Setting the Table Week 20 - Steffen's Value, Quintero's Arrival, and Fagundez's Production
/By Eric Walcott (@ericwsoccer)
Welcome to Setting the Table. Each week we take some time to focus on the best chance creators in MLS from the last weekend. If you want to see the best chances that were wasted check out Lowered Expectations. Here we focus on chances that ended with the ball in the back of the net.
#5 Jonathan Lewis to Jesus Medina, NYCFC, 80th minute, 0.336 expected goals
Passes in sequence: 1
If rumors of a reported offer from England for Zach Steffen are true, and if the Crew are interested in selling, they might want to pull the trigger on this deal before his potential buyers see this highlight. This is not the first time we’ve seen this kind of mistake from Steffen when trying to play out the back, but whoa is it costly, leading to the game winning goal for NYCFC. Steffen almost gets away with it when Jonathan Lewis’ initial shot hits the post, but Lewis does a great job taking the rebound and playing the ball across the face of goal to Jesus Medina who is somehow wide open.
Before spending a few words on Steffen, it's worth saying if there’s a team out there in need of a boost in the attack, getting on the phone with NYCFC and asking about Lewis would not be a bad idea. In fact, it might be a very good one.
Lewis has played in 18 games in his MLS career and piled up a whopping 459 minutes (there’s a minimum of 1620 minutes in 18 full games). Here are his per 96 minutes numbers in that time:
Team | Season | Min | Shots | Goals | xG | KeyP | Assts | xA | xG+xA | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
NYC | 2018 | 148 | 4.54 | 0.65 | 0.61 | 4.54 | 1.30 | 0.67 | 1.28 | |
NYC | 2017 | 382 | 2.26 | 0.50 | 0.27 | 1.01 | 0.25 | 0.10 | 0.36 |