By Anshuman Dixit, IUPUI Informatics graduate student
Indy Eleven had a difficult season last year where it managed to finish 6th in their Eastern Central Division despite a good start to the season early on. Out of the 31 teams in USL championship, Indy Eleven came 25th with a record of 9-8-15 in their 32 match season.
As the new season commences this week, let’s look at the performance of Indy Eleven in the 2021 season in more depth and understand what really went wrong for Max Rogers and co.
Overview of the season:
Since the arrival of Indy Eleven in USL in the year 2018, this past season produced the worst result for Indy Eleven when compared with all the 3 seasons it has played in USL championship and 1 in USL league One (2018 Season).
2019 Season was by far the best that Indy Eleven played in the USL when Tyler Pasher was scoring beautiful goals for them. But after his departure, Indy is still struggling to get a good season in the USL.
| Played | Win | Draw | Loss | Goals Scored | Goals Conceded | Goal Difference | Points | |
| Home | 16 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 14 | 16 | -2 | 19 |
| Away | 16 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 18 | 31 | -13 | 16 |
| Overall | 32 | 9 | 8 | 15 | 32 | 47 | -15 | 35 |
Indy performed slightly well at home as compared to away games. They conceded a lot of goals during away matches which killed the hopes and momentum of the team during the season.
Tactical Formation:
Indy loves to play back 3 in defence with A.J Cochran at the Centre. Their favourite formation is 3-4-3 which they used in majority of the matches. They also tried different variations with the back 3 formation during the season. Let’s look at the win/draw/loss stats when a particular formation was used at the start of the game.
3-4-3 formation helped Indy to get 13 points in the season out of the 35 they scored. There was 100% success rate when the squad played the 5-3-2 formation.
Goalkeeping and Defence Analysis:
Indy Eleven conceded 1.5 goals per match in the season. Indy secured to get 6 clean sheets and was ranked 22nd out of 31 teams in clean sheets During the entire season, Indy conceded only 3 penalties out of which none was saved. Indy Eleven was overall 3rd in Saves per match, making 3.8 saves per match. Only Las Vegas Lights FC and Loudon United were better than Indy Eleven in this statistic. Indy stood 15th in Clearances per match with an average of 15.6. Indy had the second worst successful tackles in the campaign with just 8 successful tackles per match. The tackle success rate was 60.4%. Jordan Ferr, the goalkeeper of Indy Eleven started 21 matches and had a Save% of 72.3 %.
Let’s look at the heat map of all the goals conceded by Indy Eleven during the 2021 Season.
The majority of the goals conceded were inside the D box and particularly from the centre. The goals which are outside the D box were generally scored from the left hand side of the pitch.
Gershon Koffie, Ghanaian Midfielder had the most tackles won for the team (31). Manuel Arteaga, the majestic forward committed the most fouls (85) and received the most yellow cards as well (6)
There was no red card taken by any Indy Eleven player in the entire season which can be well described in Jose Mourinho’s words as “Nice Guys”.
Team Play Analysis:
Indy Eleven ranked 7th in the league when it comes to accurate passes per match (354.1). The team managed to get an average possession of 50.2% during the season. They also managed to win the possession in the final 3rd 140 times (Rank among all teams: 17th). Jared Timmer, CB recorded the most interceptions during the season (37). Ayoze Perez, CAM got the most assists for the team (5)
Let’s look at the assists map for Indy Eleven during the 2021 Season.
There were 2 assists from the corners for Indy Eleven during the campaign. Generally assists came from the final 3rd of the pitch. There were less long ball assists, just 1 during the entire season. The number of assists via passes is more than the number of assists via through balls.
Attacking Analysis:
Manuel Arteaga, was the top scorer for Indy Eleven who scored 10 goals during the season and became only the fourth player ever to score in double figures for the club. He managed to get 3.15 shots per 90 and 1.09 shots on target per 90. Jordan Hamilton, the second striker of Indy Eleven got 5 goals with a stat of 2.82 shots per 90 and 1.41 shots on target per 90. There were 4 penalty kicks awarded to Indy Eleven out of which they managed to score 3 past the keepers. Arteaga missed 1 penalty kick in the season. Gordan Wild, RW gave 30% of the crosses into the box among the whole squad (154).
Indy conceded more corners than they got awarded during the season. They managed to score from 2 of them.
Shots Bar Chart Race (Season 2021):
Indy had an average of 3.9 shots per game and they created 34 big chances in the season.
Indy Eleven managed to score 31 goals in their 32 match campaign. Here is the types of goals they managed to score.
Let’s look from where they managed to get the goals in on the pitch.
30 out of the 31 goals were scored from inside the box and they are evenly distributed from left to right. There was just one long range goal scored by Peter-Lee Vessel in the second last match of the season.
What to expect in the 2022 Season?
Indy starts their campaign on 12th march with an away game with Loudon United. The departure of Gordon Wild and Patrick Seagrist is a major blow for the team but the new signings like Stefano Pino and Noah Powder will definitely try to help the team earn a spot in the playoffs this year.
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