Even before the events of the few days leading up to the game, Loudoun United’s game with Louisville was going to be a tough one; Louisville had won four of their first five, with the only loss being to fellow Eastern Conference star Charleston. Louisville’s forward Wilson Harris has as many goals (7) as Loudoun United has as a team (9) so far this year. So just looking on the outside, Loudoun losing 1-0 may be a moral victory, or is it as expected? Well that’s what this here article tries to dive into:

‘You’re fired! You can’t fire me, I quit!’ – You probably had some sort of quandary like that at your high school job where you had to work a double shift because you were good and you were mad about it, so you ‘sneezed’ in someone’s drink, right? No? Oh.

Anyway, the context of the week and season can’t NOT be a factor in talking about the game. Loudoun was on a Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday turnaround with the midweek Open Cup game, a 120-minute affair, just popped up in the rearview mirror. By comparison, Louisville had a day earlier Open Cup game but was off the previous weekend after a Tuesday night tilt at Charleston. Loudoun had to sub out a center back due to injury, making an already thin backline even thinner, for the second time in four days.

So what was the result? A game where the only goal was bouncing around in the Loudoun area, including off Florian Valot’s foot and into the far end of the net. Louisville was held without a shot on goal until the 84th minute, arguably League-leading goalscorer Wilson Harris’ only impactful moment of the match. Ray Serrano and Taylor Davila were forced to try different things to help in attack.

Arguably the biggest difference were the benches. Louisville could bring on Niall Mccabe, Amadou Dia and Aiden McFadden amongst their second half options. That’s more than 250 USL Championship games with plenty of experience working in agile systems as former D.C. coach Danny Cruz can give them. Loudoun did bring on Christiano Francois, but the other subs were a returning from injury Kalil ElMedkhar, 17-year-old Gavin Turner, Nelson Martinez (his third stint with Loudoun, this time signed to a short term contract because of the aforementioned backline depth), and recent arrival Riley Bidois. Loudoun United is a work in progress and the lack of available ready to go options reflected that.

Did I mention the centerback depth? After 120 minutes Wednesday, Yanis Leerman pulls up after 13 minutes of play. I immediately looked over at the stands, where Cole Turner, Keegan Hughes and Robby Dambrot were in the stands, and wondered how close each would be to returning to play as it would make things easier ahead of a daunting May. Heck, Ryan Martin could go with a three-man backline of that group!

Nevertheless, Keegan Tingey went 90 minutes Saturday after going 120 Wednesday, Jacob Erlandson had the experience of the Skundrich-McCabe centerback experience, Erlandson almost scored, and this build from the back deserved a little more examination at the end I thought:

Random Stat of the Week: 9/44.4% The former is the amount of shots per 90 minutes for Loudoun, good for 20th of 24 teams. The latter is the percentage of shots on target per 90 minutes, good for 3rd.

So, where does this leave us? I think that ‘I quit’ may be the winning vote. And while this week’s game at Sacramento is daunting, as before, leaving it to Ryan Martin for the last word:

“If you look at Memphis to Richmond, Richmond to Louisville, it is three very promising performances as a whole. Obviously there are (some) things to clean up, we’re not many games into the season, so now it’s really about getting our guys fit, healthy, rested, and ready to push again.”