BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. – A determined Sean Johnson is keen to put a “frustrating” start to the season behind him and recapture the No. 1 jersey for the Chicago Fire.
A series of unfortunate injuries and the recent good form of backup goalkeeper Jon Busch have restricted the 26-year-old’s playing time this year, with just seven starts in the opening 13 games as the Fire (4-7-2, 14 points) struggle for consistency a third of the way through the season.
Without a start since May 15, Johnson still has been between the posts for two of the Fire’s three shutouts thus far. The veteran Busch has one clean sheet in his six starts to date.
“It’s always going to be frustrating when you’re not on the field, but I think it’s all about how you handle it, your mentality,” Johnson told MLSsoccer.com after training at Toyota Park on Wednesday. “When you start the year off with injuries, having nagging things, it’s very difficult to get your rhythm, especially coming off an injury in preseason. It’s been a bad run of luck for me, but you have your ups and downs in your career and it’s just a matter of getting yourself healthy and back to it and training hard, which I have been doing.”
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Johnson, who has struggled with arm, eye and hand problems already this year, believes he has now put his injury woes behind him.
“I think time off is good for injuries, and obviously as a professional player you’re going to have to play through some pain, and I’m not a stranger to that,” Johnson said. “Putting myself in a position to help the team is the most important thing, and making sure that when I’m called upon for games that things aren’t prohibiting me from doing well.
“I also owe it to my teammates and the coaching staff to be honest with them, so that if anything is in fact bothering me, keeping me from playing at my peak performance, my top level, that I let them know.”
Head coach Frank Yallop has had to field weekly questions from local media about his goalkeeping decisions, but he remains unconcerned about that knowing he has two solid goalkeepers at his disposal. But after last week’s concession of two late goals in the 3-2 defeat to Orlando City SC, Yallop has another difficult decision to make ahead of Saturday’s road trip to second-place New England Revolution (6:30 p.m. CT; CSN Chicago).
“You don’t need to know the reasons that Sean has not played the last few games, but it’s going to do him good in the end,” Yallop told MLSsoccer.com. “He’s not had a break, he’s had a few issues with his hands, so we’re just trying to help him along, and I’ll make the right decision on when he comes back in. But Jon’s done really well. We have two very good goalkeepers that we’re lucky to have.”
The Fire have conceded two or more goals in eight of their 13 games so far, conceding 20 in total with just 17 goals scored. However, Yallop insisted all 11 players on the field needed to take collective responsibility for defending, not just the goalkeeper and back four.
“Both guys have done fine. And when you don’t win games and you concede goals, obviously everyone looks at the goalkeeper, but I always say it’s team defending,” he said. “It’s on all of us if it goes in the net, not just on one player or even the back four, it’s not that. It’s the whole team that gets hurt, and we’ve got to do a better job all over the field at defending.”
Shane Murray covers the Chicago Fire for MLSsoccer.com.
