Yet Another Scoreless Loss Sinks Reign Further

SEATTLE - Eleven halves without a single goal. Seattle are now tied for ninth in the table, the spot where ESPN's preseason prediction had them. They haven't scored since late March and it's the Ides of May. The Reign looked all sorts of lost on the attack basically from the opening flamethrowers to the closing whistle, and the defense had enough lapses to submerge them in a shallow two-goal river, Frederick Barbarossa style.

Some of the defending pressure was good in the first half and defensive midfielder Sam Meza had an excellent game (more on that at the end of this page). But this team's decision-making with the ball was bad on Friday and its use of space was worse. All too often would a player take the ball short into negative space or even pass it straight back to someone on the opposing team, so fearful were they of losing the ball ahead of them.

When the Reign did make the right decisions and attacked forward and went for the open space behind Gotham's high press, they most often found themselves unrewarded, with a bad touch or a giveaway somewhere in the attacking third and little to no danger on net produced. They didn't have the stubbornness to keep going for those attacks and trusting in A) their own abilities with the ball and B) their ability to win the ball back with solid pressing, despite the latter being one of the few things they did right at least some of the time on Friday.

It's quite dreary in Reign City indeed.

Coming off a fixture on Sunday, Reign head coach Laura Harvey made a couple of changes to the starting XI. Maddie Mercado moved to the bench to start out, while Emeri Adames started on the wing and they played four in the front with Nérilia Mondésir positioned more centrally.

Shae Holmes got her first start of the regular season, replacing Maddy Curry in the left back role. Harvey also incorporated Holmes into the line due to the way Gotham plays the game, though her decision was also about rotation.

"Quick turnaround, one," Harvey said about the line change. "Two, the way that they press, often that fullback will be under pressure but often wide, and having a left-footed left back to be able to break that pressure; I thought it would be a really good opportunity."

But for the Reign, the old aphorism held true: no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Such applies to sporting battles as often as it does to other kinds of battles.

"I think we lose ourselves a little bit and lose our trail of thought when things get tough out there," said midfielder Angharad "Haz" James-Turner. "We've been missing JB [Jordyn Bugg] at the back, we're missing Jess (Fishlock) ... it's for more of us to step up and take that role now, because I think we need a group of leaders out there to be able to really push the team and ourselves to be better and to stick to the game plan and make sure that we do that for a whole 90 minutes and not just 45."

Seattle was on the back foot for the whole game, only gaining real opportunities in the last minutes.

Seattle let an opportunity slip through their fingers in the third minute, with Mia Fishel getting a takeaway in the opposite box only for Adames to lose the ball under pressure. The team didn't look great early on with the ball, losing possession to errant passes and bad touches. Gotham, for their part, didn't do well when they didn't have a Reign mistake to take advantage of - and were piling up mistakes of their own. Visiting keeper Ann-Katrin Berger's attempted kick out of goal went right to Mondésir in the 14th minute, but her shot on net went right back to Berger rather that screaming towards the posts.

Opening jitters finally began to dissipate a few minutes later. Gotham began producing some connection and buildup, forcing a few clearances from Seattle. Mondésir's 17th minute takeaway in the defensive half turned into the Reign's best chance yet, as Coco found Maddie Dahlien up the left side and Dahlien sent a long cross to Adames on the right. Gotham's Savannah McCaskill managed to get the ball across the endline and Seattle had a corner and the chance dissipated despite some brief looks from the set piece.

Gotham got a takeaway in the 24th minute, forcing the Seattle defense to rush back and buckle down in the defending box. While the visitors had gotten the ball up high in earlier moments, they hadn't had the transitional momentum, and the Reign quickly found themselves lacking numbers. In this kind of situation, the team needed A-plus defensive efforts, but as Jordynn Dudley challenged newly-returned Shae Holmes on Seattle's left, the attacker spun around the defender and got the ball up to McCaskill in the box, who found Jaedyn Shaw. The shot flew in so quickly that Claudia Dickey hadn't turned to face the ball by the time it hit the back of the net.

Laura Harvey's side needed goal danger. It was something they had obtained for a couple of matches during their scoreless skid, but against Washington and now Gotham, they hadn't produced such moments at all. But time and again, that goal danger was far away from the Reign's grasp. Meanwhile, the visitors produced another chance, with a free kick leading to Dudley rattling off a 27th minute shot on net. This time, however, Dickey notched the save, keeping the game manageable for the time being.

Just one shot would be produced over the rest of the half, but as Coco found dangerous space and dropped it off to Huerta, the latter sent it offline in the 32nd minute.

Switching Dahlien to the right side, Seattle got the ball up in the 41st minute with Fishel showing excellent control under pressure and flicking the ball up that side to her, but as Gotham left back Guro Reiten pressured her from the middle of the box, Dahlien didn't challenge and instead kicked it off her opponent for the corner. Yet another set piece failed to materialize.

The second half began with Emeri Adames being subbed off for Maddie Mercado. Adames had been off her game all 45 minutes of the first half, overwhelmed from Reiten's pressure and often making the wrong decision on the ball.

Seattle finally managed to get a shot off in the 55th. The shot itself came on the heels of some of the best minutes the team had been able to put together, with Dahlien working up the left side and creating a corner kick (once again one that didn't find its way to the net, but it was something nonetheless) and the team quickly recovered to create some space in the box. Coco found herself in open space in the center of the box and, with a cross from Phoebe McClernon, saw her chance - but the shot flew over the crossbar. It was the last opportunity for an equalizer, as the visitors would double up their lead in the 57th minute.

Gotham quickly switched the direction of play after the missed shot, winning themselves a corner in the 56th minute and another a minute later. The attacking flurry continued flowing off the second set piece, and despite one blocked shot, Sofia Cook sent it up to Tierna Davidson in the top of the box. Without a defender covering her, it was a simple shot to the upper right corner of the net to bring Gotham's lead to 2-0.

That goal danger still failed to show. In the 67th minute, Haz tried for the same kind of screamer she hit against the Current, but she put too much into it and airmailed the shot. The fact that it was some of the most goal-dangerous they had been to that point was a wrong-turned weathervane to how the team had been doing with the attack to that point.

Harvey called a pair of substitutions in the 62nd minute, with Holly Ward and Brittany Ratcliffe on for Fishel and Mondésir.

The Reign were running out of time quickly in the 75th minute, but a free kick from Sofia Huerta wound up going right to Berger. Gotham reestablished control for a bit, then Seattle worked the ball up once more in the 79th minute and Dahlien wriggled free of some visiting defenders on Seattle's left only for the chance to fall apart as soon as it appeared.

Despite a pair of subs (and the return of Jordyn Bugg, who subbed in for Holmes in the 72nd), Seattle was having a rough go of it on both sides of the pitch. Gotham didn't score in the 83rd minute, but they sure brought the ball well into the penalty area and were only kept out by a desperate clearance.

The Reign got the better of some incredible luck in the final minutes of regulation. In the 85th minute, Ward got the ball in quick transition well upfield and sent it to a wide-open Ratcliffe. She lurched forward and took a shot on net, but without any change in direction, Berger was able to get her hand on it and the best chance they had obtained all game ended the same as all the other half-chances and unexplored looks: without a goal.

Seattle's last near-chance was a run up into the box by Dahlien, who fell over after some apparent contact while in the penalty area. Harvey clearly thought it should have been a penalty - noting that she wouldn't discuss it in the postgame presser - but it seemed potentially spurious to my eyes. In any case, it wouldn't have affected the table, the three points were all but lost by that point.

Sam Meza was the team's lone bright spot (aside from the always solid McClernon), as she showcased stellar work rate and takeaway ability.

Defensive midfielders can often go unsung in the eyes of many; this is especially true when things fall apart ahead of them or don't go to plan behind them. But time and time again on Friday, it was hard to ignore how Sam Meza saved her team from worse disaster and set up the beginnings of drives, even as the Reign at large didn't do much.

Haz, who connected with her quite a bit, held her up as an example for the team to strive towards.

"[Meza] drives this team, especially without the ball," Haz said about her fellow midfielder. "The amount of balls she wins back, the recoveries that she makes, she drives this team forward. She's been great for us this year, she was last year, and we've all got to match that."

Meza's performance with the Reign has been one of the few consistencies for the team, alongside Phoebe McClernon's continued solid defense. Emily Mason, who was a little shaky early on in the year, has also looked better in the last few games.

But soccer is a team sport, and it's not going to be easy for the team to notch wins in the table when nobody is scoring and balls are getting through the back of the net.

Autopsies are hard when everything goes wrong, but "experience" was the byword of the postgame.

While the Reign's chance production wasn't great on the previous Sunday, it was near-nonexistent on Friday. When things are going wrong up and down the pitch as they were for the Reign, pinpointing one thing is like looking for a particular strand of hay in the middle of a haystack.

Still, as Harvey was asked about her thoughts on the match, she gave a summary of how things went for her team.

"Not enough good moments, honestly, I think tonight. I thought their experience showed. I think one thing that we talk about a lot is being dangerous and how we're going to be able to do that, and we didn't put it in the areas we'd spoke about putting it in enough, I don't think in the game. We played too much in front of them and not behind them; when we did (play behind them) late in the game, good things happened," Harvey said. "But yeah, Sunday's game, we created chances, we didn't take them; we didn't create enough tonight."

Not sure how much they actually created on Sunday, but Harvey was directionally spot-on there. And when a team isn't producing up top, the kind of mistakes they made in the back end of the field aren't affordable. Gotham, unlike Seattle, worked the ball into those dangerous areas once their opening jitters abated, and the game quickly got out of hand for Seattle.

"I'm just a believer that prevention is better than cure, I always have been," Harvey said. "I think, on the first one, we don't deal with it well enough higher up the pitch. Jaelin Howell plays a pass, we watch her, she receives the ball back, has 30 yards on the field just to be able to drive and do what she wants. We don't get them (moments of space like that), so we can't give them to other people, but we did. Left Shae isolated 1-v-1, which we'd spoken about, we didn't wanna do. They showed some quality in that moment. And then the second one, set piece, and we didn't deal with the first ball, didn't get out quick enough to the person on the other edge of the box; Tierna (Davidson) was marked and her mark was lost."

The big theme Harvey brought up after the game was experience. Gotham, even without Rose Lavelle, have a bunch of experienced players on their team. She attributed her opponents' ability to take advantage of the Reign's mistakes to that experience, even when her team had been doing things well.

"First half, [Gotham] completely exited the middle of the field, because I think they knew that we could dominate them in that moment. And when we got good pressure on the ball, they gave us it back. When we didn't - first goal is a great example - they can hurt you in that moment, and they did. And they didn't have loads of opportunities to do that, but that's the team that they are: they're full of experience, they're full of winners, and they know how to win games."

As to how the Reign can gain that experience, well, I suppose it's only trial and error that can do that. This group made the playoffs last year but fell in the first round; as things stand after this game, they wouldn't make the postseason, a point behind the Courage for the last playoff spot. But Harvey expanded on this as she talked about the loss, noting how things would fall apart upon adverse events.

It's a chasm between knowing what they need to do as a team and applying it on the field when the chaos of matchday comes. Part of that is coaching, as Harvey has to figure out a set of cues that springs her club into action and helps dampen the problems. But unlike on Sunday, when it was the offense rather than the defense that struggled, an all-around lagging side can be hard to address. Friday's game was a step back from previous shutout defeats and scoreless ties, as frustrating as that is.

The one task is simple and yet devilishly hard.

"Gotta learn how to win," Harvey said. "We gotta understand what it takes to win games, and if you start playing the game within the game, you're not gonna win games."