Like London buses, Fire's first win of the season was immediately followed by a second and a third could easily be on the cards this season. Last week ahead of victory #2 I wrote ....
We previewed Fire's trip to New York last week when they beat Red Bulls 5-4 .......
These two have already met this season, playing out a 1-1 draw in the Windy City, that was pretty much par for the course for Fire, who have scored and conceded in all eight starts, no wins and six draws. They looked like recording that breakthrough win last week, leading Real Salt Lake 2-0 with 17 minutes remaining, but found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and lost 3-2.
Boss Frank Yallop was so mad afterwards, I thought his head was going to explode, saying : “Obviously it’s piss poor defending, I don’t think we really wanted to win that game because it didn’t show. If we wanted to we would have tried, put our head through the ball and cleared things and be good at that stuff but we didn’t. So it’s back to the drawing board for us. I thought we were going somewhere but now we’ve had a total collapse in a game we should have won.” He revamped the backline in the off season, something we spoke about on opening day and it is obviously still a work in progress.
Now they have the win, but quite what good old Frank was saying on the sidelines was anyones guess, when at 5-2 up with 24 minutes remaining, his team again let their opponent back into things and infact, after getting to 4-5 NYRB had several chances to at least equalise. Harry Shipp earned all the plaudits for the win, with his hat-trick and assist and offensively the Fire look decent, but at the back they are a mess and it is not often a team concede four goals and their keeper is singled out for praise, but that was the case with
Sean Johnson who made several top drawer saves, including one late from Thierry Henry which seemed destined to tie things up at 5-5. Fire just couldn't stop the supply of crosses into the box in New York and I doubt a solution has been found in 7 days, when one has not been found in three months + and these were concerns which surfaced in pre season and have not gone away.
However, they might not face quite the wide threat they did last week, or might have expected this evening with left winger and playmaker Graham Zusi (9-1-3...........two wins in nine starts without him) on international duty , also at the USA training camp is central defender Matt Besler (9-0-1) and his absence has been compounded by the hamstring injury picked up by Aurelien Collin (9-2-0) in the midweek home loss to Philadelphia Union, who hardly boosted the form with a 5-3 home defeat last night.
Good chance for Fire, hard to see the visiting defence without both starting centre backs keeping the on fire ( no pun intended) home offence out, at the other end of the pitch , well, who knows ! But SKC do not have the same threat without Zusi and will probably need two goals to get anything from this.
They won 2-1 and whilst it wasn't pretty and came against a understrength visitor, a win is a win. They sat back at 2-0 which invited pressure, the goal conceded came via an error, but despite giving too much possession away, for once they looked pretty solid. If they had taken a few other chances, the normally ultra reliable Mike Magee had two on 1 on 1's to clinch his hat-trick after scoring two penalties, they could have really run away with that game.
They will probably face more of an offensive threat today with Crew having refound their goal touch with three goals at Portland Timbers last week, but that 3-3 draw made it eight without a win and they had only scored three in their previous seven starts. In the West coast game they were without Michael Parkhurst and Waylon Fracis from the backline, the duo had been more or less ever present's and it was no wonder they conceded three in their absence . Fracis and Giancarlo Gonzalez ( who is another key member of the backline.... but did not leave until after the game in Portland) will miss out for sure today as they are with the Costa Rica squad, Parkhurst was still given a small chance of suiting up, to use an american term, but also had to deal with the massive disappointment of being culled from the 23 man US squad named by Jurgen Klinsmann yesterday and who knows how that will have messed with his mental state. So the situation will be compounded today, with possibly Josh Williams the only regular defender available and it might well mean that Crew will need to score 2-3 goals to get anything from this.
Fire still struggling at the back especially from set pieces with 68% of goals conceded coming from set pieces, but week on week that should improve....not sure what else they would be working on in training ! I would not put anyone off the "over", but I like Fire and the handicap start. 1.75 units Chicago Fire +0.25 ball 1.94 asian line/Ibramarket .
Good Luck.
