NYCFC drops in standings after road loss to Chicago Fire

New York City FC’s late-season slump is at risk of turning into a full-blown spiral.

NYCFC (11-10-6, 39 points) allowed two inexcusable goals and created far too few chances in a 2-0 loss to the lowly Chicago Fire (7-15-6, 27 points) on Wednesday in Bridgeview, Illinois. NYCFC dropped its second straight match, falling behind DC United to fourth in the MLS Eastern Conference, level on points with four other clubs.

"Of course it's a lot of disappointment and we feel we let ourselves down, and the people who love our football club," said NYCFC coach Ronny Deila. "We have to cope with the situation and see joy in what we're doing. Show ourselves and our best sides, if we lose then, it's more easy to do it, but right now we don't show our best side and it's worse to lose."

The month of September was a disaster for NYCFC. The club picked up just five points in seven matches this month. The team’s last five matches have been against competition currently outside of the playoff pictures; City managed just one win in that span.

Deila believes his players carried the stress of their poor form into Wednesday's match.

"Everybody wants, I think, everybody wants too much, maybe overthinking a little bit," Deila said. "There’s not so much to evaluate, this is more about a mental thing, in a positive way, that we need to start thinking about going out and show ourselves instead of going out and doing something."

The club’s lack of discipline has been on display in recent weeks, with red cards and suspensions keeping the team unsettled and making points hard to come by. On Wednesday night, it was a lack of focus by Deila’s squad that did it in. Fullback Gudi Thórarinsson said the match arguably was NYCFC's "worst game of the season."

"I think it has been quite obvious we've been in a difficult period right now and maybe that's getting a little bit to us," Thórarinsson said. "It's just small margins in football at this level and if everybody is going down 5% and we are a little bit afraid to express ourselves or play our game, then it can look the way it looked tonight."

On a free kick in the opening minutes of the second half, the Fire caught NYCFC napping. With New York City’s Jesús Medina walking away from the action and his head turned from the ball, Chicago’s Álvaro Medrán sent a through ball into the box toward Robert Beric. Nicolás Acevedo and Maxime Chanot arrived to help, but were too late sliding over and Beric buried the 48th-minute opener.

The blame for Chicago’s second goal was directly on NYCFC goalkeeper and captain Sean Johnson, a former Fire player himself. Federico Navarro took a relatively simple shot toward the legs of Johnson in the 66th minute, but the keeper was too slow to drop on it, and the ball rolled under his falling body and into the net.

A playoff team in each of the last five seasons, NYCFC now sits just two points above the cutoff line for the postseason with seven games left entering Sunday's matchup with second-place Nashville SC.

"I think the mindset should be that hopefully this was just a perfect wake up call for us for the rest of the season," Thórarinsson said. "Now we can just bounce from this."