Free Headers: Loons have their backs against the wall, in every possible way

On May 2, Minnesota United beat the Columbus Crew, 3-2 in Columbus. The next day, St. Louis City lost at Austin FC, 2-0.

Since then, Minnesota has played 21 games in all competitions, winning two and losing ten.

St. Louis City has also played 21 games, in all competitions. They have won 14, and lost zero. They can set a new MLS record for consecutive games unbeaten, as long as they don't lose at Allianz Field on Saturday afternoon.

The visitors will be playing for the third time in seven days, but Minnesota is playing for the third time in eight days. Eight of the Loons have already played the equivalent of a game and a half or more this week, with five - Morris Duggan, Michael Boxall, Kelvin Yeboah, Wil Trapp, and Cherrion Valerius - above the 180-minute mark.

Oh, and if the Loons don't win, their playoff hopes are probably dead.

It is, in short, not an ideal situation. About the only thing the Loons have going for them is that St. Louis City is playing Columbus in the U.S. Open Cup next week, and so - record winning streaks aside - probably has an incentive to rest some of the guys who torched the Loons 4-2, just a month ago.

Friday, head coach Cameron Knowles was tight-lipped about whether the number of minutes his squad had played over the previous week would play into Saturday's lineup. "Not all games are created equally in terms of the physical output, and our performance department does a really good job of seeing what that loading looks like, managing the loading of individual players, and making sure that we do a great job on the recovery side as well," he said.

On a cold, windy day in Blaine on Friday, it was a shorter-than-usual training session outdoors, as the team did a tactical walkthrough of sorts inside on the indoor field. It also meant that a number of players broke out their balaclavas for the first time this fall - though we have to note that Nectarios Triantis (short sleeves, shorts) and Julian Gressel (shorts, hiked up like it was mid-summer) appear to be impervious to the weather.

It was a reminder that you can basically never use a player's home country as a guideline to their weather attitudes - apart, perhaps, from Argentinians Joaquín Pereyra and Tomás Chancalay, who generally appear to be thriving in summer and dying in winter. But among the other balaclava-clad were Canadian, German, and Colombian players.

As far as injury updates, the Loons appear to be pretty healthy, for this time of year. Backup goalkeeper Alec Smir and midfielder Peter Stroud will be unavailable for Saturday's game, but the rest of the squad participated fully.

Better dead than red

Gopher soccer had a rough weekend last weekend, losing 4-0 to second-ranked Michigan State and then 2-0 to #6 Ohio State, but none of that matters, because Sunday is one of the two most important games of the year (source: probably just me): at Wisconsin.

The Gophers beat Iowa 1-0 earlier this season, meaning that they're a Sunday win away from a successful year. And you have to go all the way back to 2009 - really - to find the last time that Minnesota beat both Iowa and Wisconsin in the same year. By my reckoning, that's 17 years without a decent season, for Gopher soccer (yes, I am aware that Gopher soccer boosters may push me down a flight of stairs for this attitude.)

Maybe this competition just needs a trophy. Somebody leave a water jug behind in Wisconsin and see what we can get moving.

Podcasts

In addition to my own podcast, I also appeared on the Star Tribune Daily Delivery podcast, with my old friend Michael Rand. What better time to talk about the Loons than this one?

And this week on my own podcast, I talked about the Colorado and St. Louis matches... plus quizzed friend of the site Jonathan Harrison, the MNUFC radio color commentator and podcast host, with a quiz that gave us a really good chance to remember a bunch of past Loons.