I've followed the Fire avidly for 15 years. It gets harder and harder. Last Saturday's game was on the road against the #1 team in the East, so, ok, they lost. But last night, against lowly Philadephia, on a misty night when more than a few fans ventured out, the team was HORRIBLE. Little effort, little hustle, poor passing, poor trapping, too much dribbling, bad, bad defense. Where do I stop. A wasted evening when they could have moved into a position to actually win first place or at least clinch a top three spot. Now, they may even drop out of the playoffs entirely. The Fire players seemed lethargic. They have no bite. Any time there is contested ball, they lose. They may be the smallest team in the league, but they seem to know it and accept that they are going to be bullied around. Smaller, quicker teams, like Barcelona, can beat bigger stronger teams, but not the Fire. Oh, and Austin Berry, Jalil Anibaba and company were bad too. Berry kept slipping around and almost gave up a couple of early goals. Aside from Arne, no one seems able to make the first pass to transition from defense to offense. Anibaba keeps sending aerial ball across the field that actually slow play down. What happened to short balls on the ground and one touch soccer? Philly did that to us last night. I've been a season ticket holder for every year the Fire have existed, but this gets really hard when you come away seeing no hope. Even the halftime ceremony seemed flat and uninspired.
I think most of the fire's midfielder and forwards can be replaced next year.Poor passing,little possession and few shots on goal mark the fire's offense.
I considered starting a "Pessimism Thread: we have REAL chance of missing the playoffs" as a bit of self-deprecating humor. This will do just fine though...
If we had a GREAT team we would be contending for the supporter's shield.We HAVE to keep fernandez,alex,macdonald,oduro,and others who can't score consistently or pass to teammates consistently?Despite the recent mishaps we do have a decent defense and goalkeeper but except for rolfe and maybe nyarko we could find more consistent offensive help.
No we can't. MacDonald, Flaco, Pardo etc are all above average MLS players. If we got rid of them their replacements would likely be worse.
MacDonald is already very good, Alex is getting to that point. Flaco can go, as Alex is at least as good, more versatile, younger, and cheaper. I don't know what we pay Oduro, but if he is ok with a late game sub-role, I'm ok with keeping him. His presence means teams are extremely wary to commit extra bodies forwards. Pause, Paladini, and Pardo are all good at their role, which I think we see every time one of them is out to injury. The team lacks possession control without them in. Nyarko is decent, could be good if he ever gets his shooting better. Our RB position is probably the most in need of be improved. Second place would be CB if Arne decides to hang it up.
I didn't mention our defensive mids who are adequate although I still don't like playing two of them at a time. Macdonald is ok as a target forward but 2 goals in 11 games is not enough to be our main scorer.Alex in 15 games 2 goals no assists just doesn't cut it.
But LA can get keane and that swedish striker. Ny can get cooper and henry.Sj can get 22 goal scorer wondolowski.
You either need a lot of luck or a lot of money to land players with that kind of impact. Cooper got benched in Portland for poor performance. Wondo managed 4 goals in 37 games before SJE acquired him. We had every sign that Robayo would be a quality player here, but he wasn't. Just bad luck.
I've seen worse from the Fire but where they are in the standings and what even a single point would mean, this was not expected. I think that's the shock of it. One reason I like having some rotation towards the end against not in playoff teams. The obvious starting 11 get a little complacent in these games.
This from the Philly thread for this game sums it up perfectly: Freaking out over any one loss is dumb. Relax.
And nery castillo and all the others we've brought in that failed to score enough just bad luck also? When fans or teams say it's luck does it really means the winning teams who consistently make the right choices are luckier , or is it the're just smarter?
Hauptman is rich isn't he? Pujols was taken late in the baseball draft also but someone was smart enough to see talent.Saying it's luck is a loser's excuse. The smart organizations consistently winning always seem lucky.
Playing thoroughly disinterestedly and getting completely pwned at home by a crappy team on what should have been a special night and when you're in a dogfight not just for first place but for just a playoff spot is even dumber. As is excusing it. We can relax when we've clinched a playoff spot.
Andrew failing to allocate enough of his resources for your taste is no more worth getting upset about than the fans of a supporter owned English League 1 club setting a budget based on it's own finances. Every club has financial constraints and an intelligent fan accepts that. If Andrew doubled the Fire's budget tomorrow, someone would want him to double it again. It's easy to moan when it's not your money. Pujols is the perfect example of luck. Otherwise he would have been taken first overall or at least in the 1st round by the Cards. Add to that MLS deliberately rigs the league to get teams that finish poorly one year a boost for the following year. We did not get pwn3d. We outshot them 16-4. Giving up 3 goals on 4 shots is terrible luck.
Isn't funny that he was eventually taken by an organization that consitently picks the right players despite not being a top spender. Yeah you're right it was just luck.
Not just a playoff spot, but the top three. We are going no where if we finish in 4 th or 5th place, but at least we end the playoff drought.
Bullshit. Either you're lying to apologize for our worst game of the year or you did not watch the game. The stat sheet is skewed because Philly completely backed off around the 70th minute and we had a very late surge, throwing everything we had at them as they bunkered. And all we could scrounge was Oduro's goal. And it's not "terrible luck" when you let them walk right in on your keeper. Each of those goals was deserved. Hell, we flat out GIFTED them the first one. Meanwhile, we were held mostly to low percentage "shots" Our corner kicks are laughably inept. Anibaba thinks he's a Brazilian right back (fine, his Brazilian name is Retardo) but the sad fact is he can't cross worth a damn. Flacco is the bastard love child of Chad Barrett and Orlando Perez. And don't get me started on all the enforced errors we made. It's not like Philly was KC or anything. But we played like we'd rather be anywhere but at TP until the last 20 minutes of the game and by then it was too late. We simply lacked the quality to mount an effective attack. "Terrible luck", my ass. You sound like Dave Sarachan. The most you can say is that we got screwed on several calls by the ref (I'd have said 'the shitty ref' but it's USSF so I figure the 'shitty' part is assumed) but that's not why we lost. We lost because through sloppy and incompetent play which was a consequence of our lack of desire we came nowhere close to deserving to win that game. If we play like that on Saturday, we'll be lucky to keep Henry under double digits.
Yes. I want to see Piotr Nowak get drunk and start kicking the current squad's asses all over the museum like Jet Li for last night's lack of desire or quality.
It's not my money but its my club. I want the owner to compete. If he doesn't have the money, then get the ******** out. If you have the money and you won't spend it, then get the ******** out. Chicago is a big market and yet, if our owner wants to invest in this club like it is Columbus then we should be intelligent fans and accept that? This guy has been on the cheap from day one. You can see it in virtually everything from the shitty little programs they pass out now, to the reduction in quality of the kids club giveaways to putting the team on some shitty little over the air channel that no one watches. Andrew bought into a rich man's club. He should be prepared to play the game. Oh, and ******** Ruiz!