Brian Hall Giveth, and Brian Hall Taketh Away

I was going to actually watch the first leg of the Fire-United match again, then comment, but my lovely Comcast-branded DVR decided it would record the wrong channel, and I don't have the patience to watch it on my computer screen. So, this will be largely from memory.

On some level, Dave Sarachan coached a great game. Unfortunately, that level was only appropriate for an away league match. Conservative and defensive to a fault, it looked like the team was playing for a draw or a 1-0 win, and that's simply not going to cut it in the first half of a two-game aggregate series at home.

Of course, that win-by-a-goal strategy was confounded by a hard foul by thin air in the closing moments, but while it's easy to burn Mr. "I Reffed A World Cup" in effigy over that, he pretty clearly missed a penalty kick call against us earlier in the second half. Fire fans were up in arms over Justin Mapp getting taken down in the box at the death of the first half, but I was on the podium leading Section 8 at the time, which means I was watching the game on the big scoreboard screen. All ball.

A friend commented in the first half on how we were playing too much longball, but the more I thought about it, the more I concluded that wasn't the problem. With the notorious long grass at Soldier Field during football season, going to the aerial game actually makes sense. What didn't make sense was playing longball without either Nate Jaqua, Chad Barrett or Lubos Reiter in the lineup.

When he chooses this sort of lineup, head coach Dave Sarachan calls it a 4-3-3, but it never plays out that way if your 3 include two midfielders ostensibly playing forward. It's the same problem that arises when you've got Chris Armas and Jesse Marsch in the midfield and expect them to play more offensively. Their natural instinct is to sit in a deeper defensive position, and Justin Mapp and Thiago do the same further up the field.

In the postgame quotes, Sarachan is still clinging to the notion that he wasn't running a 4-5-1, or maybe even a 5-4-1:

"We didn't do as good a job as I would have liked utilizing our three attacking players. We did have a few opportunities we didn't convert on, but they were tight on us as well. There weren't a lot of chances tonight."

Sorry, Dave, but you can't put that lineup out there and be surprised by the lack of scoring. I've given the Fire skipper the benefit of the doubt a lot this season, even to the point where I was going to let this particular starting eleven go if the second half recontextualized it, but that never happened. Had the Fire come out this way specifically to absorb D.C. United's pressure in the first half, then inserted another forward (namely Jaqua) for one of the three defensive midfielders at halftime, it could have been a great strategy. But Jaqua didn't enter the game until the 70th minute, and then he came in for Thiago, in another vain attempt to justify that the Brazilian was playing up top and not in the midfield, when either interpretation still made the move suspect.

This was followed by an equally inexplicable forward-for-forward substitution several minutes later. I normally don't shout displeasure over subs during a game like some of my fellow fans, but this was the exception. Dave has dug himself into a big hole going into the second leg on the road.

If there's a silver lining to be had here, it's that United didn't even muster a shot on goal, but they didn't need the win as much as we did. I said in my last C-F.com column that this year's playoffs represents the "make or break" moment for Sarachan, and he's now put himself in a position where not only will a loss almost certainly cost him his job, but a win won't guarantee he keeps it, either.

No summary of this game would be complete without some mention of Section 8 in the second half, but that will have to wait. Short version, none of it surprised me.