LAFC keeps unbeaten streak going with draw against Nashville SC

In the last 20 years, LAFC is the only club to go unbeaten through the first seven matches of a season multiple times. Saturday night in Tennessee, the Black and Gold made it eight – the best start to a campaign in club history – with a 1-1 draw against Nashville SC.

On a night when Erik Dueñas became just the second homegrown player in club history to record a start, and Mateusz Bogusz made his first-ever MLS appearance, a familiar face stole the show in Music City.

LAFC trailed for the first time all season – a 21-minute stretch — but that ended with another deep-range goal from Denis Bouanga. The strike secured the point and ensured they’ll remain the league’s lone unbeaten for another two weeks.

“It’s a good point on the road,” Steve Cherundolo said. “It’s always difficult in Nashville to score, but to take away something, is a good performance.”

Taking care of business

Sure, tonight’s result means LAFC will end the second month of the MLS season without a win outside of Los Angeles. And yes, they’ll have only scored a singular goal in their three attempts to do so.

On the surface, it seems like the Black and Gold are merely treading water on the road, turning over a string of results more than justified by a CCL-congested schedule. Even with a full week of rest, this weekend was no different, finishing level away from the City of Angels once again.

(Again, between the location and the makeup of the crowd, it’s disingenuous to count last weekend’s El Trafico as a road match, so just roll with me.)

While this pace in its exact makeup will almost surely not play itself out throughout a full season, let’s assume it does. Winning every match at home works out to 51 points, add in every road draw to get 68 and tack on the extra two from the road El Trafico to get a final tally of 70 points. 

That’s just three points off of the points record set by New England two seasons ago. Now mixed in with the other unlikelihoods of that scenario is the near impossibility of pulling off an invincible season – even if Ryan Holingsead continues to ask, “Why do we need to lose?”

But it illustrates just how scorching hot this start has been for LAFC, even by the club’s lofty standards and even amidst a tough run of MLS and CCL fixtures that almost universally hampers teams out of the gates.

That congestion has forced rotation, an added layer of context that makes this run an even more impressive feat. With Bogusz getting the nod on the right side this weekend, Cherundolo has now started 19 different players through just eight games.

Cherundolo and Illie Sánchez spoke highly of Dueñas’ performance Saturday night – the latest two add his name to the above tally. Sánchez added that it’s “the same way” with everyone who's had to deputize in the starting lineup. 

“They earned the right to be considered for following games as starters.,” Sánchez said. “Sergi [Palencia], Denil [Maldonado], Stipe [Buik], Mateusz [Bogusz], Erik [Dueñas]. We all played as a team, and that’s definitely what made the team get out with a point tonight.”

With MLS debuts and first career starts left and right, LAFC is still yet to come out on the wrong end of a match this season. Assuming Cherundolo puts out his best XI against the Union in leg one  on Wednesday, five or six changes will likely be made from this weekend’s lineup.

Even so, that heavily-rotated XI managed to score and pick up a point on the road against one of the stoutest defensive sides in the league this season. It’s results like these, earned by lineups like these, that allow for the performances LAFC have put on in their midweek CCL tilts. And this weekend in Nashville, they set themselves up for yet another.

“The word of the week and the next few days is recovery,” Cherundolo said. “That’s what we’ll be about and we’ll focus on that first… but it should be a great matchup. We’re looking forward to the challenge.”

How long can this go on? 

The story of LAFC on a night-in, night-out basis is becoming a bit of a broken record. Bouanga does something cool, unprecedented, statistically impossible or some mixture of the three and they get a result.

He continues to outpace MLS with 16 goal contributions in just 12 games across all competitions – finding the back of the net 12 times. Within those tallies are a pair of hat tricks.

LAFC has scored 16 league goals this season, and Bouanga has contributed on half of them. Expand that to all competitions and it’s 16 out of 26 goals scored. 

When the Gabonese international is on the field, LAFC is a goal and a half better per 90 minutes than when he’s off – a team-best mark among players who have played at least 350 minutes this season.

His current level of production, however, should not be as sustainable as it’s been, and it shouldn’t be an avenue of attacking output that LAFC can rely on to continue picking up results.

Bouanga’s goal had an xG value of just 0.05, which was the worst of his six shot attempts on the night. In his April 8 hat trick against Austin, the three goals had a combined xG of only 0.27. His match-winner against Dallas on March 25 clocked in at just 0.03.

But in the same vein, he statistically should be routinely scoring. His xG per 90 suggests a goal every other game, and while that’s well below his goal-a-game pace to date, that pace equals nearly a 20-goal season in MLS.

The xG suggests he was more likely to have found the back of the net tonight than not – just not via the chance he ultimately buried.

It’s been much of the same for this LAFC team all season, who are fifth in the league in both goals scored and expected goals despite having played in one fewer match than the four ahead of them.

But almost everyone in this side not named Bouanga has been underperforming their xG as we cross into the second fifth of the season. Carlos Vela, Kwadwo Opoku and Stipe Buik make up three of the top four in xG on this team, and all of them are underperforming.

Racking up 1.76 tonight, LAFC deserved to score and – to blindly follow the numbers – deserved to get a second. Yet, the lone breakthrough came on one of the five – again, just roll with the numbers – worst chances of the contest.

Cherundolo said he felt his side “created a lot of chances to win the game” but that he was “disappointed” with their finishing on the night. He added the Bogusz was “unlucky” to not put an attempt on target and that he was “dangerous.”

“If he continues to get himself in these positions,” Cherundolo said, “he’ll score goals and become a prolific attacker.”

It’s the ultimate statistical conundrum. The underlying numbers match the goal scoring output for LAFC to this point in the season, but those same underlying numbers can’t be used to explain it.

For as many quality chances as they’ve created and dangerous situations they’ve manufactured, it’s been individual moments of unexpected brilliance that have carried the day in 2023.

Cherundolo is optimistic, as he should be, for the chances are there for the taking. But something is going to give first – either the spectacular goals will regress to their statistical improbability or LAFC will start putting away the quality chances it’s had no issue generating.

As the Black and Gold begin the CCL semifinals Wednesday night, the answer to that question might just determine whether or not they scale that Champions League mountain.