Bliss, Fire likely to stand pat rest of season
Less than an hour before the Chicago Fire kicked off against Toronto FC on Saturday afternoon at Toyota Park, Brian Bliss had to admit the biggest area of disappointment for his club was on offense.
The Fire technical director expected the team to score more in its first four games. And then the Fire went out and took 14 shots, scoring on season-high 3 of them in a 3-2 victory.
That's the way it goes when you turn over half your roster during the off-season.
Bliss isn't the only one trying to figure out this Fire squad, of course. So are Fire fans. But both fans and the technical staff had to be feeling much better after the Fire (2-3-0, 6 points) recorded a second straight victory following 3 season-opening defeats.
Bliss - the co-architect of the Fire roster with coach and director of soccer Frank Yallop - said he doesn't expect many more significant changes to the roster the rest of the season. The Fire has its maximum three designated players (Shaun Maloney, David Accam and Kennedy Igboananike). Its eight international roster slots are filled with the acquisition of Spanish midfielder Victor Perez. And like many MLS clubs, the Fire is right up against the new salary cap of $3.49 million, making trades within the league especially difficult.
"We're kind of tied up in all areas, really," he said.
Most MLS clubs, he said, were surprised the salary cap wasn't bumped higher in this year's Collective Bargaining Agreement talks between the league and its players union. But there is still some uncertainty about the final deal.
"It's still too early. We've got some initial numbers that came to us saying here's the salary cap and kind of took us and probably 15 or 16 other teams by surprise that it didn't go up as much as we thought it would," Bliss said, with many teams having to use allocation money to get under the cap.
For the first time in a few years, the summer transfer window could be a quiet time for the Fire, unless a foreign club makes an offer the Fire can't refuse for one of its current players.
"Just based on history and how I see it playing out a little bit, it's going to be very difficult to make any kind of wholesale change or big move unless the league comes forward with something that I'm not aware of, a mechanism to sign a new player and give him more money outside the cap," said Bliss, comparing last off-season to a game of roulette because of uncertainty over the CBA. "I don't want to say we are what we are right now, but that could be it."
But Bliss, who just returned from a trip to England to see the U.S. national U-20 team, is happy with the roster he and Yallop cobbled together during the winter.
"I would say we probably hit on 70 percent of the guys we wanted, but the guys we got in as backups - not backups, but second-choice guys or whatever - are still pretty competent, or better than competent, actually," he said.
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