Robin Lod’s hot start this season has the Loons midfielder in danger of finally shedding his long-held status as one of the most underrated players in MLS.

The Finnish international has three goals and five assists through seven games in 2024, and those eight total goal contributions are on par or just off the pace of some of MLS brightest stars. Lod is tied with 2023 MLS MVP Lucho Acosta in Cincinnati and two behind Inter Miami superstars Leo Messi and Luis Suarez.

“It’s something I’ve been working on, especially coming from the injury,” Lod said Tuesday in reference to his season-ending meniscus injury suffered 11 months ago. “I feel like I have a lot of energy and (hunger) to show up. It’s something I’ve been focusing on to just have those goal contributions to help the team.”

Lod doesn’t pay too much attention to the company he now keeps and is content in continuing to shirk the spotlight.

“I don’t need that extra” attention, Lod said. “I know when I’m playing good. It’s enough that the coach is here (and) likes what I do. That’s all that matters for me.”

New MNUFC head coach Eric Ramsay now highly rates Lod.

“He is one of those players that you can’t appreciate quite how good of a player he is until you’ve seen him up close and you can appreciate how he can execute various ways of playing,” Ramsay said. “He can play within different systems. Obviously, he’s relatively both footed, athletic.”

Ramsay said Lod has built himself up to 100 percent in the last few weeks, an elite level on display late in games when he has set up Tani Oluwaseyi and Franco Fragapane’s goals against Real Salt Lake and Houston Dynamo at Allianz Field earlier this month.

Lod then assisted on Oluwaseyi and Hassani Dotson’s goals and Lod scored one of his own in the 3-0 win at Charlotte FC on Sunday.

“He’s also getting back to his best as well; he would say that himself,” Ramsay said. “… You’ve seen him in the last two or three games that he’s finishing the games really strong. As the game starts to open up, he comes into his own. He’s a really good player for the MLS for this level and he’s brilliant to work with.”

Window shutting quietly

MNUFC was not expected to make any significant roster moves with the MLS primary transfer window set to close Tuesday.

That has been by design.

Loons Chief Soccer Officer Khaled El-Ahmad, who has only slightly tinkered with the roster he inherited this year, is keeping the salary flexibility and open roster spots available for what is expected to be a more active summer transfer window.

MLS is expected, according to The Athletic, to implement two roster paths for clubs: No. 1: Clubs can have up to two Designated Players and four Under-22 Initiative spots, plus $2 million in General Allocation Money (GAM). Or No. 2: Clubs can carry three DPs and three U-22 players.

The Loons are expected to pursue the two DP/four U22 route, which would further help them achieve one of their goals of creating a younger team for the future.

The summer transfer window runs from July 18 to Aug. 14, and it might include offloading absentee DP Emanuel Reynoso to another club via intra-league trade or transfer outside of MLS.

Briefly

Winger Sang Bin Jeong suffered a muscle cramp when he was stretchered off the field in South Korea’s Asian Cup Under-23 win over Japan on Monday, Ramsay said. Jeong will remain with his national team in its Olympic qualifying tournament, which continues in the knockout stage versus. Indonesia on Thursday. He will miss Loons-Sporting Kansas City match in St. Paul on Saturday. … Coming off a hat trick in MNUFC2’s 4-3 win Sunday, mdifeidler Carlos Harvey might see an opportunity with the first team in the near future. “He’s had a really good couple of week,” Ramsay said. “He’s notably improving on his level of fitness and readiness and obviously he’s had a couple of really good impacts on the second team. Every time he has been with (the first team), he has trained really well recently. I think his chance (in MLS) is just around the corner.”

The short, strange saga of “Ady Mill Rd” has come to an end. Late last week, drivers on Interstate 35E north in St. Paul noticed that a new highway sign beckoning them to exit onto Ayd Mill Road at exit 104B, near Randolph Avenue, had been misspelled, the latest unintended slight in the city’s sometimes-offbeat experience with road signage.

Minnesota Department of Transportation crews corrected the transposition of letters with a temporary patch overnight Monday into Tuesday, and have promised to follow up with a permanent fix. Officials blamed the error on new contractors.

“We have a sign replacement project going on between Highway 62 and University Avenue,” explained Kent Barnard, a MnDOT spokesman, on Tuesday, who noted that typos on highway signage are not unprecedented. “That’s not the first time, unfortunately. That’s why they put pencils on erasers — because people do make mistakes once in a while.”

Other highway signs immediately surrounding the “Ady Mill Rd” exit were spelled correctly, so it’s doubtful the odd spelling caused much confusion. It did lend itself to some snickers, as well as an offer to purchase the sign from a woman of the same last name. MnDOT politely declined, citing legal complications around the sale of public property and other practical difficulties.

“It would take up a wall in her living room,” Barnard said. “They don’t look quite so big when you’re standing looking down on them.”

St. Paul, which has spawned longstanding anti-billboard advocates in the form of Scenic St. Paul, has a colorful history of agonizing over billboards and signage.

In 2021, when Huntington Bank entered the Twin Cities market by acquiring TCF Bank, it proclaimed its arrival to drivers on the Lafayette Bridge in downtown St. Paul with a billboard sporting the ultimate faux pas: “Hello, Minneapolis!”

In August 2012, two McDonald’s billboards erected on Lexington Parkway and Payne Avenue in St. Paul made an effort at enticing Hmong customers in the Hmong language, but the giant ads left out nine spaces between words, creating a long string of gibberish. During Green Line construction the following year, street signs at University Avenue and Galtier Street briefly welcomed visitors to “Unversity Avenue.” Following sometimes tongue-in-cheek media coverage, all four signs were quickly corrected.

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By Sara Rathner | NerdWallet

A lot of work goes into making a household run smoothly, and the thread that runs through all the labor is money. It’s money that makes it possible to fix a broken appliance, enroll the kids in summer camp and save up to replace the aging car. The mental load of money can be heavy. It’s made up of those endless invisible tasks we engage in, and the future tasks we lie awake at night thinking about.

“I think it is important to mention the emotional weight that comes with worrying about money. Do we have enough for rent next month? Are we saving enough for college?” Kate Mangino, author of “Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home,” said in an email. “Those kinds of worries tend to chip away at our emotional health, especially if we think our partner doesn’t share this worry, and we’re alone in carrying that weight.”

When it comes to the mental load of managing financial responsibilities, couples can fall into unproductive patterns that can lead to conflict, resentment and even willful ignorance. If money management feels unbalanced in your relationship, here are some ways to rethink your routine.

Approach money as equals

If one person takes on most or all money tasks, there can be a tendency to fall into a manager/follower dynamic, which can create a power imbalance in your relationship.

Additionally, when one person is in charge and the other does tasks as assigned without understanding the full picture, it can leave that second person in the dark. “The person who is ‘spared’ having to think about this stuff will become less financially literate over time,” Scott Rick, author of “Tightwads and Spendthrifts: Navigating the Money Minefield in Real Relationships,” said in an email. “This will leave them especially vulnerable if the relationship ends, either through divorce or the death of their partner.”

Equality doesn’t mean each person must be 50% responsible for every task, or even that you each take on 50% of tasks, but rather that you acknowledge that you have an equal stake in your shared success.

List and assign money tasks

Schedule a money date or two to make a comprehensive financial to-do list. Who is responsible for which task currently, and how did it become their responsibility? Should any of these tasks be switched to the other person? Is anything not getting done?

Break down each task into a list of subtasks. Let’s say you both want to work with a financial planner, and one of you takes responsibility for finding one. Those subtasks can be:

Get three names of financial planners that meet your shared requirements (such as a fee-only planner, or someone with specific professional credentials).
Contact those planners to inquire whether they’re taking on new clients.
Schedule consultations at a time that’s also convenient for your spouse or partner, and prepare any needed financial documents in advance of those meetings.

“It is important to recognize that managing money is only one of many tasks required to run a household, so these types of conversations should not happen in isolation,” Brian Page, founder of Modern Husbands, a community that shares ideas to manage money and the home as a team, said in an email. “Be considerate of the other household burdens you each tackle.”

Own your tasks from start to finish

As you list your tasks, discuss what “done” looks like for each. Set parameters, a budget and other expectations. Then, you each select tasks to accomplish on your own, with periodic check-ins.

Some tasks are complicated, but take them one step at a time. This is not the time for weaponized incompetence (though, in a partnership, it’s never a good move to feign incompetence to get out of a responsibility). If you’re stuck on a subtask, you can talk about it when you check in with each other.

“Remember — everything money related is a skill, and skills can be learned. There’s no ‘I’m just bad with money’ excuse,” Mangino said. “You just need to prioritize learning that skill, and practice. And practice. And in time, you get better.”

This article was written by NerdWallet and was originally published by The Associated Press.

The article How Couples Can Share the Mental Load of Money Management originally appeared on NerdWallet.