The early part of the season sees teams hosting, or playing opposition to, the host team in their first game of the season as March unfolds to April, and Loudoun United was half of another home opener in their fourth straight game, playing at a Birmingham side recently wounded in their last effort, and looking to play well in their home opener in the 205. While the scoreline was familiar to anyone who’s ever seen Loudoun play at Birmingham, are their lessons learned? Well, let’s see.

Given the lineup, this was a close one! Let’s look at the high level optics of the game for a second; Birmingham, off a five-goal shellacking by Louisville, comes home for their home opener against a Loudoun side that was off for a week. So one team’s going to come out quicker than the other inherently.

And it gets better! Of Loudoun’s starting XI, Abdellatif Aboukoura made his first in almost 19 months, Yanis Leerman made his first start of the season, as did Tommy Williamson, who was also getting his first 2024 minutes. Christiano Francois was getting his first start since the first week of the season. For a team missing two prime attackers in Florian Valot and Kalil ElMedkhar, getting nudged out (.6 to .52) in the xG battle wasn’t horrible. The go-ahead goal from Tyler Pasher was a traditional curling attempt he’s made famous, Loudoun was stretched a little and gave up the third in stoppage time. Stuff happens.

So, how’d the lineup do? Not horrible! Leerman filled the Robby Dambrot version of the backline with Francois ahead of him; the team did well to find Francois on switches and long balls to allow him to run at Moses Mensah, and however he gets deployed, that’s a worthwhile tool to have in the box.

And for Bouchy? Well he did this:

He was on the outside as well, and whether it was a hair late to getting to a chip attempt on Matt Van Oekel or a just missed ball to Zach Ryan about ten minutes after this goal, he had a decent effort. Williamson was subbed out at halftime for Wesley Leggett, and the overall speed of the attack was a handful for Birmingham for 15-20 minutes into the second half.

The overall point being, between the absences and Sunday’s lineup, I think Ryan Martin is getting a sense of what everyone on the roster can do and what the best deployment of them may be.

Random Stat: 52, the minutes per goal for Abdellatif Aboukoura in 2024. The current League goals leader Wilson Harris from Louisville (who Loudoun host next Saturday) has 7 goals, at a 59.6 minutes per goal average.

So where does this leave us? The shared feeling among the players after the loss is that they were comfortable where things are and they have every right to be. They have a three game in seven day stretch coming up, with two at Segra Field, starting with Saturday’s game with a wounded Memphis side, and a midweek Open Cup game at Richmond sandwiched in between. Widen that out, 7 of their next 10 League games are at Segra, with two trips to California and a game in North Carolina the only road trips.

Loudoun included Valot and Cole Turner in their training collage midweek, and if these guys are coming back shortly, Loudoun’s going to find themselves in decent shape later in the season than everyone but they had expected.