Will it even matter?

Indy Eleven posted on Friday that "A new era starts soon." with an image that implies that an announcement of the new coach will happen in the coming day(s). Since Mark Lowry and the team "parted ways" on November 28th, the club has signed one new player (Aedan Stanley) and the schedule has been released (first game in Oakland on March 9th), as well as the club announcing a  partnership with Grand Park as the club & Ersal's company Keystone Group will take over the operation and management of the facility, a partnership with CareSource, and a partnership to produce a new Indy Eleven-themed beer with Metazoa Taproom. In a vacuum, that's a lot of things going on with the club/team.

However, while Indy fans have waited (more or less) patiently, all the teams around them have been announcing player signings because they already have a coach in place and are building towards the season in a non-rushing fashion. The season has the same feeling to me as the transition from Tim Hankinson in 2017 to Martin Rennie in 2018. Hankinson was announced as leaving on November 28th, 2017. When Rennie was announced on January 16th, 2018, there were just a few weeks to put together a team to his liking before spring training began. As I previously mentioned in my article about Lowry's departure (ironically also occurring on November 28th), Rennie completely cleaned house of the 2017 roster, returning just three players; Ring, Braun, & Speas. Of that Rennie 2018 thrown-together-late roster, only 8 players survived to continue with Rennie in the 2019 season; Speas, Ouimette, Farr, Ayoze, Starikov, Pasher, Watson, & Matern. Rennie also released several players that were in contract to be in Indy during the 2018 season, leaving them struggling to find teams at the last minute. Turnover was a major part of those early Rennie days, and I can only hope that the new 2024 season coach does not follow that same pattern with the 12 players that are currently signed to the roster.

More to the point of this article, though, will it even matter? Will it even matter who is announced as the new coach?

I don't know who the incoming coach is going to be, despite some rumors and some guesses. However, I don't know that it will even matter. I fully expect this club, for the men's first team, to be in this exact same position in a year or two. 

Hankinson was a good coach whose second season was derailed by injuries. Though to be fair, he might have also lost the locker room a bit.

Rennie was a good coach whose teams account for 1/2 of Indy's playoff appearances, and seemingly had reached a point where he had enough. Spectacularly.

Lowry was an excellent coach, with proven success in the USL. For a number of factors, his first season in 2022 didn't go as planned. Indy struggled in the early part of the 2023 season, predominantly due to injuries and suspensions, but as players became healthy, Indy finished the last 17 games of the season (i.e., the second half of the season) with a 8W-5D-4L record, with a +8 goal differential in that span. The four losses were to Louisville, Memphis, New Mexico, and RGV (3 or the 4 were playoff teams, with RGV just narrowly missing). In the second half of the season, Indy averaged 1.70 points per game, getting points nearly 60% of the time. The 3-nil win late in the season at home against Detroit looked like the best Indy had played all season, and looked exactly like how a Mark Lowry team typically wants to play. They followed up that performance a couple of games later with a dominating performance in the first half of the San Antonio game with some of the most fluid, beautiful soccer before the game went off the rails after Asante's second yellow card put the team down a man. 

The team, and the way they were playing at the end of the year, was exactly what I expected to see from a Mark Lowry coached team. The team made progress throughout the year and managed to make the playoffs despite the early season injuries and suspensions. The team looked like it was building towards something sustainable, with a historically winning coach who, every indication to me during the seasons, liked being in Indianapolis.

Yet, we find ourselves in the early weeks of January, still waiting for the official announcement of a new coach so that we can then hear about new players, and then begin thinking how the season is going to progress. New players that history has told us time after time are going to take time to gel together. So the 2024 season could likely be marginal, and bad at worst, and given the late roster build, will likely start off rough. Maybe Indy makes the playoffs. Maybe they don't. Either way, the coach almost always gets a pass for the first season because they "inherited" some of the roster, despite the fact that the players that this coach will be inheriting from the 2023 season are some of the best players in the league. So unless things go absolutely horribly with a missed playoffs and losing the locker room, the new coach will get a second season to bring in some other players, and success at that point will be unknown. 

Either way, will it even matter?

Martin Rennie is the longest tenured coach for Indy with 99 official games (+1 friendly), which was 3 seasons + 8 games of the fourth season, but really only amounted to 2.75 seasons of actual games due to the shortened 2020 season. Hankinson coached 70 games across all competitions (2 seasons), Lowry coached 72 games (2 seasons). The history of this club has shown that two seasons of failure (or less) and they're definitely headed somewhere else and two-ish seasons of success and they're probably still headed somewhere else, because that has been the club's method of operation. I can't envision the club hiring a coach that will suddenly have full control over roster selection capable of having immediate success, who will then also stick around for very long. I think Lowry might have been that guy in 2024 and beyond, but that ship has sailed, with reports out that he is headed to Salt Lake City to be the head coach of the Real Monarchs, Real Salt Lake's MLS Next Pro team. 

Every single one of those three coaches had some level of success during their tenure and yet they, or the club, felt like it wasn't a good fit to continue any further. I have thoughts and theories about why (I described one of those imaginary scenarios in my article about Lowry's departure, but I can imagine more), and all of those thoughts and theories lead me to wonder if it will even matter who the next coach is when it's finally announced. I just don't see the coaching carrousel trend changing here in Indy in the foreseeable future. 

Whomever gets announced soon, I think the "new era" is going to continue to look significantly like the "past eras."

Lowry on the hot seat?

Photo: Don Thompson

As the Indy Eleven losses continue to pile up like an interstate accident in winter, I keep getting asked a version of the same question; "Is Lowry on the hot seat?," "Is Lowry in trouble of being fired?," "Is Lowry the right coach?"

The answer I continue to give, and continue to believe, is that Lowry is too good of a coach to yank him this fast. This has been a historically bad stretch for Indy Eleven and that is saying something given the history of the club. However, even Sommer was allowed to go into a second season, even though it felt like very early that Sommer might have been out of his depth. I remember catching Peter Wilt's eye in the press box after a 90'+8' rocket from Kyle Hyland salvaged a draw against Tampa Bay on a night where a +2 hour weather delay forced a near midnight finish and Indy had a man advantage for the final 17 minutes of the game. It was a look of "this isn't good enough." Sommer spent the post-game telling the guys that very same thing and that all their jobs could be on the line. The very next day, Sommer was let go by Wilt. 

Even as much as that first (and second) team struggled, they never had a streak where they went on an 11 game winless streak with 9 losses in that streak. What makes it baffling is that Sommer had never coached a team at this level, and Lowry has been highly successful at this level. To narrow down why this season has gone like it has leads you on a sad trail of infrequent shots, fewer shots on target, and at least one or two major mistakes every game by the defense that opposing teams capitalize upon and win the game. As with all teams, where does the blame start and finish when these are the things that are happening? Is it the coach or is it the players? It's obviously easy to put it on the coach, in that a change there fires one person, whereas if it's the players, multiple firings have to take place. Some of which has occurred and the results have been about the same. In fact, in this last game against Hartford, we watched Hackshaw make a pass that was intended for Vazquez, who was clearly not on the same page and the ball easily went to Barrera. Then Hackshaw, Vazquez, and Dambrot all stood and watched as Barrera dribbled up the field uncontested, took a shot uncontested, and scored a goal uncontested. Two of those three players are new additions to the team. Were they the wrong players (selected by Lowry), were they not in sync with each other yet, or was it something else altogether? For me, in that case, that's a mistake by players and not a mistake by coach. I've never played at a high level and even I know that if nobody stops the ball, bad things can happen.

Photo: Don Thompson

For now, I still have faith in Mark Lowry. From my discussions with him, he is fully aware that the entire squad, from coach to assistant to starters to bench players, are at risk and are responsible when things are going poorly. That includes him and he has said as much to me. He has said exactly what Sommer told that team after the Tampa Bay Rowdies game in 2014. Everybody's job is on the line, including his. I don't see him "pulling a Rennie," and exiting the club during a post-game interview with Rakestraw and Hauter, but I have waited on the field for him to come back from the locker room after enough games recently to know that he is not enjoying this stretch of games any more than we're enjoying watching them. 

Yet, it got me thinking. How does this stretch of games rank in club history? So I did what I do, and I started digging into my stats to find out. Below, I present the data for the worst winless streaks per season and then each coach's record in their first 24 games, which is where Lowry stands right now when you include the Open Cup game. Below that I'll highlight what I find interesting about the data.

Worst Winless Streaks each Season

• 2014 - Sommer
• First nine games - 0W-4D-5L
• 0W-2D-4L streak in Fall Season
• 2015 - Sommer/Regan
• 1W-4D-3L to start Spring Season (Sommer)
• 0W-1D-4L in Fall Season (Regan)
• 0W-2D-3L in Fall Season (Regan)
• 2016 - Hankinson
• 0W-2D-3L stretch in Fall Season
• 2017 - Hankinson
• 0W-7D-4L to start Spring Season
• 0W-1D-4L
• 0W-2D-3L to end season
• 2018 - Rennie
• 0W-1D-3L to end season
• 2019 - Rennie
• 0W-0D-4L (games 28-31)
• 2020 - Rennie
• 1W-1D-5L to end season
• 2021 - Rennie/Rogers
• 0W-1D-3L (Rennie)
• 0W-3D-2L (Rennie/Rogers)
• 0W-2D-4L (Rogers)
• 2022 - Lowry
• 0W-2D-2L to start season
• 0W-2D-9L (including 6 losses in a row and another 3 losses in a row)

Coach Records through First 24 games

• Sommer (includes 2 Open Cup games)
• 4W-7D-13L (win percentage = 16.7%)
• 34 GF; 47 GA = -13 GD
• Regan (in 23 GP; includes a friendly)
• 7W-6D-10L (win percentage = 30.4%)
• 28 GF; 37 GA  = -9 GD
• Hankinson (includes 2 Open Cup games & a friendly)
• 12W-9D-3L (win percentage = 50.0%)
• 37 GF; 22 GA = +15 GD
• Rennie (includes 1 Open Cup game)
• 10W-6D-8L (win percentage = 41.7%)
• 30 GF; 28 GA = +2 GD
• Rogers  
• 6W-7D-11L (win percentage = 25.0%)
• 25 GF; 38 GA = -13 GD
• Lowry (includes an Open Cup game)
• 6W-4D-14L (win percentage = 25.0%)
• 25 GF; 39 GA = -14 GD

Let's start with the winless streaks. Even when it has been bad for Indy Eleven through the years, the longest string of losses has been 4; in the beginning of the 2014 season with Sommer and in the 2019 season with Rennie. The worst number of losses in a winless streak was 5, again with Sommer in 2014. I included a streak of games where the 2020 Rennie-coached season finished the year on a 1W-1D-5L run, which kept them out of the playoffs. Following both of those 5 loss stretches, both coaches made it to game 8 of the next season before being fired/quitting. This year's team's winless streak makes those earlier streaks seem like happy times. That doesn't look well for Lowry.

Photo: Don Thompson

Looking at how Lowry's first 24 games compare to previous Indy Eleven coaches doesn't look well for him either. Obviously. What is interesting though, is that he has nearly identical records and goals for/goals against/goal differential as Indy's two caretaker managers, Regan and Rogers. Those two guys were forced to continue the season with players selected by somebody else, whereas this team, with a few notable exceptions, were guys selected by Lowry. Sommer clearly had the worst start to his tenure of any coach, but Lowry's start most compares to the records of the men that were figuratively thrown into the lead role. That's not a good look.

What if I told you, though, that in Coach Lowry's inaugural season with El Paso in 2019, the team had a 
1W-4D-6L stretch between June 22nd and September 4th? Admittedly, that team didn't dig themselves the early season hole that Indy did this year, but that ELP team still made the playoffs and advanced to the Conference Finals. Or that in Lowry's 1st full season as head coach with Jacksonville Armada in 2017, that team went on a 0W-4D-4L stretch across the end of the Spring Season and start of the Fall Season from July 8th to August 19th? Or that after he was announced as the interim coach in 2016, the team went on a 1W-5D-2L streak to start his tenure from August 17th to September 28th. 

Maybe Coach Lowry just has some summer struggles in his first season? Maybe by that point in the season, he has a better understanding of what the guys are capable of doing, the guys have a better understanding of how Lowry really wants to play, and in trying to enact those tactics, the teams go through some growing pains in the summer? I honestly don't know, but ELP turned into a perennial winner in his time there and that summer bump in the road isn't really mentioned by anybody except the ELP fans. With some insight from Seriously Loco Soccer Pod, a group that provides content for, and by, El Paso supporters, that 2019 stretch was "a combo of things with Jerome Kiesewetter being hurt for a bit, Mechack Jerome suffered a season ending injury at the Gold Cup, and some issues with goal scoring more generally that eventually were sorted out." Sounds familiar, right? Insert Arteaga and Pinho in for Kiesewetter, long-term injuries to Briggs and Meredith (which forced another shuffle with the goalkeepers), and issues with goal scoring. We can only hope that Indy does the same as that ELP squad and gets their goal scoring sorted out too.

As I said before, this stretch of games has been historically bad for the club and there's no way around that. I will also reiterate that I still have faith in Lowry. There are still too many mistakes that are being capitalized on by opponents, and Indy is still struggling with getting enough shots on target, but their summer slump included an entire month away from home and games against some of the best teams in the league. That was always going to be a tough stretch even without the constant changes in the goalkeeper position, the injuries to key contributors, and some unlucky bounces and calls (I'm specifically thinking about the one shot/one goal fiasco in the first Pittsburgh game and the goal that wasn't allowed in the second Pittsburgh game). 

Yet, I've also seen improvement in the play recently, even if the results haven't followed. If Indy can't get a win by the end of the season, Lowry will, unfortunately, be gone. However, against my pessimistic nature, I believe the results will get better even if they don't make the playoffs, and Lowry should be allowed to return next season.

Until, at least, the 8th game...