Sounders know they need higher-quality scoring chances

RENTON — Anyone who has watched the Seattle Sounders over the past month or so can easily diagnose their biggest problem. After opening the season by scoring 13 goals in their first six competitive matches, the Sounders have scored just two in their past five overall and only one in their last four league games.

The Sounders defense has been more up and down, but it has been considerably shy of the elite level it played at over the past two seasons when they allowed the fewest goals in MLS.

Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan was blunt in his self-assessment: “We haven’t played up to our potential, we haven’t scored enough goals. We haven’t defended well enough. We were the best defensive team in the league, and we essentially added another defender. And we we’ve worked on goals all all preseason, we felt like we were in a good spot and moving forward we haven’t done done well enough in front of goal.”

Part of the way out is a better understanding of what, specifically, is going wrong – and that seems to be in the details.

As you might expect, the two phases are connected. The Sounders have shown a frustrating propensity to play from behind, having given up the first goal in 4 of 7 league games for a total of 293 minutes, and only playing with a lead in two league matches for a total of 131 minutes.

This has effectively led to the Sounders having to attack against set defenses that don’t need to take many risks and has dramatically cut down on their ability to attack from transition moments. It has also contributed to the Sounders taking a lot of relatively low-probability shots.

Although their underlying numbers look reasonably strong, the devil is in the details. A lot of their expected goals total has come from relatively low-quality chances.

In fact, the Sounders lead the Western Conference in that category — according to American Soccer Analysis — with 53. The only team in MLS with more is the Philadelphia Union (54) and no one else in the league has as many as 50.