Coming into the season, Ryan Martin has looked at Loudoun United’s schedule as several blocks of four games each, give or take. Sacramento was the third game in the current block, with the first portion of the year being demanding in retrospective. And sure, it is a cliche, but Loudoun’s two-goal loss was closer than the scoreline showed. Or I thought so at least! So let’s take a look at things:

On Kiwi (and) co: A thing that makes Loudoun United fun is that when they do the international signings you aren’t quite sure what to make of them. Sometimes they turn into fun adventures like Niger’s Kairou Amoustapha, some like Morocco’s Hassan Aqboub never get off the ground. So when a New Zealander named Riley Bidois comes to town you wonder where this journey takes you. And in his first start, it wasn’t bad:

While he’s still learning the Loudoun system, he presumably comes into the team being vouched for by Loudoun assistant Steve Coleman, who was the Technical Director and helped build New Zealand’s Wellington Phoenix club, where Bidois played in the organization since 2019. I’d expect Bidois to play a bigger role and make a bigger impact as the season goes on.

On the quietly effective Mr. Leggett: Wesley Leggett’s short professional career has 40 USL games since the beginning of 2023, but in his 14 starts he’s scored five goals, including Loudoun’s lone tally Saturday. His actual versus expected goals are generally in line with one another, and last year he was third on the team in Goals Added. Another guy who quietly does well with the minutes afforded to him, but maybe more of a regular 1 or 1A look should be considered particularly with the busy month.

On injuries and the abundance therein: This will be a recurring theme until things subside, but for the third straight game, Loudoun had to make a first half substitution in back due to injury, as Rodrigo Lopez came through on Nelson Martinez, the latter of whom was signed to a short-term contract to fill in with the injuries in back.

Then in the second half, Trevor Amann, already on a yellow for a late tackle behind Kwame Awuah, does this to Jacob Erlandson less than ten minutes later:

I fully admit my biases, especially when I see a guy coming in late, sticking his wing out, giving his opponent a concussion 8-ish minutes after leaving some marks in another opponent’s calf, probably should have been sent home early for it. It stings a little more as that guy assists on the game-winner a half hour later.

More than that, getting Loudoun’s backline picked off one by one, sometimes by fluke, sometimes by trash behavior, when you’re facing an eventful, frequent-flying May, has got to get on some nerves.

Random Stat of the Day: 41 (number of clearances by Erlandson, second in the Eastern Conference).

So, where does this leave us? I wrote at the time when the ball when in the net for 2-1, “ah man,” and I meant it as Loudoun were going back and forth with the League’s last undefeated team, sometimes going end to end as far as the 80th minute or so with a patchwork backline. There are positives to take from this game, which is encouraging and necessary, as they go from playing a team who hadn’t lost in their first seven games to hosting another (Detroit) who lost last week for the first time in six games. It’s good for the team that it won’t get easier, but brownie points aren’t going to count in the standings.