One Win in Fourteen on the Road

Fourteen days between matches, and they end on Saturday night with the side that has fewer away wins than anybody in the Eastern Conference walking into Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Kickoff 7:30, Apple TV.

That is the fixture. It is not the fixture the national preview sold.

Mac Scarce filed a preview for Gameday Times on Thursday, syndicated through Yahoo, under the headline "Atlanta United Faces FC Cincinnati In Playoff Push After Early Struggles." It is a playoff-push piece that never prints a league position, a points total or a gap. Its single concession to the table is a conditional: "If the defense does not tighten up and the offense finds a rhythm, the dream of a deep playoff run could fade fast." It also still offers the summer transfer window as the fix, which "might hold the key." Filed in October.

The headline is wrong in a more structural way, too. A playoff push implies one of these clubs is pushing from inside a playoff place. Neither is. Ninth, the final qualifying place in the East, belongs to New York City FC on 33 points. FC Cincinnati are tenth on the same 33 from a match fewer, split only after the wins column came out level at eight apiece. First club outside the line. Saturday is two sides below the cut, and only one of them can still see it.

Atlanta's own numbers, once. Twenty-seven points from 27 matches, 14th of 15 in the Eastern Conference, six points behind ninth on equal matches played, with seven left. I printed that gap five days ago and it has not moved, because five of the clubs around that line — Atlanta, New York City FC, Cincinnati, D.C. United, Toronto — have not played since September 26. That is the arithmetic.

Now the part nobody has written.

FC Cincinnati have won one away match all season. One, in fourteen. On the road they are 1-6-7: nine points from a possible forty-two. Twenty-four of their thirty-three points were earned at TQL Stadium. Seventy-three per cent of a season, banked inside one building. The club four places above Atlanta United has, the moment it leaves Ohio, won less often than anybody in the conference.

Atlanta hold the other half of that sentence. At home they are 4-2-7, fourteen points from thirteen matches, in a stadium that used to be the whole argument for this franchise. Two bad habits meet on Saturday. One of them has to give first, and which one does is the real question of the night, not whether anybody is pushing.

They fail in opposite directions, too. I argued in late September that Atlanta's season was lost for want of a striker and not a defence: 32 goals now, still the fewest in the conference. Cincinnati are the photographic negative. Fifty-five scored, joint-second in the conference. Sixty-four conceded, joint-worst. Winless in five, with seventeen conceded in them — a 0-4 at Nashville, a 0-5 at Philadelphia.

None of which makes them comfortable to host. Evander has 13 goals and 12 assists — more involvements on his own than Atlanta's two most productive players have managed between them. Kévin Denkey has 14 goals. Alexey Miranchuk leads Atlanta in goals and is level with Miguel Almirón on six assists apiece — twelve involvements against a team total of thirty-two scored. That is the dependency. And no availability report exists yet for either club, so nobody writing on a Friday morning knows who walks out.

Cincinnati's number 12, meanwhile, is Miles Robinson — a centre-back who spent his best years in this building wearing the other shirt. The 17s will know exactly which one.

Everything about Saturday is conditional. No result, no team sheet, no honest way to settle what kind of side this is from a Friday. I have been certain twice in a fortnight, in opposite directions, and I am not doing it a third time without a match in front of me.

What is not conditional is the shape of the opponent: beatable in precisely the way Atlanta United are still capable of beating somebody, at home, against a side that cannot win away. October 28 at Citi Field is still out there, still the night nobody's absence will explain anything.

Fourteen days of nothing end at 7:30. The gap has not moved since September. Saturday is the first chance it gets to.