Captain Dax McCarty used an interesting word to describe the mood around the Fire entering Saturday’s match against Real Salt Lake.

“The mood is a delicate one,” McCarty said. “It’s definitely a sense of disappointment. Certainly, a sense of what could’ve been.”

That sense of disappointment comes from the June 11 loss to USL-side Saint Louis FC, knocking the Fire out of the US Open Cup. Though they were without Bastian Schweinsteiger, Aleksandar Katai and Przemyslaw Frankowski, the Fire fielded a strong lineup but couldn’t do enough against a second-division club.

Saturday’s game – the 17th of the 34-match season – is the Fire’s first since the upset loss. Now they’re returning to an MLS season that’s been, at best, uneven.

“We’re definitely not calling the Salt Lake game a must-win game, but it’s pretty close because we haven’t had the season that I think we want to have had up to this point,” McCarty said. “But we know there’s time to fix it.”

Without the Open Cup, the Fire’s MLS season takes on even more importance. Playing an MLS game for the first time since June 1, the Fire come into the weekend out of playoff position, winless in their past four league contests and with just four victories in 16 matches this season.

McCarty did not expect this kind of season for the Fire. Nothing close.

“It’s tough,” McCarty said. “I’m definitely surprised. I’m definitely frustrated. I think everyone is. It’s a test of character, is basically what it comes down to.”

Perhaps adding to the frustration for McCarty are the positive signs the Fire have shown. He talked about how they blanked Los Angeles FC, New England, and Minnesota United in early May, and how their attack produced five goals against New England, and four facing Colorado.

McCarty also said the Fire are a pretty good team between both 18-yard boxes. He likes how they’re trying to play by keeping the ball on the ground and working to build through the midfield and create chances.

Yet they’re 4-6-6 (18 points) and looking at a fight just to make the playoffs.

“It hasn’t gone our way this year,” McCarty said. “You can talk about – for me, it’s always the fine margins when you are playing at the highest level of athletics. The margin for error is very thin. Some games this year, we walk away from saying ‘how did we not win that game?’ That’s a question that I’ve asked myself many times this year, and the answer is you just have to be a little bit sharper in both penalty boxes.”

McCarty does have confidence things will turn, that the positives will take over and the Fire will start collecting points.

“The signs are there. It’s just a matter of being consistent,” he said. “Once we get that consistency down, I think we’re going to be fine and we’re going to start winning a lot more games in the second half of the season.”