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United aims for second straight win against Fire

Jun 24, 2015 - 12:06 AM Bridgeview, IL (SportsNetwork.com) - Eastern Conference leaders D.C. United will shoot for a second consecutive win in league play on Wednesday when the club ventures to Toyota Park to face the Chicago Fire.

United comes into Wednesday's clash with a seven-point lead over second-place New England after Ben Olsen's club claimed a 2-1 win over the Revolution on home turf on Sunday.

United fell behind after 10 minutes when Teal Bunbury played Lee Nguyen in behind the United defense on the right side of the pitch. Nguyen played it across the face of goal and Charlie Davies was there for an easy-tap in.

But the home side drew level 20 minutes from time when Fabian Espindola played an excellent looping cross into the box and Chris Rolfe was in the perfect spot at the back post to volley it past Revolution goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth with plenty of pace.

The winning tally came nine minutes from time when substitute Steve Neumann hacked down Miguel Aguilar in the box, prompting referee Ismail Elfath to point to the spot.

Rolfe stepped up and blasted it into the bottom right corner, leaving Shuttleworth with no chance for his sixth goal of the season.

"I thought the first 25 minutes they [New England] were very good. Their passing was just better than ours and on a hot day, if you start chasing the ball a little bit, and you don't take care of it yourself to make sure they're defending, you're going to take some waves and you're going to defend a lot," said Olsen.

"And again, with that heat out there, we had trouble getting out to guys; they always had an option. I think around the 30th minute we started to connect some passes and had some better ideas out there. We had more triangles, more connections, and then for the rest of the game I thought we were pretty good, always threatening from then on out. They are a good team. Their front four are a handful; the physicality they bring, Lee [Nguyen] exploiting your holes and Charlie [Davies] doing what he does in the box, it's an impressive front four."

Chicago, meanwhile, will aim to snap a three-match losing streak following a 2-0 loss to New England on June 13.

The Fire fell behind three minutes into the second half when Diego Fagundez marked his 100th appearance in a Revolution shirt by blasting a wicked strike with pace into the top corner to put the hosts in front.

Just two minutes later the home side doubled its lead as Bunbury served an excellent cross into the box where Davies was able to get his head to it, nodding it into the bottom corner for his team-leading sixth goal of the campaign.

"It seems to be the story of the season where we've played well enough to be in the game, doing the right things, mainly, getting chances, not taking them, and then have a spell of lax play when we're soft and we're off people and letting them play and the team punishes us," said Fire head coach Frank Yallop.