Fire look to capitalize on home-heavy schedule

The first six games of the Fire’s season went as many expected. Faced with a difficult schedule, the Fire showed some promising glimpses but only won once and looked a step or two behind the top teams in the league.

Now with the scheduling loosening up, the Fire have an opportunity to make up lost ground.

The match Saturday at Soldier Field with the Houston Dynamo (3-1-1, 10 points) begins a stretch of four home games over the next five. Houston, last year’s U.S. Open Cup winners, has gotten off to a strong start. The Fire can build momentum with a strong performance.

“It’s always good to be at home. Obviously, the start, four games were on the road,” coach Frank Klopas said. “But we thought we should have got more than five points at this point, if you look at the games and how we dropped certain points. But those are opportunities for us to learn and grow.”

Now in his fifth year with the Fire, midfielder Gaston Gimenez sounded similar to Klopas. There have been missed opportunities, but they’re in the past.

“That’s the way [soccer] is. It’s not to say that because you deserve it you get the points,” Gimenez said. “But that’s the reality we’ve been facing. Taking out the game against Atlanta [last Sunday], which was a little bit different, we have been going into games doing things well, doing the right things. And we are on our way to being able to build a good season if we keep doing the things the way we have been doing.”

To start getting wins, the Fire (1-3-2, 5 points) can’t repeat what happened Sunday. The 3-0 loss to Atlanta was the Fire’s worst performance of the season. They had just three shots on goal and generated 0.7 expected goals to Atlanta’s 4.6.

If Klopas and the Fire felt they needed proof of concept, Sunday didn’t provide it.

“Wins are important. The thing is, we look at the last game, so everybody looks at that game and us losing, it’s not [just] that we lost,” Klopas said. “When you look at it overall, as a whole, our game plan for me going in, we had a good game plan. We got stretched at times, but we got in good spots. We just didn’t have the ability now to penetrate in that final third.

“We have quality players, and I think tactically we can do things from point A to point B. But from point B to point C, we have quality players,” Klopas added. “There are moments where they need to make a difference there and be more aggressive and stuff like that.”

The Fire will get the chance to do that Saturday after a short week.

“We need to really come out with some really good energy on Saturday and take advantage of this homestand and get that confidence and momentum back,” Klopas said. “Obviously, the wins, you can’t replicate anything, but when you get the three points it just builds that confidence level within the group.”