New York City F.C. has lost to the Red Bulls at home and away. At equal strength and with a man advantage. In the daytime and at night. On Sunday, it will try — again — to do the one thing it has failed to do in its two-year-old Hudson River rivalry: win.

It surely cannot go worse than the last meeting, a 7-0 thrashing in May that N.Y.C.F.C. Coach Patrick Vieira and at least one of his stars charitably described as “a disaster.”

“You can’t take away what happened in the last game,” Vieira said last week. “This is in our minds. That is part of what is happening, and we have to face it.

“But at the same time, it is still a game, and it is 3 points on the table, and that is why it’s important for us to focus on how we want to perform.”