Hartford Athletic hosts Loudoun United on Saturday night, as they look to recover from their worst loss in nearly two years. The matchup is the 19th meeting all-time between the two clubs, with the Latics having won 12 of the prior games and Loudoun five, with just one draw.

Ahead of the game, Burke reiterated his message from the immediate aftermath: everything that could go wrong, did. And what went wrong started with the club’s preparations, which proved to have missed the mark.

“We prepared for a four. They played in a five, so they had us outnumbered. So our press was disjointed," Burke said. "You know, we, we literally got almost everything wrong that we could possibly get wrong on the day. And you have to own those. Everyone has those days at work. I don't care what you do. And you hope you only have one or two of them a year. But we had one of those days. I mean, we couldn't pass the ball 6 yards. It wouldn't have mattered what we did tactically. I would say 30 guys had a bad day all at the same time. Our whole technical organization had a bad day.”

When an entire team has a bad day like that, it can be tempting to just close the book on the game and move on. Failure at every level of preparation and execution can make a meaningful post-mortem challenging, but Burke said that the Latics spent the early part of the week analyzing their mistakes.

“Sometimes you just burn the tape on a game like that, but this one we actually dug into quite a bit, Burke said. "You know, we know it's a an anomaly, it's a one off. We've been in great form despite missing five regular starters. So we're still really positive about where we're at in the big picture. And you know, we're very cognizant of how bad that game was on every level, but we took the opportunity to just be calm and level headed and dissect it.”

From dissecting that tape, one theme that emerged was the same one Burke had pinpointed in the immediate aftermath: his team came out flat. That can happen from time to time, but it’s the sort of thing teams usually hope to avoid at home with a week to prepare. Burke emphasized this again on Friday, and indicated that the club’s approach to training this week had been in part driven by a desire to avoid a repeat of last Saturday’s listless performance.

“That was the key factor in that game," he said. "I think their energy was much better than ours and that can never be the case on our home field. You know, I know there's no crowd. I know there's no environment for that game, but that's not an excuse. We still have a week match to approach and try to win. I mean, we did it in Birmingham with no crowd. We did it in Miami with no crowd and we put up zero. So to make that many mistakes, part of it, part of the root cause of that game was energy. So we talked about how do we get that right? So we really went back to a fundamental week of training where we didn't do anything outside of our most basic training and we laid off them physically so we can pop Saturday.”

On Saturday, Hartford will take on a Loudoun team that is coming off a three-all draw with Louisville City. It was its third draw in five league matches to start the season, and easily the most impressive, as it came back from 2-nil down to lead 3-2 before Evan Davila equalized for City to earn them a share of the points.

Loudoun may not have been lighting the world on fire – they have just those three points so far – but forward Thorleifur Úlfarsson has been on a hot streak. Up to this point, no player in the league is converting their chances at a better rate than the Icelander, and Burke is well attuned to the danger of a familiar face.

“Well, Thor's elite for this level," burke said. "I coached him in Houston and you know, he's a guy that can score in many different ways. And when he's focused and energetic, you know he's he's going to score goals even if you're tight defensively. So I think the reality is we're playing against a really hot forward with a really high ceiling and they have some good pieces around him. [Marcos] Dias, Jack [Panayotou], obviously guys that can unlock you on the ball, that can run at you, that can exploit spaces and final passes. So they have a lot of tools going forward.”

Coming off a game in which Hartford conceded four goals, another dangerous attack could be bad news. Through the early weeks of the season, Loudoun is in fact scoring at a good clip; only three teams in the league have scored more goals on a per-game basis. The Latics will need to be alert to the danger posed by the visitors’ attacking pieces, but will also be looking to find some attacking verve of their own against what has been a porous defense.

Hartford have been held scoreless in three straight games in all competitions. While they hope that Samuel Careaga will return to action on Saturday in at least a limited capacity, they will have to do the bulk of the work with the same group of players that has been struggling to find the back of the net. The good news there is that Loudoun has one of the worst scoring defenses in the league, with only Eastern Conference cellar-dwellers Sporting JAX conceding more goals on a per-game basis.

Taking advantage of that opportunity will require Hartford to come out with a little more enthusiasm and sense of purpose. Loudoun can be beaten in transition, but the Latics will have to be switched on and all on the same page to take advantage of those opportunities. The opening exchanges of the game will be key, as that’s where Hartford will show if it has the right mindset to bounce right back from last weekend’s one-sided loss.