Another record by BWP in win at the Fire

The New York Red Bulls knew that this visit to Toyota Park was some form of a trap game as the Chicago Fire were coming back from crashing out of the Semi-Finals in the 2018 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup taking on the Philadelphia Union.

The Red Bulls found one play to take advantage of and the club left Toyota Park with the full three points and heading back home with a one goal to nil victory against the home town side of the Chicago Fire.

In the 55th minute the Red Bulls took advantage of a slight loss of concentration by the Fire and quickly converted the only goal of the match. After a corner was crossed into the Chicago area and missed, former Red Bulls Captain Dax McCarty took the ball away and tried to control it.

But Tyler Adams found a way to surprise and steal the ball off of McCarty’s foot and made a quick pass to Danie Royer. When he got to the top and far corner of the area, Royer made a blind pass and found Bradley Wright-Phillips who controls the ball and a hard side footed shot from the outside of his right boot beats Richard Sanchez and the lone tally was converted.

“As I’ve said before, credit to a team that can win ugly. They say that’s a good team. Today was not the most enjoyable game but the boys stuck with it and defended well. We kept them down to only a few chances and we came out with a win in a tough place.” said BWP

Once again it was another milestone in his impeccable MLS career as Wright-Phillips scored his 15th of the season, but that also means that he has scored 15 goals in the five consecutive seasons he has played in Major League Soccer.

Two moments in this match that kept the clean sheet for the Red Bulls was coming from Luis Robles as he stopped a big moment by the Fire and a big moment that could’ve been against a big mistake from a teammate.

The big save from Luis Robles was in the 71st minute as Nemanja Nikolic got a great ball from Nicholas Hasler and off to the races he went, when he tried to chip Robles, it was the Captain of the Red Bulls who made a big leap and stuck out his left hand to paw that ball out and over the end line.

But then there was that one moment that nearly cost the Red Bulls two points, but it never happened. When in years past you knew when this club had the lead in a house of horrors that Toyota Field was once, many probably thought “Same old Metro”

But this time it never came. In the 82nd minute the Red Bulls tried to attack the Fire’s side of the field, but their defense played them very well. The ball came to Kemar Lawrence who tried to pass the ball back to Robles.

But there was too much pace on the ball and when many saw Robles running after it, the thoughts of this could go into the back of our net was on everyone’s mind. Thankfully the ball went wide, but Robles still cleared the danger away as it could’ve been a corner kick.

But after a hard fought match that looked like the Fire were trying to play gritty and tough tackles, the Red Bulls secured the full three points and are officially one point behind Atlanta United for fist place in the east and first place in the Supporters Shield.

“In the first half, Chicago is a team when you look at their first 30 minutes of games, they pretty much score as much as they’ve given up. That is when they bring their best and they gave us a lot to handle. We were hoping to keep things under control and in control of spaces, which we thought we did. I think in the first half we limited them to two shots.” Said Chris Armas.

“Towards the end of the first half, we started picking up and getting a little rhythm and held on to the ball a little bit more and we are counter pressing and it started looking a little bit more like us. At halftime we again, we start out talking about some of the frustrations we have on the road. It looks like this sometimes.

We talked a little bit about adjustments up the field with some spacing and getting Marc [Rzatkowski] and Danny [Royer] involved a little bit more. Playing forward a little bit more. Again trying to play quicker and with a sort of rhythm we were hoping to get.

And then we addressed the balls behind issue which we could see from the beginning of the game trying to expose us behind and they kept exposing us behind somewhat now. Every time they played one of those it looked scary. In the end, I think they had one shot on goal all night but it’s challenging.”

This has been a fantastic moment to see more history being made by BWP, as well as being unbeaten at Toyota Park in four league matches and five in all competitions a this stadium has been a horrible place to get positive results.

Now the Red Bulls are rolling just outside of Chi-Town and are climbing the eastern conference ladder as well as the supporters shield ladder with Chris Armas in charge.