What’s it going to take for the Union to snap out of their downward spiral? Here are two ideas.

For all their faults, the Union didn’t play a bad game against Charlotte FC on Saturday night.

They held possession for large stretches of the match; their passing was nearly 81% effective, and they rattled off 17 shots. On paper, one would suggest they did everything necessary to win.

But when you take a closer look at those stats and realize that the possession was mostly on their side of the pitch at Bank of America Stadium; those effective passes were rarely in Charlotte’s final third; and, of those 17 shots, only three were on target, you understand why the Union dropped their sixth straight match in Major League Soccer following a 2-1 final on Saturday.

The Union now hold the dubious distinction of being the first team in the history of the league to start a season 0-6 after winning the Supporters’ Shield the year before.

So where do the Union go from here?

The time for “soul searching” has passed, after a generous two-week respite to regroup and figure out what’s amiss, courtesy of a FIFA window. Now, it’s just time to get a win, heck, even a draw, as midfielder Alejandro Bedoya put it earlier this week in preparation for Montreal — a club faring only moderately better than the Union — on the road on Saturday (2:30 p.m., Apple TV).

“We have to make sure we get up and go again because, for me, Montreal, we have to get at them,” said manager Bradley Carnell. “This is a crucial game coming up, in my opinion.”

But before we examine what they learned and how it applies to Saturday’s match, we can’t just walk past these glaring observations that opposing teams will continue to exploit.

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Let’s be real. Anyone who witnessed Wilfried Zaha’s game-winning goal in the 80th minute could see that, despite his apparent superior talents, he would have needed to deploy them if anyone was standing in front of him last night.

Instead, fresh off a goal from Danley Jean Jacques in the 78th minute, Zaha ran in completely unmarked, hitting a monster of a side volley into Andre Blake’s far post.

If you needed a second look here’s a screenshot of the moment.

It’s clear the outside backs have been OK, with Nathan Harriel in his moments and Frankie Westfield in tough challenges that don’t get called for infractions, but the centerback duo of Japhet Sery Larsen and Olwethu Makhanya are still sorting out their positioning 10 games into the season.

During his postgame press conference, Carnell said something that he attributed to the entire team, but it might as well have been hyper-focused on the defensive side of the ball, specifically the Union’s back four.

“Right now, you know, it’s just a few percent of the fine margins that’s not going our way and we don’t get the rewards,” Carnell said. “ I feel for them. We feel for them, you know [but] you only get what you deserve.”

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Carnell alluded to it, but this next point about Ezekiel Alladoh has nothing to do with the fact that he’s the club’s largest-ever signing. It’s not about the over $4 million that exchanged hands.

Money doesn’t dictate how well a player performs in a system if he still doesn’t quite understand where he’s supposed to be. When it comes to Alladoh, the sample size has been small with media being unable to watch much of the team’s practices, so we resort to the analysis that these matches provide. He’s only played in seven of the club’s 10 matches, going a full 90 minutes just once, but there have been stretches in a few matches where it’s clear he’s still figuring things out.

The biggest example so far came in the seventh minute of Saturday night’s match, on a goal by Milan Iloski that was called back for offside. A closer examination showed Iloski had to pick up the pace on his run because Alladoh mistimed his.

As Indiana Vassilev drove up the field, he could see that the easy ball, a through ball into space to Alladoh, wasn’t the move with Alladoh offside. So in a split second, the ball instead gets weighted in Iloski’s supplemental run, which, to his credit, was a nice one even if he was marginally offside.

That was perhaps the biggest in a series of moments where Alladoh, as the target forward, rotating off Bruno Damiani, was behind the attacking play and not an option. It’s a situation of him dropping too deep at times and not being able to catch up to the attack.

For all of the faults that sent Tai Baribo packing to D.C. United, the one thing he did well was forward surging diagonal runs to remain as the high target upfield. That, and an ability to use his head well, is the reason why he left last season leading the team in goals with 16.

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Positionally, a review of what we can see shows Alladoh isn’t there quite yet. But there’s hope.

“We continue to build with him, we continue to grow with him, and we continue to coach him on a team level, an integrated level as well as an individual level,” said Carnell. “I think he’s benefited in the last two weeks from that attention, from that detailed coaching.

“I understand the price tag with his name attached to it, but he’s still 20 years old. We have to nurture him. We have to continue with him. And no one around here is giving up on Ezekiel.”

It’s certainly a weird time for a team that, at this point last season, was 6-3-1 in all competitions. It has to feel like a gut punch. But MLS is a long season, one made longer this year by a near two-month break in action for the FIFA World Cup. Of all the teams they’ve faced, Montréal offers the best chance for the Union to start turning things around.

“I don’t see us giving up, I don’t see a team that’s not committed, I don’t see a team that’s not creating, and I don’t see a team that’s not trying,” said Carnell. “They’re fighting until the very bitter end. I feel for them. We feel for them … we cannot drag our feet. Like I said, we just have to accept that we are where we are right now.”