raith had been fairly compensated in the release clause, and said of Collins “everyone’s got their price so to speak.” So while we don’t know the exact value Sacramento paid both to and for Collins, we can assume it wasn’t exactly a cheap deal.
The results cannot be what Sacramento pictured when they splashed the cash. At the time of this writing, July 2nd, Sacramento sits at 8th in the West with a record of 4 wins, 4 losses, and 5 draws. They meekly exited the Open Cup without so much as putting up a fight. And the loss to Orange County SC this past weekend makes advancing in the USL Jägermeister Cup a difficult feat. And all of this is after many folks around the league predicted Sacramento to be a shoo in for first in the West—USL Tactics’s model went so far as to list Sacramento as the only Western Conference team with a 100% chance to make playoffs. So what’s gone wrong? Is this a Collins problem, a front office problem, a player problem? Maybe all of the above? Let’s take a look at three areas on the pitch where the tactics just aren’t working to try and figure out what’s going on…
Late Game Breakdowns
Let’s start at the back and work our way forward here. Defensively, Republic actually has the second-best defense in the league—they have the second-fewest goals against, the third-fewest shots on target against, and Vitiello has the fourth-highest save percentage in the league.
Where the Republic defense struggles is in closing out games. They’ve dropped points after the 75th minute in 6 matches, good for 9 points that they’ve missed out on. We’ve seen that twice in the last two weeks; both Orange County and Birmingham scored last gasp winners to steal a draw on the road away from Sacramento. If you take out the USL Jägermeister Cup game against Orange County, Republic has dropped eight points in USL league play; those eight points would put Republic tied for first in the West.
Even more shocking is that four of the six matches with dropped points have come from allowed goals after the 90th minute:
If Republic had protected even just these four games, they would be second in the West. Now, the defense isn’t the main problem here; late goals like this can happen, and Republic’s shocking offensive performance means that the defense isn’t given any wiggle room. As mentioned before, the defense has the second fewest goals against even with these late game breakdowns. But Republic is allowing a goal after the 90th minute in 22% of their games so far; they allow a goal after the 75th minute in a full third of their matches.
So what is causing the late game breakdowns? Well, the data shows it’s mostly the substitutions. One way to look at player performance is by player match rating; a player starts a match at 6.5/10. A rating of seven or higher is good, eight or higher is great. On the opposite side, a rating of lower than six is bad, lower than five is terrible. Republic’s starting XI is averaging a 7.03 match rating (per FotMob) across all competitions. That’s really solid, easily in the top 10 in USL. Where things start to fall apart is when we look at the substitutes, who are averaging just a 6.34 match rating. That’s below average and a significant drop off from the starting XI. In fact, Republic has only had *two* matches this season where the substitutes have performed better than the starting XI.
So what does that all mean? Well, a few things. One, Sacramento takes a noticeable hit in quality nearly every time they make a substitution. The guys on the bench are just not able to consistently perform well enough to turn the tide or hold out a game. And two, this means that Collins has to be pretty picky about how often he subs; in 10/18 games this season, 3 subs or fewer were on the pitch for more than 10 minutes. And this is killing the club late in games; either the subs coming on aren’t playing at a high enough level, or the guys on the pitch aren’t able to sub off when they need it. This issue isn’t a Collins problem; the players either need to step up when they sub on, or the front office need to sign players who will.
Possession
Now let’s move into the midfield, where the main thing we’re going to look at is Republic’s possession numbers—because they are staggering. We’re far enough into the season to see these numbers stabilize, and a major trend has continued to emerge: Sacramento can’t win when they have the ball.
Okay, so pretty clearly, the lower Sacramento’s possession, the more points they gain. But let’s expand on that:
Republic has only won two games with more than 50% possession—Vegas and El Farolito, a literal amateur team. The lone draw was Republic’s only late game goal of the season, a 90+5 minute goal from Amann, to level things against Tulsa. And even in that game, Republic looked clueless on the ball while holding 70% possession.
Compare that to when they have less than 50% possession, where the two losses are a 2-1 loss to Orange County, where Republic had two own goals, and the loss to MLS side San Jose in the USL Open Cup, with a heavily rotated roster. Every other game has resulted in at least a point for Sacramento.
So it remains bewildering that Republic continues to keep possession. The previous five games show that the club still hasn’t figured out what to do:
This tells me that this isn’t a secret. The league knows that the way to beat Republic is to sit back and force them to have the ball, and then beat Republic on the counter late in games. And yet, Neill Collins has not changed or adjusted his formation other than slightly adjusting the front line. Sacramento has utilized a 3-4-3 all season, which shifted into a 3-4-2-1 against Rhode Island and Orange County. But neither look provides a solution for when Republic has control of the game. It’s 18 games into the season, and this problem lies squarely on Collins' shoulders. Yes, Dunivant built most of the roster, but Collins knew what the roster was before he signed on. Eighteen games of trying the exact same thing with the exact same results is excessive—the system isn’t working, and Collins either needs to change his tactical approach or Republic needs to change managers.
Offensive Woes
Finally, let’s look at the issue at the top, which is really an extension of the possession issue—Republic really really struggle to score from open play. We talked about this in a previous article, but most of Sacramento’s goals this season have been from quick counters after pressing high, much like this:
That’s about 6 seconds from turnover to goal, and of Republic’s 12 league goals from open play, around half of them are scored like this. These types of goals only work when Republic doesn’t control possession; instead, they rely on allowing the opposition to control the ball, while Republic back them into their own half and wait for a mistake.
Part of this issue is that Republic’s shooting accuracy, at just 42.7%, is tied for the fourth worst in the league. Only Colorado, Tampa Bay, and Hartford are worse, and that is not good company to be in; Tampa Bay and Hartford are the two worst teams in the league and Colorado is one point off the bottom of the West. One of the core problem players here is Luis Felipe, who has seemingly lost the ability to shoot at the goal. Despite not starting for a month between the end of May and end of June, he is still second on the team in total shots with 13—and only *2* of those have been on target. He still hasn’t scored yet this season. Herrera isn’t much better, with only 4 of 12 shots on target, but he at least has 3 goals to go with that record. Sacramento can’t score if they can’t shoot, and this is directly on the players not performing.
One of the few significant changes that Collins has so far made mid season was having the team cut back on the number of shots in an effort to replace a high quantity of shots with a high quality of shots. Republic started the season leading the league in total shots, but had a dismal ~10% conversion rate. That has since risen to 16.5%, but that’s still not a great number. Look at Republic compared to the top 5 teams in the league:
Republic trails in every single category, except for shots where they’re above New Mexico, and as a result they just aren’t scoring. None of the offensive metrics are there. And really, there’s three problems here:
1) Sacramento’s players are just not performing in the final third: Felipe can’t hit the target. Cicerone is only on pace for eight goals, which would be by far his fewest in a full healthy season. Jamieson has only scored twice, a far cry from the goal scorer Republic had hoped to get in the off season. And no one else has stepped up to be able to be “the guy.” The only player with any sense of a decent conversion rate is Trevor Amann, who has two goals on three shots, but he’s so far been unable to consistently get on the pitch.
2) The offseason acquisitions by Todd Dunivant and the front office completely ignored this growing problem. Republic, after already struggling to score goals at the end of last season, signed a single attacking player during the offseason, Lewis Jamieson—and he was only brought over once Collins had joined the team, as the two had worked together at Raith Rovers. Instead, Dunivant signed *six* defensive players, all before Collins even signed on to the club. Yes, a few of these players have been standouts (Kleemann and Benitez notably), but for a team claiming to be shooting for a title, Dunivant has failed to provide the coaching staff with adequate options.
3) Collins has then failed to use the players he does have in a way that enables them to succeed. Yes, this squad is Dunivant’s squad; however, Collins knew what the squad was before leaving Raith. And while Collins may have his system that he wants to utilize, a head coach simply cannot try and force a system on players that don’t fit it. He needs to be flexible in order to get results and he has completely failed so far to do so.
Final Thoughts
The season is certainly far from over. There is plenty of time left to right the ship here and Republic are technically in a playoff position. The problem is that no one at the club has given any indication of a willingness to change things, and it’s been on every level. Republic desperately needs a mid-season signing of an attacking player at the least, and probably also either a left-back or a midfielder. The players themselves haven’t shown that they are willing to step up. In fact, besides Roro, Cicerone, and Vitiello, who else on the pitch has shown the emotion and drive to play for the badge? The lack of effort and drive has been startling. And Collins needs to show a willingness to change his system. The 3-4-3 is not working.
For the front office, Dunivant gave an interview on June 13th on Sacramento Republic’s YouTube channel. While most of the conversation surrounded the new then-confirmed-now-up-in-the-air stadium, Dunivant did put his full support behind Collins. Further, he agreed with Connor Sutton that the team has been playing well and had been “unlucky”:
“I think that’s the right way to look at it. The team is continuing to build in confidence… Neill came in and has made a lot of impact in a short amount of time, and things take time and you’re seeing that play out… but the guys are really buying into what he’s doing.”
The issue is, the team is far from unlucky. If you look at the team’s expected Goals (xG) difference, that is, (xG for) minus (xG against), Republic actually has a goal difference better than they should. If anything, Republic has been lucky they haven’t dropped more points. The data just does not reflect an “unlucky” narrative.
I can buy that implementing a new system takes time, and Republic paid a decent amount to bring Collins in; he’s not going to be on the hot seat for a long while. But fans are going to grow impatient fast: from another failing stadium bid, to another mediocre season, to another year of a lack of transparency from the club, Sacramento needs to do a lot of work to get fans who are tired of the mediocrity to buy back in.