P/I/P, Match 23: Revs @PHI, Sun 11/8/2020 3:30pm [R]

True enough, but ... I think the Revs have been competing better and better each time. Without Blake's heroics, we surely would have won last time out. Given that we've done well on the road, I like our chances.

 

For me getting a positive result all depends on who Arena starts. Lately it's been Caldwell and TMac and I think thats a formula for losing. If we want to get a result then we need to play players that are skilled enough to get that result. Its up to you Arena..... roll the dice, put it on the line and play to win or ..... play to be competitive and probably lose.... Caldwell and TMac play hard but cannot move the ball forward. Neither is going to score. Meanwhile, we have Diego, Lee and even Polster riding the bench. Of those three, Lee has the potential to be a game changer. He must be on the field more than the last 10 minutes if we have any hope

 

My ideal starting lineup right now is something like

Buksa
Teal Lee Gil
Tommy Polster
FB1 Kessler Farrell FB2
Turner

Im a bit higher on Tommy than you are, but agree that Scotty cant move the ball forward. I think Tommy has shown a good ability to progress the ball through midfield and even a bit of vision with respect to finding passes to dangerous spots.

I also think Gil+Lee gets the most creativity on the field, although I could be convinced that dropping Lee for Tajon gives them a more dynamic theat out wide.

 

Twellman ripping the Revs. at 42 mins. justifiably. They just are not a good team in this 2020 season, IMHO.

 

Once again, the combination of Lee and Carles leads to lots of breakouts for the other team. I think Bruce is tougher (and wrong more often) on the officials than Stevie was!! That said whatever happened to persistent infringement? Martinez committed about 17 fouls and was called for at least five of them and didn't get a card until his tactical foul near the end.

 

I have to agree with Twellman on this. We have few "very good" players. We look slow and old most times. Do not have a scorer and are terrible on defensive set pieces. People just stand and watch. I really think Arena has to clean house (except Turner). I look at our three DPs and two I would move ASAP. I officially give up on Buksa and Bou and think Gil is either not 100% or highly overrated. Has he done anything since he came back? I dont think so. Diego is apparently dead to Arena. He puts Rowe on over him and Rowe looked slow and old. Twellman is right.... we are not very good

 

I think the game showed who we really are....at best a mid-level team. Philly ran circles around us and we had no real response. Watching us in our own half of the field just kick the ball away, and usually to Philly, I thought I was back coaching a U-12 team. Speaking of U-12 team, was it Teal (?) early in the game who had the ball in the top of the box and had to set it up on his right foot!!! Even my wife hollered at him to shoot the ball.
We should..." should" beat Montreal, but after that, it will probably be Philly again and that will most likely be the end of the season for the Revs.

 

I wouldn't judge the Revs (as Twellman and his partner did) by this performance. Maybe they won't come out any better in the playoffs, but this was a very sub-par performance based on how they have been playing over the last month.

While some played better (Turner, Gil - the most assertive and involved he's been yet), too many others turned in really bad performances.

- Bou has been lost since Gil first got injured in the spring and is still trying to find his game
- probably the worst game by Bye since his rookie year. Missing was all of the polish and steadiness that he developed this season. His passes were poorly measured, he was shut off easily, lost battles for the ball over and over again ...
- unfortunately the kind of too familiar game that Farrell puts in occasionally where he looks clumsy and overmatched. Ridiculous late slide to draw an early yellow, mistimed a central/last man challenge that was fortunately bailed out by the referee's whistle.
- Polster was slow and looked out of shape
- very, very poor game by Bunbury (the essential trick-or-treat player). Bad passes, reluctant to go forward, didn't protect the ball when he had it.

I think with DeJuan Jones coming in on the right, we had finally stabilized our defense providing a good foundation. Since his hamstring injury, the defense has been playing like they are on skates.

Overall, I thought the reffing was pretty poor. A lot of tackling from behind - with contact - was allowed. Gil was repeated fouled in transition and the ref never got control. He allowed Philly players to scream at him and his lines-people for correct calls with no discipline at all.

Basically, we saw one team capable of quick/precision passing and another one that was not. To me, that's the story of the game.

Kind of remarkable Twellman's 'coolness' towards the Revs. Virtually any former player or coach in broadcasting will express some fondness for their former team. Not Twellman, if anything I think he leans on the side of being more critical. I'm not suggesting he should show any bias for them; I just think he's probably got some serious unresolved resentment below the surface. Other than praising Turner, I don't think he said a good thing about them all day (and he was judging their performance as if he hadn't seen them all season - which I suspect was the case).

 

Its unsurprising that in those final 8 games Bruce inexplicably decided that Scott Caldwell was his starting 6, and the team turns into a sieve in the middle.

A previous commented suggested Lee and Gil made the team weak in the middle. What a crock of manure. The team was weak through the middle because they started their least effective CM qt the base of a wide diamond. Reminds me of a decision in 2017 in T&T. I forget who the coach was, but what a moron.

 

A few words from the manure spreader (crocker, I guess). I'm not a Caldwell defender, at all. Remember that Luis Caicedo is the first choice in this position, and that we all said they needed to go out and get something at the start of the season (Matt Polster and TMac were apparently the best we could get).

In each of the games where Nguyen and Gil were playing together, the number of breakouts by the opponents, including 4 v 2 or 5 v 3 went from nearly zero to at least a handful in each half they played together. Much of this is the team mentality when they are in the game. When we have the ball in the offensive half, 7 or 8 players get forward and the opponent doesn't feel the need to mark with a comparable number.

In my mind, the biggest issue with the team as currently constituted is that we can't string more than a few passes together until we not just lose possession, but do so in a way that turns the opponent on to an offensive threat quickly. The whole team has been guilty of this through much of the year.

 

I think if you rewatch yesterday's game you'll notice most of those lost possessions happened in the first half. They came primarily from the wide players having some of their worst games of the year (Bye, Tajon, Buttner, Teal) and Caldwell just being himself. I hated the Polster as a RWB experiment, but at least he stopped giving the ball away (small tangent: I'd have liked to see him as a IWB with a traditional winger in front of him)

As to Polster and Tommy, they've both looked very good when they've played, and it dont think its debatable. In fact, I'm surprised that they haven't been given a run together given their commitment to defense and ability to successfully transition quickly from defending to attacking. Will either threaten to make an MLS best 11? No. But they provide integrity to the most important area of the field, something the team routinely has lacked in their absence over the last few years.

And that brings me back to Bruce. I don't understand his commitment to Rowe as a winger. Hes a CM. Full stop. A more sensible formation at the end of the game would have been:
Manneh Buksa Gil(IW)
Lee
Rowe Scotty

34 yr old Lee isn't really an 8, and Gil is going to have freedom to roam wherever he wants no matter where his formal position is. Regardless there are ways to arrange your players that make more sense than what he used. What does make sense is pushing your players high trying to find a goal! You're down a goal in the last game of the season, you need to get one back. So panicking over actually trying to win makes 0 sense to me. Unless you're trying to play for that classic 0-1 draw, and buddy that never works

 

Does l’Impact de Montréal have to continue its isolation in Conn. until the 11/20/20 playoff play-in game v. Revs. at Gillette? Montréal’s BigSoccer page (dated) has no info. Or can Canadian teams now travel back and forth?

 

Maybe when he had a chance to go to Europe and the Revs blocked that is the reason? He's not the only one that was unhappy here though. Dempsey did not want to come back here. Nether did Parky. Lee had to fight his way out but came back when Burns was sacked.

 

Yes, they are mediocre - no argument there. Since Gil has come back, people have speculated that the offense could 'ignite', with all 3 DPs back. Hasn't happened yet (though Gil is becoming more and more influential).

But, the last time they played Philly, which wasn't that long ago, they played much, much better - and were the better team IMO, but couldn't really solve Blake.

This time, there were just too many poor performances - as someone mentioned, particularly by the wide players. We may not be able to match PHI in a game that really matters, but we should be able to do much better than that.

I really think McNamara needs to be in the lineup. Since he didn't even sub in (and Arena's generally found a time/place to use him just about every game), I wonder if he wasn't fully fit. And, I think he'd have made a big impact.

Yeah, I could see TT having an issue with that, but they also payed him for about 3 years when he couldn't play.

More likely, I think Twelllman had an issue with his career-ending injury and how it was initially mis-diagnosed. I think that was a really mysterious injury at the time, so I don't know if they could have/should have handled it better - or whether it would have enabled him to resume playing at some point.

 

I think that Taylor has a strong urge to fight a "homer" image (as opposed to Paul Pierce), much more than others might. Many national announcers have lost their gigs by being too loyal to past teams (anyone old enough to remember the disastrous Tommy Heinson NBA color analyst era). Taylor is super-sports savvy given the family history.

 

I see it this way as well, FWIW. Tommy has some "probing attack" in him, Scotty does not.

 

I wouldn't say exactly that Taylor was misdiagnosed, but he was definitely mistreated, and was rushed to back to play too often. I did not know at the time how bad my own post concussion situation was, but I knew enough that whenever Taylor got back on the field, my gut reaction was "too soon, he'll prolong his recovery." He was also thrown back onto the field because, even hurt, he was the best option we had. Burns could not freakin' fill out a roster -- we had no depth. If we had depth, Taylor might not have had to be rushed back onto the field. It's the what if's? that plague you.

That being said, his career ending probably saved my life. I got hurt in '06, and Taylor in '08. He is absolutely the only reason I figured out that I was dealing with post concussion syndrome. All my doctors failed me, nine years straight -- the ignorance is that bad in the medical community.

I don't always get a chance to go to Revs games, but I did against LAFC last year. It hit me while I was there that I had never been to a Revs game with a clear head -- no brain fog, headache, or sound sensitivity. The team lost that day, but I won.