Brian Bliss bemoaned his side’s lack of fight as the Chicago Fire fell to their heaviest defeat of the year, to finish the 2015 season without a win on the road.
The 4-0 defeat at second placed D.C. United was a humbling experience for the Men in Red, who will now finish the year as MLS’s bottom club with an 8-19-6 record and a total of 30 points. With one game left, at home to the Supporter Shield chasing New York Red Bulls next Sunday, their potential haul of 33 points is one shy of both the Philadelphia Union and the Colorado Rapids and represents the Fire’s lowest return since joining MLS in 1997.
“Not many,” was interim head coach Bliss’ response when asked if there were any positives to take from the game. “I thought we had a couple of guys that really got after it and played to what I would say their capabilities are. But we had most, if not all other than those two, that didn’t get out there and get after it and give a good performance. We can always say if things aren’t going well for you on the ball everybody can fight. We didn’t bring that today.”
Once again, the Fire were the architects of their own downfall, inadvertently contributing to three of the hosts’ goals with deflections or misplaced clearances falling kindly for D.C.
“It just sums up our season right there,” veteran goalkeeper Jon Busch admitted. “The first goal comes off a broken play again and one of our defenders toe pokes it on to (Chris) Pontius and he’s in and around. Again, it’s on us, not to take anything away from them because they are a very talented team, but the only good goal they got was the header off the corner. We battled hard the first half, we had some good chances, we didn’t take advantage of those and then second half we kind of fell apart.
“You look at the third goal and it’s deflected off Lovel (Palmer), he’s trying to cross the ball, it’s a freak thing and it goes in when (Fabian) Espindola is trying to cross it. The fourth goal, somebody takes a long shot, it gets deflected straight to (Alvaro) Saborio and he’s just there to pop home the rebound. In essence, in all honesty, that just sums up our season right there. We do some good things during games, especially in the first half and it just falls apart in the second. It’s frustrating for the boys.”
After a solid week on the training pitch, Bliss said the performance and the result was the “furthest thing from what we expected”.
“The mentality during the week, today’s performance couldn’t have been further from it,” Bliss said. “If we had got to the half at 0-0 I think it would have been a different ball game, not that 4-0 is something to wipe away. But the game is what it is and at 4-0 we have to take responsibility for that.”
