The Fire visited Gillette Stadium on Saturday night to take on the Superliga 2008 champs and bitter foe New England . The Fire struggled in the first half but must have found a magic bottle during half time because in the end the Fire beat the Revolution to complete the season sweep.

With the return of Cuauhtémoc Blanco, the Fire offense should have opened up more, but it didn’t open up at all in the first half. Fire forwards have been struggling, Fire rookie Patrick Nyarko scored the Fire’s last goal against Chivas USA but was not available due to a concussion. Denis Hamlett has shown signs of frustration because of the lack of goals being scored, but in reality Hamlett should be frustrated at himself for the line-up he puts on the field. The past few games Hamlett used a combination of forwards, one being Chris Rolfe. In tonight’s game Chris Rolfe didn’t start but Hamlett must feel that Rolfe’s four goals aren’t as good as Herron’s zero goals. With two forwards up top the Fire still didn’t score goals but looked much better then the lone forward up top. Hamlett must think that one forward is better then two because he went back to that line-up. John Thorrington moved back into a defensive mid-field role where he simply doesn’t belong. Coaches should use players to their best of their abilities and John Thorrington’s abilities are at their best when he plays on the right or left mid-field position. In the end the Fire went down early after a Taylor Twellman header that came off a corner that was taken by Mauricio Castro. The Fire has two big central defenders but Twellman didn’t have to jump over them to get his head on the ball. Logan Pause was Twellman’s victim and it didn’t look pretty. Marco Pappa was once again phenomenal for the Fire and came close to scoring his first goal as a member of the Fire, but New England goalie Matt Reis made sure that wouldn’t happen after he made an excellent save.

In the second half Hamlett’s questionable moves continued as he finally brought in Chris Rolfe but for Justin Mapp who was creating some chances. Herron should have been taken out and replaced with Rolfe. However, it seems that during half time the Fire found a genie that granted him three wishes. Emotions started running high in the half and the Fire received their first wish in the 75th minute after Shalrie Joseph received his second yellow to get ejected from the game. The Fire got their second wish after Matt Reis, one of the best goalies in the league didn’t grab the ball on what should have been a routine save. Gonzalo Segares took a long shot and the ball just went though Reis’s hands, quite an embarrassing moment. The final wish was granted after Tomaz Frankowski was subbed in. Frankowski took a shot that was saved by Matt Reis but Wilman Conde fought through the Revolution defenders and scored for the Fire to take the lead two to one.

Denis Hamlett may not use his players correctly, but the fact that his team works hard and never gives up should give hope to all fans that this team is very capable of reaching the MLS Cup.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed