An unfiltered look at exactly what I was thinking during the 1-1 draw between the Chicago Fire and FC Dallas.

On FC Dallas Right Back Jackson:
•Overwhelmingly active. Is he going to make it to halftime without being gassed? (5′)
•Seriously, this guy's heat map will be absurd.

In the MLS, teams like to maintain an expectation. See LA Galaxy or Red Bull New York and take in the flash and starpower — watch the Colorado Rapids and you'll witness tough, no nonsense soccer. Most clubs have a brand, a style — something you can count on seeing night in and night out.

Heading into the 2011 MLS season, prognosticators, supporters and casual fans had no idea what to expect from FC Dallas and the Chicago Fire.

In a league that is short on rivalries, FC Dallas and the Chicago Fire try hard to maintain whatever semblance of a rivalry once existed between the two teams. Names have changed, conferences have realigned, but the Fire and the club formerly known as the Burn still play for the Brimstone Cup each year.

To say that the Chicago Fire has undergone a roster turnover heading into the 2011 MLS season would be to make a strong understatement. Gone from Toyota park is Fire mainstay C.J. Brown, local hero Brian McBride, ticket sellers Nery Castillo and Freddie Ljungberg, the dynamic Wilman Conde, the versatile-but-injured John Thorrington and the untapped potential of Collins John.

Cold consolation is watching your once-proud team usher two legends into retirement with a meaningless rout of a confused and ill-favored foe. 4-1 felt nice, and it was fantastic to see Bake score a clever goal, but what did we learn about this team from last night's game?

Pundits will say before these kinds of games that the teams "have nothing to play for save pride.

Now that is how to throw a birthday party.

I watched this one on my laptop in bed feeling torpid, working on the composition of a post spitting derision on the club's 13th year just to give a sense of my state of mind at kickoff. I was expecting lung-bursting runs to nowhere, lots of gesticulating at officials, and a suspects' lineup of Fire defenders making the consternation gas-face.

the larch

Hello there, no one in particular. It's been a while.

I'm in this hammerlock. See, I've written about the Chicago Fire Soccer Club in this space a couple of times now, and each time, my increased scrutiny has been followed by a pronounced funk.

Understand, I'm a modern person.

Is this team broken? The season is over, and now the question is: Do we keep the spine of this team, and fill in the fleshy bits, or is the cancer bone-deep; must we purge the roster and begin again? Because this season is over, and the next will be on us quickly.

The standings are bleak: We're one point ahead of Chivas USA, who are the only team between us and DC United.

Self-portrait, or a desperate man - by Gustave Courbet

]So I wrote a couple of days ago about my habit, developed over long years of Cubs fandom, of treating hope (in terms of hope for actual success for my team) as something of a corrosive substance. Hope so long delayed and so often betrayed demands a re-figuring of the nature of one's fandom: Do I hope for success, and stay perpetually downcast; or do I take a longer view, of the sport as a lovely thing, of tribal passions channelled and used to good end?

So we're at this point in the season now a lifetime of Cubs fandom has taught me how to handle this point in the season: You put the hope just out of view. Sure, you know the hope is there; you know the Fire could win six of the final eight, sneak into the playoffs as the hottest team in the league (beat Red Bulls in a final for the ages .

"You can't expect more than you put in front of the camera," my mom used to tell me on picture day and the picture of this season is like a 13-year-old's school photo: Halfway between this and that, awkward, promising but slightly embarrassing. The result is the result is the result. The table doesn't lie.

Well, that's more like it. Everything but the payoff I haven't seen the Fire play this coherently, and (importantly to this aesthete) beautifully in a long time. That said, we need points; the screw is tightening on both teams, and the second half could go any of a hundred different ways.

Quick prediction: Someone will get sent off in the second half, probably after the first goal when desperation sets in.

It's hard to know how to take this point: Is it a miracle of teamwork and opportunism, overcoming a moment of first-half madness on the part of one player; or is it yet another Fire collapse in injury time? Both, probably.

Is there a more equivocal sport in the universe? One more suited to ambivalence?

Just a couple of thoughts at the half here. We're scoreless, down a man, and lucky to be on even terms:

- What the f*** was Segares thinking trying to land an overhand right on a corner-kick scrum? I admit the run was looking threatening, but it may be time to break out the old 'Gonzo' nickname if he's going to make brain-dead decisions like that.

It will be standing-room only this afternoon when the Galaxy visit Toyota Park Section 8 will be in fine voice, the weather breezy but mild, the pitch immaculate, the foe imposing but beatable: exactly the situation where the Fire have laid an absolute egg again and again over the last three or four seasons.