Following Loudoun’s Sunday draw with Pittsburgh, one couldn’t be blamed for seeing that perhaps they had found themselves back into the swing of things and hopefully snapping their winless streak heading into Saturday night’s Segra soiree with Oakland. Unfortunately two first-half goals in five minutes were the difference as Loudoun dropped a 2-0 result to the Roots, leading to the second straight shutout of the hosts and winless in six over all competitions. So let’s try to poke around what’s going on, shall we?

The easy answer is that it’s not just a one-man team. There’s a weird sort of symmetry in this streak; Abdellatif Aboukoura missed his second straight start to injury, but the urge to lean on what happened Saturday was because he wasn’t there is perhaps a touch convenient. After all, Loudoun scored two goals on the road without him at the beginning of the week, and Aboukoura played the four games before that too. He scored in two of those, and they were the only goals the team scored, but Loudoun’s lack of winning the last month hasn’t been because of a player who hasn’t played in a week, there have been other issues.

For example? Well if you look at the first goal, Florian Valot passes crossfield because he sees Wesley Leggett. Leggett pulls up on his run to the ball, Neveal Hackshaw gets to it first and well:

Within a 15 minute span, this happened, Leggett went down and required medical attention leading into the hydration break, and came off in the 38th minute, along with D.C. United loanee Bibi Karamoko. The action maps for both show a relatively isolated(?) Leggett:

Leggett’s been dealing with injury this season, but he has two goals in 2025, where he had eight last year. Karamoko has yet to find a pro goal with D.C. or Loudoun, but didn’t step up to close space on Panos Armenakas, so Yanis Leerman had to come up, Peter Wilson was found at the top of the Loudoun box, which led to goal two.

Ryan Martin was able to make the subs he made because Zach Ryan was on the bench and the team’s versatility, combined with Martin’s desire to shake things up for the guys onfield, allowed for the subs to occur. But Aboukoura’s absence doesn’t account for inconsistency that was there before he went down and still appears to exist.

On doing what you’re supposed to do. About this time last year, I recall bemoaning Loudoun’s inability to handle games at home against teams that on paper they should dispatch with relative ease. At the time they played them, Orange County and Oakland were in 10th in the West, both teams come to Loudoun and shut out the home side. I’m happy to hear the case where smaller bursts of form lend to this; OCSC won three straight before playing Loudoun, Oakland won three of four before same, even Hartford (who started Loudoun’s run of unpleasantness) was playing better when Loudoun came to town.

The moral to a lot of soccer games is to not take most any team for granted, so hopefully an aspirational Loudoun has learned this as things get closer to a postseason spot.

Random Stat of the Day: 50% (Loudoun’s 3-3 record against the bottom six USL teams, including the previously mentioned shutouts).

So, where does this leave us? Well it seems like things are back to where they were before the Hounds game! Loudoun heads down 95 to play North Carolina FC Saturday and need to win, either in regulation or penalty kicks, in order to advance out of the group in the Jagermeister Cup. The good news is if they do that, they’ll host the Group 1 winner, who will be travelling from the West Coast, the bad news is if they don’t win, they likely will not get a wild card spot (the permutations can be found here). From there, two road games at Tulsa and Rhode Island call.

The road trip should give the team some time to work with each other and have an opportunity to end this skid, but if they want to both continue their hold on third place in the standings and their lead in the Jager Cup, it needs to happen soon.