1-1 34' minute. Diego scored in the 9th minute and they equalized around the 30' Mark. Watson overcommitted and their guy finished unmarked, it was pretty embarrasing defending.
I love Femi starting. He brings so much more than Davies/Bunbury/Agudelo and I hope Heaps sticks with him. Same with Donnie Smith, he provides speed that Tierney lacks, is a better defender and can put in the occasional good cross.
69' Agudelo on for Femi ..and Agudelo scores on a good cross by Rowe. 2 1 revs Amazing what happens when you make smart runs off the ball!?! Watson struggling and about to come off with an apparent injury. Woodberry on.
Rivas scores to tie it up 2-2 Figures - he should have been sent off for his cleat to Shuttleworth's face earlier.
Agudelo gets a free header and hits the woodwork. That's it 2-2, another game, another draw for the revs. Sigh.
We're such an average team it hurts. The worst part is we finally play at home against a team who doesn't bunker (which is the only way our offense can operate) and we still tie. I don't see any way we get better
Whats amazing is we have only won one game in 10 fixtures and we are only four points out of first place. We've had our share of unlucky breaks that costs us a few wins and a gaggle of goal scorers whose jocks have been too tight ---but--- if tonights goals help relax the offense a bit we might just become competitive. We do need an infusion of talent but I've not given up of the current rosters ability to play good soccer yet.
25,203 in attendance at @GilletteStadium tonight. #NERevs pic.twitter.com/GwP7UMlU9U— New England Revolution (@NERevolution) May 1, 2016
Gave it away and Im not going to be nice here. Which friggin idiot decided not to mark his man on their second goal? Was it Woodberry. Who ever it was, there is no friggin excuse to leave yur man wide open in front of the goal unless you're just too stupid to understand what your job is. We cannot give away soft goals and have any hope of winning There is NO excuse for that On a positive note... Im impressed with Donnie Smith's play. Keep him around and keep him playing
It was Woodberry. Rivas was not wide open. Woodberry had him marked and his clearance attempt hit off Rivas' foot and went in the goal. Nobody was a idiot on the play. On the first goal, Watson did leave Molino unmarked. He made the understandable but wrong decision to help out on Larin rather than marking Molino.
It is frustrating. I love the current style; they are fun to watch. The team looked good all around. Fagundez was great in the first half. The announcers said that Revolution is 1st or 2nd in chances created - I believe it. Feldman also mumbled something about being unable to finish. No $#^*, Sherlock. Femi is an amazingly likable player. He seems like he is going to be great, and he deserves PT. However, the fact that he is starting in MLS.2016, and the fact that he is better than the alternatives, is embarrassing. He is obviously learning his craft. He was more reactive than active, and I felt I could see him figuring things out. Donnie Smith, on the other hand, has been figuring things out in his 4(?) years of obscurity. There is no obvious drop-off without Tierney, other than leadership. And leadership seemed to be lacking in the last 15 minutes. This is where Jones would have mattered as well. With a 2-1 lead and the game stretched, we need to settle the game down, and keep the ball, something we have the personnel to do. I'm resigned to the fact that this is how it is until we get some help up top.
Ok Im going to modify what I said before. I was confusing the first goal and the second goal in previous post. Lets look at their first goal (Still not going to be nice though ). At 1:23 of the highlights clips on the Revs site. Here's where the problems starts. The ball is wide on the right side. The guy with the pointer is Watson and he's switched insde because JoGo was outside where the ball was. I think thats where the real problem started. When JoGo went outside, Watson came to the middle with Farrell and nobody picked up the guy that scored. When Watson did go to the middle, he was guilty of ball watching and marking nobody. The cross comes in... Farrell and Watson both go for the header and Caldwell picks up the trailer. A few seconds later Farrell is on the ground, Watson is to the right of the goalie and nobody has the scorer. and a few seconds later... its in the net What went wrong? I see two things. One - Why was JoGo doubling on the side line with Smith? Smith wasnt beat and neigher of them stopped the cross. This started the problem Two - Watson went inside and I dont think that was needed either. Farrell was in there, Caldwell had the trailer.... Watson abandoned his mark and essentially did nothing while leaving his postion Summary - I have to say Im sorry I ripped Woodberry in my previous post. This was the goal that pissed me off more than their second one. Watson may be a physical player but OMG he is killing us. Between causing PKs and now this. I dont think we can afford to keep him on the field until he learns more disipline.
(EDIT: I had started composing this earlier in the day today, long before RevsRule post saying some of the same things...and once posted this afternoon, saw RevsRule's post. Timing issue...) The first goal was a pile o' team defending errors. Smith and Diego do OK initially in marking/delaying the two OCSC attackers countering down the right side. But then.... JoGo helps Orlando open up lots of space in the Revs' D by rushing out wide to double team the wing attacker who was already being marked by Donnie Smith. This created an even strength situation in the box, reducing the numerical man advantage in the center. Maybe this made sense, maybe he thought Donnie was going to get skinned, maybe he analyzed the tradeoff in his head. Maybe not, who knows. Farrell gets caught in no-mans land as he starts out toward right wing - he appears to be tempted to now add a 3rd/4th defender to marking the attack down right wing (Why?? Remember, Donnie and JoGo both are already committed there on the ball, and Diego is marking the other attacker in the vicinity), and he then realizes too late that he is out of position and nearly(?) falls over backwards as he realizes that he now covering no one and there is a ball sailing over his head into the middle and to the top of the 6 yard box. Caldwell and Watson both caught ball watching to varying degrees. Watson realizes he is the sole man left to mark two players as the cross comes in - Laren and Molino - and that he can't get it done by himself. Laren is the bigger threat, as he is directly in front of goal. Caldwell realizes that he is covering no one and starts towards left side just as the ball is coming to Molino, by then it's too late. Meanwhile, Rowe is not engaged during this whole sequence. A few moments before the OCSC counter, he had just released a a shot in the Orlando box, and does not seem to have any intent of helping defend -- he did not track back at all on his side. Ultimately he should have been back in the Revs box providing far post support. Replays after the shot show him walking, having managed only to get back over half as the OCSC attack is unfolding. Molino was the person who the wing midfielder should have been marking. No reaction by Rowe at all when the goal is scored.....it almost looked like "meh, so what?" -- disinterest. I saw new errors each time I watched this play. At least on the 2nd goal, Woodberry was tightly marking - his one possible error could be possibly not moving fast enough nor powerfully enough to clear ball on the last step of two of the play. But he was not ball watching, and did not seem to make any specific glaring error that could be on par with the circus that took place on the first goal.
Well, it was nice to finally see them attacking with some pace and urgency. I started a post after the Portland match which I never finished, where I was talking about how the team seemed to just have no urgency, they seemed to play at a plodding pace. There was a play early in the Portland match I was going to comment on where Watson had the ball out wide, we had a chance to get numbers into the box, but all the midfielders just hung around and watched, leaving just Charlie in the middle. Right from get go today we seemed to be playing with much more urgency, getting more bodies forward, trying to attack the goal. It also appeared to me that they were trying to send Watson forward more often as the primary outside back going forward, as they normally do with Tierney on the left. A few player thoughts that I remember after watching late last night: Smith's been ok, good enough, but he's hardly been spectacular. I feel like some are overstating how good he's been. His service has been spotty, getting some crosses in, but I wouldn't say he's been regularly putting the balls in at pace into dangerous spots. I thought Mariner's brief focus on him before the game was amusing, because he was heaping praise on Smith for not diving in, which is good, but it should be expected of defenders. Then Mariner showed a Smith cross and talked about how great it was, but it was this very high, looping ball that took forever to come down, not the kind of ball that scares defenses. Femi brought some great energy up front. I wouldn't say the higher pace the team played with was all down to him, I think the whole team came out with a better attitude, but he certainly helped. He's still raw though, he's all energy, but to sort of borrow a phrase that I heard someone use when talking about a Bayern player this week, for all his work, Femi is not yet putting himself into positions in the box where the ball finds him. For 2 months into his MLS career though, I like what I see and hope to see more. Agudelo - I was wondering how he might react to a rookie starting over him, as that's obviously a different message than starting behind MLS veterans. I don't know if he had any different motivation coming in, or if it was just the luck of scoring a goal, but I thought he looked different than we've seen yet this season, he seemed a bit more confident after the goal, more willing to try things with the ball. I'm very curious to see who starts up top next game. Diego looked better, perhaps he was the most different in terms of bringing more energy and more willingness to go at goal. Farrell has been looking much better of late. He still scares me, as he still does seem to make a bad mistake, if not bonehead move, each game, but it's down to 1, and he does seem more solid and dependable. His bonehead move last night was similar to one someone else mentioned against Portland, where he gave the ball away poorly, and then compounded the error by trying too hard to win the ball back, and he just lunged in wildly, was nowhere close to getting the ball, and he was left on the ground as the play went by him. Against Portland he did that near the opposing box, against Orlando he did it in our half near the center circle. One thing I did see from him that I don't remember seeing before was at least 2 times I saw the ball come back to him as we were attacking, and he played a pinpoint long pass across the field to someone on the left near or in the box. As I said, I don't recall seeing such accuracy from him before, and I was impressed by it. I put more blame on Woodberry for the 2nd goal than others seem to here, you just have to be stronger and more decisive than he was. It looks like a nanosecond before the ball is played, he turns his head and sees that Rivas is coming, but after the ball is played, he thinks he's going to get to the ball first, doesn't really seem to try to get his body across and cut off Rivas' lane to the ball. Had he been stronger and used his body better, he should have been able to not allow Rivas to get his foot in to deflect that ball. Hamstrings - I was going to say this after Tierney went down, we seem to have a lot guys with hamstring problems, and now Smith appears to have had a problem with his hammy as well. What's going on there?
I agree... if he could cross a few in, I'd take him over Tierney. I think he has the edge on defense and speed
I decided to do a different post on the first goal, after seeing a lot of people have commented on it since I started my post this morning, and I see it a bit differently. For starters, I'd say JoGo got pulled out because Smith got spun and was chasing, and though Smith did recover, at that point JoGo was already committed. It might have been a mis-read by JoGo, thinking Smith wasn't going to catch the guy, but I think that's why he went over. It wasn't great that we ended up with 2 guys there, perhaps JoGo should have called Smith off, but it happened so quickly, it's hard to say that people should be able to think as clearly in the heat of the moment as we can after watching multiple replays and breaking it down. Watson absolutely should have been in the area in front of goal, his man was at the far post, so of course he'd be there, a step or 2 off of the guy. He probably got drawn a step further inside when Farrell stepped to guard the front post area, which he might have felt he needed to do with no JoGo there, leaving Watson thinking he could maybe be able to watch both his mark and the guy in the middle, but he wasn't miles out of position. Of course once that happened, neither guy in the middle was able to cover the one who headed the ball on, and that left nobody marking the goal scorer. I agree that Caldwell seemed lost, doing nothing, which looked bad, but I don't think the guy he was responsible for affected the play, luckily for Scott. I do think it's a bit harsh to put blame on Rowe though. In the professional game, with limited substitution, players aren't asked to always be sprinting up and back, there are plenty of situations where midfielders like him aren't expected to be back in the box. It looks to me like Orlando was attacking with 4-5 players, while we had 6, the 2 d-mids and the back 4, plus there was their guy taking the throw and Diego there to watch him. I don't know that was a situation where Rowe was supposed to be back. The more and deeper we're bringing back our wide mids, the few bodies we'll have going forward over the course of the game. Yes, the end result showed the team defense was not good on the play, but I don't think that means we need to start committing more bodies to defense and fewer in attack. In all, it just seems like a play where 1 guy got pulled out, and the team didn't react well, but this is what happens when someone gets beat 1v1, it can stretch a defense out of shape, especially when attacking teams put numbers in the box, which is exactly what happened. Had Smith not allowed himself to be beaten so easily by a guy who'd started with his back to Smith, it's likely the rest of the defense wouldn't have gotten out of shape to begin with. It was that first breakdown that caused the cascading effect, which led to the goal.
Initially, I faulted Watson for getting sucked inside and leaving a free runner in the box. He's got to stay disciplined there on the back post to prevent something like this from happening. Rowe could be at fault for a lot of other plays, but I am not sure I would bash him for this one. It was a calamity of errors. For example, in my screen shot, this is seconds before the goal, ball in flight, and Rowe is off screen. I would fault Caldwell for lack of anticipating the run and Koffie for failing to track Molino. Also, Diego for failing to defend the cross and half assing it back. Because Diego basically gave up on the play, it forced JoGo to support Smith and try to block the cross. When they failed, all hell broke loose and Molino made no mistake. Yes It happened quickly but it was basically a team screw up and a good example of the lack of soccer intelligence and ability to read and anticipate we have on the present roster.
No. The part when he was complaining that Portland didn't have a game the prior weekend and his team did, then after Wednesday night, they had to play again last night. Cry me a freakin river Heaps. How about some accountability for once? The revs should have closed out the game last night by playing smarter the last 15 minutes or so. It's frustrating to watch another draw. I'm sick of the excuses.
Another observation on that goal - Shuttleworth was playing way too deep and did not communicate with Farrell. He should have proactively called off Farrell and grabbed the cross as it came in rather than sit back in the goal mouth. Anything inside the 6 should be his. The lack of command of his area reared its ugly head on that play. Then, he gave Molino the near post which is another example of poor positioning. All that lack of positional discipline and half assed defending would NEVER happen with Jones on the field. Heaps doesn't get the same respect, that is obvious.