The Chicago Fire will try to win consecutive regular-season games for the first time in 2021 when they host CF Montreal at Soldier Field in Major League Soccer action on Saturday.
Chicago earned their first win of this campaign last weekend, beating Inter Miami 1-0, while Montreal conceded twice in the final 20 minutes to hand FC Cincinnati their first victory of the year.
Match preview
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It took six games, but the Chicago Fire finally earned their first victory of the season in perhaps their most complete performance of this campaign against Inter Miami.
They had just under 60% of the possession and limited a dangerous Miami team to just one shot on target, all of which had to please manager Raphael Wicky as they look to keep climbing up the Eastern Conference standings.
Chicago would have felt they deserved more from their match with DC United, which ended in a 1-0 defeat.
Still, last Saturday, they caught a break when The Herons keeper John McCarthy gifted them the winning goal as he spilt what looked like a routine save from a Luka Stojanovic free kick.
With five of their next six matches at home, this is an ideal opportunity for Chicago to start stringing some wins together and getting back into the playoff picture.
Maintaining a level of consistency will be necessary for this team who have not won more than two consecutive games in the regular season since 2017.
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After an encouraging start to the season, going unbeaten in their first three games, CF Montreal have hit a wall, losing back-to-back fixtures.
In their defeat to Atlanta, manager Wilfried Nancy maintained that his team was headed in the right direction.
Still, after losing to lowly Cincinnati last weekend despite dominating for over an hour, many have been left to wonder if that is still the case.
A team that has been so strong defensively throughout much of this season has crumbled at the most inopportune of moments, squandering a 94th-minute goal to Atlanta and then conceding two against Cincinnati in 16 minutes.
After seven games played, it seems clear that Montreal are lacking a consistent goalscorer who they can rely on, something that they knew could be a problem following the departure of Maximiliano Urruti to the Houston Dynamo.
Djordje Mihailovic has been their top attacking threat this year, as the former Chicago midfielder has scored twice for his new club, which is already the same number of goals he had for the Fire last season and only one away from his best single-season output.
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Team News
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Chicago will be without left winger Ignacio Aliseda, who has a hamstring injury, while Stanislav Ivanov remains out long term after undergoing knee surgery.
Goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth picked up his first clean sheet of the 2021 campaign last week and his first since September 27, 2020.
Defender Boris Sekulic has been fantastic at the back for the Fire, with 16 tackles won.
They are still looking to get Robert Beric going as the Slovenian striker has only one goal in this campaign after netting 12 in 2020.
Montreal centre-back Luis Binks, with a knee injury, is doubtful, left-winger Ballou Tabla has a groin problem and Mason Toye is unlikely to feature with a hamstring injury.
Their leading goalscorer a season ago, Romell Quioto, is off to a slow start in 2021 with just one goal through the first seven games, after missing a wide-open net in their defeat to Cincinnati.
Chicago Fire possible starting lineup:
Shuttleworth; Sekulic, Omsberg, Calvo, Navarro; Herbers, Pineda, Medran; Frankowski, Beric, Stojanovic
CF Montreal possible starting lineup:
Diop; Struna, Camacho, Waterman; Brault-Guillard, Hamdy, Wanyama, Lappalainen; Mihailovic; Hurtado, Quioto
We say: Chicago Fire 0-0 CF Montreal
Only two players have scored goals for Chicago all season to this point, which shows they lack balance offensively, playing into the hands of a Montreal side with a defence-first approach.
Unfortunately for Wilfried Nancy and his side, like Chicago, they do not have many attacking options who can score, and they lack creativity in the middle to create chances.
Top tip
Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Chicago Fire win with a probability of 56.31%. A draw had a probability of 22.2% and a win for CF Montreal had a probability of 21.52%.
The most likely scoreline for a Chicago Fire win was 2-1 with a probability of 9.89%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 1-0 (9.44%) and 2-0 (9.01%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (10.35%), while for a CF Montreal win it was 1-2 (5.68%). The actual scoreline of 0-1 was predicted with a 5.4% likelihood.
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