Toronto FC has four games left to close out the season.

Up first is this weekend’s away trip to Atlanta United. That will be followed by another road match at Orlando City SC before MLS pauses for the September international break. When play resumes the club will host Inter Miami CF in the final home match at BMO Field before travelling to face the Philadelphia Union on Decision Day at the start of October.

The playoff hopes took a dent last weekend with the 4-3 loss against CF Montreal under the midway lights of the CNE. Toronto stands five points shy of the final berth in the Eastern Conference heading into this weekend’s action.

But that doesn’t change anything for the club.

“You go into every game wanting to win,” levelled Mark-Anthony Kaye on Thursday at the BMO Training Ground. “Until there's no more games to win, the mentality doesn't change.”

“We know the predicament we're in, we know there's four games left, we know there's teams with games in hand. You can name a list of all the things surrounding us right now, but for us it's just continuing to focus on what we're trying to achieve in terms of football, the way we're trying to play, and go into every game with a mindset of trying to take three points,” he continued. “Four games left, four opportunities to get three points, and after those games we'll have another discussion and see where we’re at.”

The disappointment following the Montreal result has overshadowed what a good run of form the club has been on. TFC has collected 16 points in their last nine games, a rate of 1.78 points-per-game. That is a pace good enough to place them squarely in the top four of the conference if sustained for the entire season.

At the forefront of that surge has been the performances of Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi, who have combined for 13 goals and five assists in their nine league matches. Toronto has scored 21 goals over that spell.

“That is a weird statistic,” said Bob Bradley of those figures. “If you find good attacking teams, you'll see that if your wide left and wide right attackers are dangerous, on the move, going into the box, they're going to have a high involvement in goals.”

“Do I think that our ideas of how we want to play and their qualities and the understanding of certain moments is off to a good start? I do, for sure, but there's still so much,” he continued. “We might get to the point somewhere along the line where those guys are contributing even more, but we might have a stretch where it's not 17 of 19 or something. I don't get caught up with that. I see the good moments.”

“What I would say in both Fede and Lorenzo's cases, they’ve both shown that they're capable of making some great passes and scoring some great goals. That's great. That is an important part of us creating chances,” Bradley elaborated. “Now, in a weird way, can they be sharper? Absolutely. Can they have different moments? Is it a better decision in certain moments to shoot from 25 yards or is it better that at the last second you slip a ball and maybe the next guy gets the ball and makes one more pass and then you create a goal that way? There's still things that we've got to continue to work on and sharpen up on, but I love what they're able to bring.”

One idea circulating in the background all season for TFC has been the process of becoming a good team. This season may be ending, but that evolution has just begun.

Part of that has been the change in personnel.

Insigne, Bernardeschi, and Domenico Criscto have garnered much of the spotlight, but the addition of Mark-Anthony Kaye, who missed seven of those nine matches, will be just as important in the long run.

“Having him around is great,” said Bradley, who coached Kaye at LAFC previously. “He's a great guy, he shares a vision of what we want to be in terms of the way we play, the way we train, the way we talk to each other. He brings really good qualities and those qualities, in the building and on the field, show up right away.”

“It's been disappointing that we've not had him out there more,” he continued. “We had the excitement of the first half against Charlotte and then we've not had any time since where Mark, Oso, Lorenzo, and Fede have all been on the field at the same time and that’s been disappointing for sure.”

Kaye made his return on Sunday, coming on for the second half against Montreal.

“A little slow, I’m not going to lie,” said Kaye of how he was feeling on the pitch. “It's tough when you have been out for four-to-five weeks. I'll take a lot of positives away from actually getting on the field and being back in that competitive environment; obviously, I wish I could have done more to help us get the result we wanted.”

“There were some moments in the game that felt normal and there's a lot of other moments that didn't, so it's back to the training ground this week, working really hard before this game on the weekend to try and regain my form again,” he continued. “It was definitely a good step forward in the recovery process to get some minutes in a meaningful game, but there's a lot more work to do.”

That bit of rust is only natural.

“No matter your experience, no matter how many big games you've played in, how talented you are, when you haven't played over and over and over, when you're not in the midst of training and playing games and training and playing games, little things, touches, some of your sharpness, can't possibly be at the level that it would be otherwise,” said Bradley. “That part we all know, but it's great to see him back on the field.”

That 45 minutes against Charlotte FC when Insigne, Bernardeschi, and Kaye debuted was a glimpse of the possible future. With some uncertainty around the availability of Jonathan Osorio, Insigne, and Criscito heading into the weekend, further patience may be required. Evolution is a slow process.

But as Kaye said, nothing will alter the baseline mentality that TFC will approach Saturday’s clash in Atlanta.

Gonzalo Pineda’s side enter the weekend action one point behind TFC with a game in hand, eager to find their own way up the standings.

Having lost their last two matches, away to the Philadelphia Union and the Portland Timbers, they will be looking to make the most of home-field advantage at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Atlanta will be without leading scorer Josef Martínez, who was suspended by the team for “conduct detrimental to the team.’ Top assist man Thiago Almada with 10 on the season as well as his midfield partner Marcelino Moreno, who has seven helpers, will look to pick up some of that slack, as will Ronaldo Cisneros and Luis Araújo, with seven and four goals, respectively.

Toronto won the meeting earlier this season, 2-1 at BMO Field on June 26, with Osorio and Ralph Priso scoring either side of an Araújo strike.

Since Atlanta joined the league in 2017 the two clubs have faced off in some ferocious contests including the 2019 Eastern Conference Final, which TFC won 2-1 in Atlanta. With both in need of a win, Saturday will be no different.

“They’re still a team with a lot of skillful players,” cautioned Bradley of overlooking Atlanta without their talismanic striker. “They're pretty fluid with the way that attackers move around, you have some creative players, when you play them there the challenge of finding the right ways to make it hard for them in their build-up, the right ways to control the game. Those are important details.”