It’s time for a St. Louis marathon, and I’m not talking about running 26.2 miles. St. Louis CITY is coming to town, and they’ll be staying a tad longer than our usual guests (MLS game on Saturday, USOC on Wednesday), meaning I’m going to have to remark about these guys multiple times in just a few days. Unfortunately for me, they’ve put together a rather unremarkable season so far, but I’ve done my best to sum it all up for this week’s edition of Storylines. Let’s take a quick look at what’s been going on down in the Chess Capital of the World.

Trending, But Not in a Good Way

I want to preface this section by saying that I have a slight personal beef with CITY. In their inaugural season in MLS (2023), I predicted that they’d finish last in the league, and I was more than a bit sassy in doing so. They proceeded to finish on top of the Western Conference, and though they fell to SKC in the first round of the playoffs, my pride had already taken a hit, as the bulletin board material I had given them was thrown right back into my face. Touché, St. Louis, touché.

I must be a DJ, though, because these tables just keep on turning.

To paraphrase legendary Minnesotan Bob Dylan, writers and critics who prophesy with their pens shouldn’t speak too soon, for the times they are a-changin’. In their second season, STL missed out on the playoffs altogether, and this year, they’re going to need a serious turn in form if they want to break that downward trend. Was I wrong in 2023? Perhaps. Or, perhaps we spoke too soon.

Much like their club’s overall history, 2025 started quite well for Head Coach Olof Mellberg and his squad. They didn’t allow a single goal in their first four games of the season, and while two of those were 0-0 draws, they looked like they’d be among the league’s most defensively astute squads. Since then, the numbers have betrayed them, as they conceded six times in the following four fixtures and eight in the four after that. Throw in their rivalry match against SKC just this week, and they’ve now allowed 16 goals in 13 games. While that number isn’t too far behind the league’s best (Vancouver is at 10), it’s simply not good enough given the trend at the other end.

If we use the same game blocks to analyze the goals scored by STL, the picture gets increasingly bleak. After scoring four in their first four, they managed just a single goal in the following four fixtures. They’ve scored six in their last five, including a pair of 2-2 draws that suggest that the only way for this team to score multiple goals in a game is by leaving themselves exposed. They’ve failed to score at all on six occasions, they’ve only scored multiple goals in the same game three times, and their -5 goal difference only looks kind of good because it’s sat next to the Galaxy’s astonishing -21 mark at the bottom of the table.

Diving Deeper

The trend is clearly downward; can we agree on that? While player availability due to injuries and whatnot is part of the picture, that doesn’t change the reality: This team is in need of a boost. In my research, I found a few interesting data points that back up my first section and rub things in a little more. Enjoy these parting bits of proof.

While I was looking for trends to point to, I ventured to compare STL’s home and away form, only to find that they’ve been exactly the same. Almost eerily so, actually. Their seven home matches have ended in the following results:

D-W-L-L-D-L-D

I know that’s just a random list, but just wait. Their six away results are as follows:

D-W-L-L-D-L

Either that’s cool or I need to get outside more often. Don’t tell me you don’t find that at least mildly interesting; they’re mirror images of one another! I would never bet on sports, nor would I advise anyone else to … But if I did, I’d bet on a draw this weekend, purely because of this anomaly.

Interestingly enough, though, CITY’s heaviest defeat and their largest victory in 2025 have both come on the road, meaning that they’ve been at their best and worst away from home. Now, that victory I mentioned was a 3-0 win over the Galaxy, so I don’t know that it’s really all that impressive, but a win is a win. Their 4-1 loss to Seattle just a few weeks ago felt like a much more accurate way to gauge their threat level.

As CITY prepares for two straight road matches against a Minnesota United team that has only lost once at Allianz Field in 2025, they’ll need to find something truly special to pull out anything of value from this extended trip. That said, I learned my lesson when I predicted a last-place finish in 2023; I won’t be making any concrete statements until after the match, and I won’t be counting anyone out.