The Union are one game away from an early end to their season. Their performances in a few other ones are to blame. As in, one point from the last nine available in an ultimately disastrous week, after the Union again battled but couldn’t take anything from a 3-2 loss at Columbus. Or one, as in the number of one-goal games the club has won this season in MLS play, none since April 6. They’ve lost their last 10 one-goal decisions, adding the Columbus setback to a 2-1 loss to Orlando on Wednesday. And then there’s the one win in 17 games from mid-April to mid-July, a 1-10-6 run that is on the precipice of rendering the last team to suffer a loss at the start of the season a non-playoff qualifier. So the Union will enter Decision Day in two weeks in 11th place, with 37 points, three points behind eighth-place D.C. United and ninth-place Montreal. They sit behind Toronto, which was eliminated from playoff contention since it has played all 34 games and is idle on Decision Day. Though the Union have the tiebreaker on both of the teams they’re chasing, they’ve lost control of their destiny: They need a win over Cincinnati in two weeks and both D.C. and Montreal to lose. D.C. hosts Charlotte, and Montreal hosts New York City FC, teams that are sixth and fifth, respectively, in the East. The Union own goal differential tiebreakers on both, which is a benefit of needing a multi-goal lead in order to close a team out. Any result from either of those teams, though, and the Union are out. “It’s not in our control anymore, so we’ll need some help,” manager Jim Curtin said Saturday night. “What we can control is getting a win at home against a strong Cincinnati, something we’re more than capable of. But we’ve let ourselves down in recent weeks. We’ve played great opponents – Orlando and Columbus are really good opponents. Had half-chances to get back into both games and steal a point, but if we’re honest, we were outplayed by Orlando and we were outplayed by Columbus.” The two-week build through the international break will lead to Cincinnati, whom the Union beat on the road in the Leagues Cup and lost a 4-3 decision there in the league. But that’s no longer the point. The Union (9-14-10, 37 points) left themselves too steep a climb in the final stretch. They stumbled through the middle part of the season against bad teams and have struggled after the Leagues Cup break where the majority of their opponents have been in playoff position. Even so, had they merely taken care of business against the only non-playoff team of the bunch – a 1-1 draw last week with Atlanta United in Chester – their postseason path wouldn’t be so narrow. “When you think back on some of the points we dropped and the fashion we did it, we did this to ourselves,” Curtin said. “I think we realize that. We went through a really hard stretch in the middle of the season. Part of that was because Andre (Blake) was out, for sure, but we win as a team and we lose as a team.” Curtin talks often about margin for error, and it’s been trimmed so far by that summer swoon. The Union can’t, for instance, lose track of potential MLS MVP Cucho Hernandez on a restart. They certainly can’t do it twice, as they did at Lower.com Field Saturday. They can’t afford for their big offensive players to blink out, as the big trio of Daniel Gazdag, Tai Baribo and Mikael Uhre has in the last three games. They can’t afford to rely on Homegrowns for their last four goals, two of them from Nathan Harriel, who also spurned several chances in Orlando City to cost them a win there. Curtin doesn’t think it’s an issue of depth. He doesn’t think it’s an issue of effort. He still retains faith in his players doing their part against Cincinnati. He can only lament that that will no longer be enough. “They’re disappointed because we let the control slip out of our hands,” Curtin said. “But they play hard. They fight for everything. It’s a great group of guys. They’re going to fight to the final whistle there; we’re going to find a way to get a result, to get a win there and stranger things have happened.”