Look, sometimes there are roller coasters in life. A personal down side is having a car get totalled when a school van doesn’t check their mirrors. But the up side is getting a whole bunch of money to throw at a new car, so…even Steven! Loudoun United tends to play this in a bizarro fashion lately. Following a big 2-0 win on the road against a Hartford side in need of the points, they seemed to be moving toward another point at home until a late flick from a corner let Indy Eleven walk out of Segra Field with a 1-0 win, which put Loudoun in need of some mojo as they went to Rhode Island Sunday. The 0-0 draw got them a point, but is it good, bad, or ugly? Let’s unpack the last 8 or 9 days:

Is this hanging on? It seems like hanging on. For me, it seems like forever, but was only three weeks ago when Loudoun seeimingly put a marker down on their postseason chances by beating Birmingham in convincing fashion 4-2. And in the five games since that four goal outburst, they’ve scored three, and they have two games left. Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood has a spinoff character called Daniel Tiger who has a song called “Countdown to Calm Down.” I just counted down a bunch of stuff, and I don’t feel calm! There have been chances there as far as xG goes in that span, but Loudoun’s 6th best in the USL at that number, and 12th in actual (of note, Zach Ryan makes about half of that difference on his own, good for 5th most underachieving scorer with at least 2,000 minutes).

I’m sure I’ll talk about the shopping list for Loudoun at some point down the road, but getting some more tidy finishing has to be among them.

Big brass for Bouchy. Abdellatif Aboukoura assisted on Wes Leggett’s goal in the Hartford win and missed out on Tuesday’s game with Indy, but came into Rhode Island as the starter in a mild surprise but a vote of confidence by Ryan Martin. And he was…OK?

For his biggest minutes back since his return, he was playing on a wet field against a tough opponent, still did what he could to link up, despite the lack of key passes on his night, getting his legs back is encouraging. He’s among a slowly growing core of players already returning for 2025 and even with his limited minutes should improve further for a kid who turns 20 this week.

On the unseemly, opaque side. Following the Hartford win, word came out from our friends at The Blazing Musket that a Loudoun player directed a homophobic slur at a Hartford player. The incident occurred following a foul by Florian Valot on Hartford’s Michee Ngalina. It remained unclear that Valot was the offending player (the only known thing to go on was broadcast video, which shows a frustrated Valot following some questionable officiating, but little else, and an animated Isaiah Johnston moments later). Then the USL mentioned three days later in a general news and notes article that Tommy McCabe would be suspended, but “Due to the timing of the review and decision, McCabe will be available for selection in Loudoun’s contest against Indy Eleven on Tuesday night, and unavailable for selection in Loudoun’s contest against Rhode Island FC on Sunday.” Friday afternoon, word came that McCabe’s suspension “due to an incident” was overturned altogether by an Independent Disciplinary Panel.

The Blazing Musket noted that this was an unrelated incident to the slur, and there were additional confrontations at the end of the game, punctuated by Hartford’s Mamadou Dieng with his hand around the throat of Loudoun’s Yanis Leerman. On Friday, Hartford declined to comment when asked, confusing things even more. Was this it? Was it not? Is the investigation still ongoing?

The USL encourages and accommodates people to see their product, and I find myself watching that more and more than MLS for more than the obvious proximal connection. And while the USL has grown by leaps and bounds (three men’s and two women’s divisions), they still occasionally handle things that counteract whatever aspirations they claim to have, and hopefully they can improve on handling unseemly matters like this in the future.

Random Stat of the Day: 0.94, the number of goals per game across 16 road games scored by Loudoun.

So, where does this leave us? Well, the home finale is now the biggest game in the franchise’s history, for real this time! They host a Pittsburgh side that has lost one game since July 6, amounting to a 7-1-6 record and level with Loudoun on points, but owning the tiebreaker over them at the moment. Like before, a reminder of how tight things are:

I include Hartford, as they had a game at Tampa postponed in anticipation of Hurricane Helene. Heck, Hartford could get a road win and make all of this moot!

The overarching point remains that Loudoun needs to max the points and let the chips fall where they may.