Ashley Westwood was booked twice for dissent in Saturday night's 0-0 draw with Houston Dynamo FC. Charlotte FC's own discipline log stamps both bookings at the 71st minute, which is unusual enough to note and which the club's release does not explain. It records the two yellows and the reason for them, and nothing about what was said or to whom.
The second one sent Charlotte's captain off. Charlotte played out the remaining twenty-odd minutes a man short, did not concede, and finished with a second consecutive clean sheet in front of 25,450. The scoreline cost the club nothing. Wednesday is where the bill comes due, because Westwood is suspended for the trip to CF Montréal.
What the club was saying on Thursday
Three days before the match, Charlotte FC put out a release describing Westwood as having a career season: two goals and eight assists, a single-season best for him at the club, and second in club history with 23 MLS regular-season assists, one behind Pep Biel's 24. Biel started alongside him Saturday night.
The same release carried a smaller number. Westwood had played 1,797 of a possible 1,980 minutes in league play this season, and in the same sentence the club named a reason for part of the gap: he had missed one match, on a yellow card suspension.
It was offered as a durability note, and as a durability note it holds. Read three days later it does something else. The one absence the club chose to account for was a suspension, and Saturday produced a second one.
Wednesday, and one point
CF Montréal is last in the Eastern Conference, 21 points from 23 matches, five wins all season. That is the fixture Westwood misses.
At the other end of the table, Charlotte FC sits fifth in the East on 36 points from 23 matches, ten wins, six draws, seven losses. New England is fourth on 37 from the same 23 played. The top seven in each conference go straight to the first round of the playoffs and the eighth and ninth places go to wild-card matches, so Charlotte is inside the group that skips the wild card, one point off fourth.
The argument that this is a small thing has evidence behind it. Charlotte finished Saturday a man short without conceding, and in May it beat New England 1-0 while playing the last half hour a man down. This is a team that has handled being short-handed. But being short-handed for twenty minutes with the score level is not the same as starting a match without the player who has been on the field for all but 183 of the club's available league minutes, and Charlotte does not get to choose which of those two situations Wednesday resembles.
Two Charlotte players were already carrying yellow cards when Westwood picked up his: Tim Ream in first-half stoppage time and Djibril Diani in the 49th minute. Head coach Dean Smith had made a double substitution at 70 minutes, one minute before the sending-off.
Westwood serves the suspension Wednesday. He is one assist behind the club record, and Montréal is one fewer match in which to get it.