There’s no denying the Rowdies fell short of expectations in August.
After experiencing the high of knocking off the then first-place Charleston Battery to close out July, the Rowdies were brought back down to earth a bit with a four-match winless skid before ending August with a 2-0 victory over in-state rivals Miami FC.
Much of the discussion during the club’s longest winless stretch of the year was focused on scoring, or the lack of it. That’s bound to happen when one of your leading scorers nets only one goal in five matches and the club suffers back-to-back shutouts for the first time in the season.
The numbers don’t lie, though. Tampa Bay remains one of the most productive attacks in the USL Championship this season. The squad’s 43 goals ranks third in the league, behind only Louisville City FC and Charleston. Both Cal Jennings, 13 goals, and Manuel Arteaga, 14 goals, sit in the top four in the league’s Golden Boot race. In fact, Arteaga is on pace to surpass his personal single-season scoring record of 17 goals, while Jennings is still within range of his personal record of 19 goals from last year.
“I think you kind of go up and down throughout the season. It’s natural,” said Rowdies Head Coach Robbie Neilson following the team’s second scoreless effort in August. “We’ve got two guys, Cal and Manu, that have scored a lot of goals. There’s going to be wee periods where we don’t, but we just need to keep creating.”
Through the recent rough patch in August and all throughout this season, creating scoring opportunities hasn’t not been a concern for the Rowdies. Tampa Bay leads the league in shots with 432 attempts and have also outshot their opponents in 18 of their 25 matches. On top of that, the Rowdies lead the league with an Expected Goals mark of 53.91xG.
However, the Rowdies -10.91 differential from their Expected Goals and actual goals scored is the widest gap in the entire league. The Rowdies shot conversion rate of 14 percent is by no means terrible, but even a small improvement with finishing chances in front of goal could make a huge difference down the final stretch of the regular season as they look to lock up a playoff berth for the sixth straight season.
If the Rowdies attack can catch fire again over the next two months, they could be a force to be reckoned with in the postseason. Given recent developments like the addition of wingback Ryan Spaulding, the return to fitness of 2022 USL Championship MVP Leo Fernandes and the club’s current assists leader Blake Bodily, as well as the consistent dependability of Jennings and Arteaga over the last few seasons, all signs point to the Rowdies hitting their stride in the attack.
“The last couple of games here we’ve actually played really well,” Neilson noted after the Rowdies win over Miami last week. “We probably played better against Loudoun and Detroit than we did tonight. We just didn’t get what we deserve out of the games. Tonight, against Miami we took a couple of our chances. We probably could have scored more, but I think it’s just about keeping that positivity within the group. We know we’re a good team. We attack well. We defend well. The last couple of games we had a wee bit of a wobble, but we just didn’t finish those chances.”
