Loudoun United has certainly been on a heater of late, coming into Friday night’s game with Las Vegas having the chance to do something that they had only done once before: win four straight games. The last three games Loudoun kept their laundry clean, and a fourth was attainable but fell early, and while the game had shared points, nobody knew what would happen in the path to it.

It was nuts! While it’s nice to have a take and such after a game, sometimes the game is bonkers enough that you can’t really quantify it that much:

Given how well Ammeter was playing it would take a banger for Loudoun to level things, and Tommy McCabe put it where nobody was going to get it:

Note that goal, and scroll up a little more to see the xG value of it. That Loudoun turned in a Top 5 in club history xG effort that only had that banger to show for it was a testament to how weird things were.

It wasn’t COMPLETELY unexpected. One of the things I said ahead of the game for DC News Now was that Loudoun, coming off a bye week, facing a Vegas side with an impressive win under their belt, needed to start fast and/or strong to keep the momentum going. And they didn’t do that! Keegan Tingey mentioned postgame about giving up an early goal again. The response was impressive and could have been decisive weren’t it not for a Team of the Week type performance, but to avoid getting in situations like that, Loudoun can’t put themselves in situations like that.

Catching up on falling back. One more thing on slow starts: Loudoun is 7th in the East with 18 points, tied with Birmingham and two points ahead of Hartford, both of whom have a game in hand on Ryan Martin’s bunch. Pittsburgh is sitting four points back along with North Carolina, who host Monterey Bay tonight. Loudoun is going to play a couple of those aforementioned sides in the next month or so, along with a couple of other Top 3 sides to boot. It’s strange to consider bemoaning using the words “dropped points” and “Loudoun United” in the same thought, even more so when it comes to having postseason ramifications, but with McCabe, Florian Valot, Drew Skundrich and Kwame Awuah in the room, guys who have been on teams that have appeared in the postseason in their past stops, they are going to remind the others that the five points that they could have had over the last month would put them in contention for a home playoff game (never mind Loudoun’s first postseason appearance), so getting hungry, staying hungry and wanting more may need to get into the conversation.

Random Stat of the Day: 15.1% (difference in games won percentage from 2023 (20.6%) to 2024 (35.7%).

So, where does this leave us? The fact that Loudoun gave up an early goal and/or has this newly acquired habit of playing down to competition may be a minor cause of concern, though it’s something they’re aware of and can remedy, starting with next week’s game against a Miami side that is allowing almost two and a half goals a game, and will be on short rest having played Tulsa midweek.

Loudoun has a challenging stretch of five games, starting with hosting Tampa Bay the following week, and they will want to both avoid a slow start on the road and continue their upward progression to keep spirits high.