CHICAGO - Long time Chicago Fire fan Drew Naven admitted that his recent optimism about the team is butting up against his years of experience following the team, causing him to be confused before the season begins.

8 wins in 34 games. That's a respectful level of awful, right there.

"We have had six seasons in the past 12 years where we didn't even have more than 10 wins," stated Mr. Naven to The Nutmeg News on Monday. "That's 50% of our seasons over the past 12 years where we were abjectly awful. Yet, despite the 8-20-6 record of last season and the 6-10-18 record of 2014, I somehow feel a burgeoning sense of optimism solely based on pre-season play."

While acknowledging that it is patently stupid to generate a feeling about an upcoming season based on meaningless pre-season games, Mr. Naven nonetheless forged forward with his confusion.

"They were good. Or at least they seemed good. I can't really tell. Were we good? Was Minnesota bad? Does the Vancouver result matter? We beat a full strength Portland side, so I think that is good. I think we might be OK this season but it is hard to tell. Everything in my body is screaming that we are not good, but I think we also might be good. It really, honestly is very difficult to decide. These days I would long for the glory days of 2013 where we didn't qualify for the playoffs but at least we were mediocre. I'd definitely take the run of making playoffs that happened between 2005 to 2009, despite some really mixed teams. At this point, I'd just as soon have a season where I'm frustrated that the Fire threw chances away instead of being frustrated that the Fire have no chance."

The Nutmeg News will have more on this as Mr. Naven vacillates between being optimistic and pessimistic before the season kicks off.