Cavan Sullivan won’t save the Union’s awful defense. More importantly, Andre Blake won’t, either.

If Saturday’s awful 3-2 loss to Orlando was the first time you watched a Union game thanks to Cavan Sullivan’s arrival, welcome aboard.

But if you think Sullivan would have helped the team win amid all the hype he’s gotten, let’s answer that right away: No, he wouldn’t have.

The Union’s problems right now are at the defensive end of the field, not the attacking one. Believe it or not, they’re tied for second in goals in the league so far this year, 21, with the star-studded Los Angeles Galaxy and LAFC. Only Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez’s Inter Miami has scored more, 35.

No, the headline is this: The Union have given up two or more goals in every game of their ongoing five-game winless streak, and haven’t delivered a shutout since March 30.

“I think that the guys kind of look at each other and go, ‘We actually did some really good things,’” manager Jim Curtin said. “But we concede so easily, it just gets thrown out the window, and it feels like a wasted performance.”

» READ MORE: Union’s winless streak grows to five games in ugly home loss to Orlando City

Some fans might be inclined to point at goalkeeper Oliver Semmle, who made his seventh start on Saturday because of Andre Blake’s various injuries. But it shouldn’t take long to watch the goals and realize Semmle is far from the top of the list. Most of the shots that have beaten him would be unstoppable for any goalkeeper.

Of course Blake makes some saves that Semmle doesn’t. He makes saves that almost every goalkeeper you’ll come across doesn’t — so many, in fact, that he sets the bar for quality at an almost unreachable height. Perhaps more fans might understand now that Blake hasn’t just bailed them out often over the years, he’s spoiled them.

They’ve surely seen the real issue at this point: how those scoring chances came to be in the first place.

Damion Lowe was lax marking Duncan McGuire on Orlando’s first goal, and that was just one of many poor moments in the game. He was lucky a video review overturned a red card he got for charging into McGuire on a breakaway in the 74th.

» READ MORE: Is Cavan Sullivan really that good? Here’s what to know about the Union academy and its teen phenom.

José Andrés Martínez had a bad giveaway that led to Orlando’s second goal, the second time in three games that a poor pass by him led directly to an opponent scoring. That’s a big problem for a player who has been perhaps the most essential of anyone other than Blake in recent years.

“That’s kind of a microcosm of where we are as a team,” Curtin said, “and that’s probably why we’re a .500 team. And that for us now is not acceptable.”

Three-fourths of the back line was at fault on Orlando’s third score. After Lowe and Jakob Glesnes let Luis Murriel run past them, Kai Wagner put a hand up to claim Murriel was offside but was in fact that player keeping him on.

None of that was Semmle’s fault.

» READ MORE: Why Cavan Sullivan, hyped as the world’s best 14-year-old soccer player, chose to turn pro with the Union

“Defenders have to take responsibility, and we see that we’re conceding so many goals in these games,” Lowe said. “I think we have to just go back to basics and focus on being defensively sound and stable, and doing the simple things on the whole, and it will come back together. But I wish everyone don’t go into panic.”

What happened to the team that two years ago set Major League Soccer’s record for the fewest goals conceded in a 34-game season? Curtin knows, and here’s another quote to hang on his wall of all-timers.

“Right now, we let ourselves down for the key moments in front of goal, and that’s uncharacteristic of us,” Curtin said. “Because it’s literally the only thing we’ve done good over the last five years.”

Ouch. (It’s not really true, but it definitely showed how angry Curtin is.)

“We’ve been a team that has fought for everything, been hard to play against, didn’t make mistakes,” he continued. “And right now, maybe it’s contagious, but we make a lot of silly mistakes.”

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Curtin doesn’t like pointing figures at individuals, but he knows the most blame lies at the position he used to play: centerback.

Lowe was bad, and Jack Elliott has seemingly fallen below him on the depth chart. But the biggest problem is Glesnes, who has regressed alarmingly from the form that made him MLS’s defender of the year in 2022 and a two-time All-Star.

Elliott will almost certainly start Wednesday’s home game vs. New York City FC (7:30 p.m., Apple TV), simply for rotation’s sake. But Curtin can’t bench both of Saturday’s centerbacks because the only other option on the roster is young reserve Olwethu Makhanya.

Perhaps Brandan Craig would help if he wasn’t away on loan — so he can get playing time he wasn’t getting here. But it’s hard to blame the Union for thinking the 20-year-old wasn’t quite ready for the first team yet when they sent him to El Paso Locomotive of the second-tier USL Championship. He was ready to play against pros, but at a level between the reserve team’s and MLS. That’s exactly where he is.

The best short-term answers, especially while Blake is still out injured, would be to get Elliott back out there and put more defense-first players in the midfield, especially Leon Flach.

» READ MORE: For Jim Curtin, Cavan Sullivan signing with the Union is a ‘full-circle moment’

That might mean taking Quinn Sullivan off the field, a move that will become easier when Julián Carranza returns from suspension on Wednesday. It might even mean giving Jack McGlynn a night off, a big call to make when he’s in great form.

But there’s no better way to say it than how Curtin did: “It is inexcusable to concede three goals at home. We should never do that.”

The first thing you should do when there’s a problem is fix the problem. If that means playing ugly soccer for a while, so be it.

“It’s been five years since we’ve had a streak like this, so it hurts, and we’ve been trying to guard against it for a lot of years,” Curtin said. “If you want to point fingers, point them at the coach — I’ll take all the blame for it. … We have to do better on the field.”

With those words, and a few others, Curtin showed where the real problems are. Of course it’s his job, and just as importantly his character, to take the blame. But doing better on the field is up to his players. They have to step up.

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