Another lackluster road effort for Union

Though the relationship between Union manager Jim Curtin and the team’s fan base isn’t always the warmest and fuzziest, there are occasions when Curtin’s evaluation and the fans’ are in sync.

So it was Saturday when the Union flopped and flailed to a 2-0 defeat against the Chicago Fire, a game in which the Union trailed by two at the half and spent the entire second half up a man but to no avail.

“It felt like a night where we could’ve played 180 minutes,” Curtin said, “and it wasn’t going to go in for us.”

That’s not so much a lamentation on the Union’s luck as it is on their inability to capitalize on fortune. Fire midfielder Nico Gaitan was sent off just before half for a reckless if not overly venomous tackle on Jamiro Monteiro, giving the Union the halftime break to scheme for 45 full minutes of attacking a 10-man squad that had – oh by the way – played mandown for 60 minutes in a loss Wednesday in Portland.

The result was 18 impotent shots (only three of which found the target), 69.7 percent’s worth of anemic possession and hardly a memorable chance among them. The closest the Union came to a breakthrough may have been in the 70th minute, a curling shot by Haris Medunjanin from outside the box that was headed wide and deflected back on goal.

Instead, the Union authored 45 minutes in which a minimum of nine Fire players sat in two compact lines between 20-30 yards from their goal and the Union tried to break through with the dexterity of someone fumbling to get their key into the lock after coming home from the bar at night.

The Union (13-8-6, 45 points) were devoid of ideas. They did nothing to stretch the Fire vertically, forwards waiting for plays to happen while stapled to the shoulders of defenders. They did precious little to stretch the Fire horizontally, either, far too predictable and deliberate in their passing and too slow to switch the attack. Instead of adding Fafa Picault to do the former, Curtin opted for Andrew Wooten and Brendan Aaronson, clogging the midfield to Chicago’s benefit.

With Marco Fabian compulsively dropping deep to get the ball, he and Monteiro seeking the same nonexistent pockets of space from 25 yards out to shoot and even the occasional penetrating runs by Ilsinho and Kai Wagner in behind going unrewarded, the Union got nothing going. Then it descended to farce, with Curtin subbing off two defenders and finishing with a formation that was nominally a 2-6-2, which is both nonsense and discounted the fact that A) Wagner was one of the most active players getting forward and B) Alejandro Bedoya, dropped into some kind of a center-backpatrol role, was also among the small collection of visitors who played with a pulse.

So yeah, not a lot to write home about.

“We just weren’t able to convert our chances,” Bedoya said. “I missed a big one. Kacper (Przybylko), our strikers did as well and some others guys as well. It’s just not good enough all the way around from us. We need to be better.”

The Fire (8-11-9, 33 points) deserve credit, moving to within one point of the final playoff spot (albeit still sitting 10th). Their structure and tenacity despite playing more than 90 minutes down a man this week made the Union look too putrid with the ball. They also converted on two first-half chances – a routine cross that Jack Elliott failed to cut out before Nemanja Nikolic redirected it home, then a penalty kick deposited by Nikolic after Aurelien Collin hauled down CJ Sapong on a corner kick.

The game showed the duality of the Union’s lingering issues. They’ve conceded too easily at times, not forcing teams to show the class needed to break them down. And they’ve struggled to find a way through when presented with an organized, committed defense.

“In this league, we talked all week about, Chicago is a desperate team,” Curtin said. “The hardest thing to do is basically try to end a team’s season, and they’re professionals. They came out with a lot of intensity. We looked like we were in first gear, I would say, for the first half. Catch a break to get back into it with the red card but we just weren’t sharp enough on the night. Chicago deserve the points.”

“It wasn’t good enough from us,” Bedoya said. “The first half, we came out pretty flat and I’m disappointed with that. And I’ve been saying it all year, we’ve been conceding goals that are just soft goals. We need to be better, we lose a ball in the middle and out wide we don’t do a good job defensively and 1-2 in the box and we don’t pick up out of nothing. I don’t think Chicago was a big threat in the first half, but they got two chances and two goals.”

The price they pay is dropping to third in the East in points per game (1.67), though they remain in first in the East pending the result of Atlanta’s game late Sunday night. They embark on a stretch of three straight home games, with Atlanta, D.C. United and Los Angeles FC coming to town. It’s a harder road to travel without a result in Chicago, but that’s now the directive.

“The last three out of four away games, we just haven’t really shown up,” Bedoya said. “We’ve got to do a lot better. If we’re a first-place team, we’ve got to show up better in away games. And now we just have to protect our home-field advantage. All the home games are that much more important.”