Unanswered Questions

Before the season, the biggest question facing the Chicago Fire was, where are the goals going to come from? After two matches, that's still a really, really good question.

According to MLSNET, the Fire ranks 10th in shots, 9th in shots on goal -- tied with a team who has played one less match, mind you, 12th in offsides and 10th in corner kicks. And this is despite being up a man for 84 minutes of their second match.

I would argue that the Fire got suckered into bad conventional wisdom after the early red card against the Rapids. Especially on such a huge field, the players all know they can take an extra touch or two without worrying too much about pressure. In taking those extra touches, though, the Fire gave Colorado time to close down whatever efforts the forwards were making to get open.

Obviously, there's work to be done to get the Fire offense up to speed, but a lot of that may simply be the speed part. One of the important qualities of the USOC run last year was that we did a lot of one-touch passing in the back and the midfield for our possession game. So far this year, we seem to have remembered the possession part, but not the types of passes we were making to maintain it.

The quicker we move the ball, the more opportunities will open up for our attacking players. I'm not ready to throw them all out of the starting lineup just yet until we see if they learn from one of the more dismal performances I've seen from this squad in ten years.