Fire Sidebar: Everything But The Goals

Lack of goals for Chicago, Nikolic taking the blame.

The Chicago Fire in recent games has dominated possession and ability to have the advantage over its opponents with shots in matches, but the inability to convert those chances to goals has left the club the lack of results.

Chicago ended up in another draw 1-1 with visiting Vancouver Whitecaps FC at SeatGeek Stadium on Friday night. The Fire had outshot its opponent once again with a 23-9 shot margin, but had just one goal to show for it.

“I think we can’t say that but in a game like today,” Chicago Fire head coach Veljko Paunovic said. “You miss your opportunities and you had a lot of pieces in the attack. The guys are creating a lot of opportunities and a lot of shots on goal. It’s just a lack of precision in the final pass. That’s something we miss right now. I think the mindset of our guys was very sharp and we just need a little bit more of completing the sequence more in the attack.”

In looking at their first six matches, the Fire has scored just eight goals thus far which doesn’t seem all that much with the way the club has possessed the ball and has created many chances match after match.

Nemanja Nikolic was a scoring leader in recent years and just scored his second goal on a penalty kick in the 84th minute Friday that tied the match. He has come forward to take some of the blame of the lack of finishing.

“Goals are missing of course,” Nickolic said. “It’s on me and I will take on the responsibility for that. I’m the guy that needs to score goals and it’s on me. I need to be sharper and better than that. I also deserve more goals in the six games that I’ve played. I just think the team and I need to work hard to believe in ourselves and stick together. We have to turn the situation and I feel power in this group. We didn’t lose and that’s positive thinking and all is in life to build on that. You saw a team that wanted to push and score goals.”

The Fire have left some valuable points on the field in this match up against Vancouver and a few other matches on the early part of its schedule.

We’ll see if the club can recover with its fifth home match coming up next Saturday against Colorado. They will need to keep working and pushing forward where the goals will be showing. That may lead to producing victories and more points on the table.