Heaps has to take a big part of the blame for this loss. Two of his subs cost us two goals. The other part of the blame goes to the players that decided to try and coast to a 1-0 win. We stopped and DC didnt. Stupid, stupid stupid was to lose...on both fronts. Never play Newmann again... He's useless
well this was a let down. Revs miss a few headers that could have put this game away. I can understand the Alston sub but I have to question an attacking player for your DM when you are up a goal on the road. I think Teal had a pretty good game. My MOTM
I think Woodbury was spent and as Taylor pointed out the last few attacks came up his side and he was not effective
My guess too. But Neumann is a head scratcher. I guess he went to Gtown and may have friends at the game. Also, Daigo played a lot midweek and maybe the local connection was the tie breaker. Neumann is a black hole. He is among the worst mids I've ever seen in a revs jersey.
I think firstshirt is right about the Alston sub, but I have seen KA beaten so many times on that exact same ball, that I have to think that DCU had that scouted and scripted. The Neumann bashing is absurd. This was a situation in which a veteran d-mid presence was called for, not a 2nd year player who has rarely seen the field this year. It was unfortunate that he gave up the PK, but that doesn't mean he sucks, just that he wasn't ready to do that job. I have to say, the entire team looked sluggish - second to almost every ball, unable to puts shots on target. They were hanging on by their fingernails before the subs. So here's a thought. What if the Revs FO picked up a couple new starting level players, so that we really did have depth? Still, it's painful. DCU is so pedestrian, so unexciting. They are professional enough to maintain a level of play, though, and beat you if you don't show up.
While we agree Heaps got the sub wrong and Daigo should have come on instead, with respect what do you see in Neumann? Genuine question, I can't name a single strength. He is a number 4 draft pick. I genuinely don't know why.
Another way to put it: my unofficial hockey +/- chart for the season, including the OC game. Alston is "leading" and also has never had a + game. Alston -15 Rowe -9 Fagundez -7 Kobayashi -5 Goncalves -4 Knighton -3 Okoli -3 Neumann -2 Hall -1 Rudy -1 Smith -1 Herivaux 0 Barnes 2 Caldwell 2 Farrell 3 Jones 3 Shuttleworth 3 Agudelo 4 Woodberry 4 Nguyen 5 Tierney 5 Bunbury 6 Dorman 6 Davies 11
I think here we differ is that, in my view - in the American system where players mature 5 years later than in the European system - you can't tell the ultimate worth of a 22-24 year old until he's played 3-4 years professionally. Your view is I think the more common one, and the perspective more grounded in the world game, where players are essentially fully formed by the time they are 22. WRT Neumann, I have see glimpses of a pro player. He seems to be athletic enough, and willing to get stuck in. He has had some good moments. I agree that he is a way off from producing at the top level. That is why he should not be put in the position of having to come on in the crucial phase of a crucial game.
Neumann needs minutes. He needs to go be starting every single week and playing 90 minutes in USL for a full season. It'd be nice if it was Rochester (since I would get to watch him) but really, anywhere will do. Last night he gets tossed into a tight game in the wrong position and it might have just ruined his confidence for weeks. He's really being mismanaged as a prospect. It's ridiculous. It was a really stupid challenge for him to make, but he shouldn't have been in that position in the first place. I swear as soon as Alston came on I thought "oh no, far-post cross, Alston getting posterized like Kamara did when he played for SKC." And yup. Alston drifts inside away from his mark, in order to jump for the header and miss it, and his mark is wide open. You can see Agudelo scampering back after realizing that Alston left Rolfe unmarked, but in no universe should our right-sided forward be responsible for their left wing in the box. All that said, it should have been 2, 3 or 4-zero by the time DC finally got into the game. Davies had one half-chance and scored it. Teal had a beautiful opportunity to score or set up Davies, and he bungled it (to be fair, he created it entirely himself out of nothing). Agudelo had a couple good chances, Nguyen had a couple good chances, but only 1 goal. I wonder if the ref had allowed hydration breaks, if we would have been able to see out the game.
Five times he has come on as a sub. The team has scored 0 goals and given up 7 in those appearances (as stated above). Three times (of those 5) they gave up two goals in the final 20 minutes. Mind-boggling. Good thing Burns is trying really hard to find a defender, we might need one someday soon...
I literally swore at the TV when I saw him getting ready to come on. I don't doubt that London needed a break, he actually has played a lot of minutes in the last week. But Alston is at the point where I think he provides nothing - he's poor defensively and offensively. If the other guys on the team that could conceivably play outside back can't get past Alston on the depth chart, that says something - and it isn't good.
Smith is too one-footed to play on the right, as is Tierney. Hall looks like a good defender when he's out there but is limited going forward. Still, at least he can defend. He should be out there before Alston IMO.
It was disappointing - you could see this loss develop in slow motion way before the substitutions, back as far as the 35th minute or so. This with Twellman complimenting our depth at the beginning of the broadcast. It's a myth Taylor. I wonder if swapping Woodberry and Farrell might have been better than pulling Woodberry. Is this squad fit enough to win in the dog days of summer?
Yeah when Twellman was complimenting the revs attacking depth I literally was laughing out loud. He couldn't be more wrong considering we are a goal-a-game type offense. Chicago sucks so there was a second but most teams keep the revs to 1.
riffing off my Neumann comment, http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...alyst-heel-turn-burning-rage-and-more-week-16 There's no perfect overlap yet, but this weekend gave us a glimpse of why I think teams that invest in academies and set up their own, full USL reserve teams will start to separate themselves from the pack over the next three or four years.
Heh! Totally not serious. This one burns.... Soon as I saw Altson, I thought the same as many here: "This is now a loss." My wife said "But they're up 1-0" at the time. Then she was amazed at how right the prediction was. But is wasn't just about Alston. It was about the mentality and the defensive posture that was going on. Was it defensive? If it wasn't, well then they had a tough time holding back the juggernaut onslaught of DC's offense. Maybe they were just pinned-in.
Maybe, just maybe, if Neumann had spent some time with Rochester earlier this year, he wouldn't have looked out of place Sunday. Of course, we can't do that, because we still have two open roster spots, so he is needed in Foxboro for emergency use. That Burns, always thinking 4-5 moves ahead....
If we sent Neumann to Rochester today, Rochester would have no incentive to play him. They have a solid USL squad, top of the league, and have no need to insert a new midfielder just to get him some playing time. Ultimately we just need a Providence Revs 2 USL team.
Memo to Burns and Heaps: "He's the only guy we got" is hardly an adequate substitution strategy. This horse is so dead he's been ground up into alpo, but it all goes back to this winter. If Burns had brought it a couple of new guys who could at least be serviceable MLS players, how many more points would we have right now? I loved Twellman as a player, but man, he is beyond horrible in the booth. Maybe I was expecting too much from him, but he is lazy, repeats the "conventional wisdom" claptrap with little to no original thought and his inane ramblings make Feldman and Mariner sound like teachings of Khalil Gibran.
Don't worry folks. Burns is trying. And 6-5-6 isn't mediocre. Man, I'm so glad we blew off the USOC for this crap. At least our summer tradition continues.
Don't forget - we'll get lectured from some here that "the FO are the professionals" and "Heaps knows what he's doing." After yesterday's loss Heaps is quite literally .500 in 3+ years as the Revs' coach.