It’s now or never for the San Jose Earthquakes, according to coach Bruce Arena.

“I’m preparing a team to try to win these last four games,” he said after a 4-2 loss to LAFC on Sept. 13. “If we come out the way we did tonight, we’re not going to win any of them. I’d like to say we can learn something from this, but this has been a bit of a broken record this year.”

Starting with Saturday night’s visit from St. Louis City SC, San Jose (9-13-8, 35 points) has no choice but to fix that broken record if it wants to stay in the West playoff table. It presently holds the last spot in the West but has a difficult finishing kick at conference leader San Diego, at Vancouver and then at home against Austin.

Defense is the Earthquakes’ main concern. They’re 28th in the league in goals allowed with 55, enough to negate the league’s second-best scoring attack that also has 55 goals. They trailed 3-0 12 minutes into the match with LAFC, too much to make up against a good team.

Meanwhile, St. Louis (6-17-7, 25 points) is cast in the spoiler’s role but did at least manage a 2-0 win on Sept. 13 at CF Montreal. Conrad Wallem and Marcel Hartel scored goals as St. Louis won its first road match since March 9 and managed just its sixth clean sheet of the year.

If nothing else, the result gave interim coach David Critchley and his team some satisfaction after a 1-1 draw in their previous fixture against Dallas. St. Louis launched an incredible 41 shots that night, the second-most in MLS history, and played a man up for the final 74 minutes but couldn’t get the victory.

“We have to look at ourselves and think about how we can have that number of chances and not come away with three points,” he said.

St. Louis is a perfect 5-0-0 against San Jose in three seasons, including a 2-1 triumph on May 31 in Critchley’s debut match after Olof Mellberg was fired.

–Field Level Media