{"id":21675,"date":"2013-09-05T09:45:52","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T13:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=21675"},"modified":"2013-09-05T12:28:04","modified_gmt":"2013-09-05T16:28:04","slug":"revs-look-ahead-to-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=21675","title":{"rendered":"Revs Brace for Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chris8\"<\/a>

(Photo: Kari Heistad\/capturedimages.biz)<\/p><\/div>\n

The New England Revolution (10-9-7,\u00a037 points)\u00a0will be looking to maintain their three-game\u00a0unbeaten streak when they welcome the Montreal Impact (12-7-6, 42 points) —\u00a0one of three\u00a0clubs atop the\u00a0tightly-packed\u00a0Eastern Conference table\u00a0— at Gillette Stadium on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Both sides saw their playoffs pushes\u00a0come to a crawl\u00a0for the time being, as they both played out a draw on the road last week. The two clubs will expect to bounce back in order to improve their seeding in the conference.<\/p>\n

After receiving an early goal from\u00a0Diego Fagundez\u00a0last week, the Revs tied\u00a0 Toronto FC 1-1 at BMO Field in Toronto, a place where success has been hard to come by for the local XI.<\/p>\n

For their part, the Impact travel to New England after a scoreless draw on the road last week in Philadelphia, a team the Revs demolished 5-1 the week before.<\/p>\n

Montreal is currently on a three-way tie with the New York and Sporting Kansas City for the first place in the conference with 42 points each. But\u00a0Montreal has two games on hand on both the Red Bulls and Sporting K.C. Meanwhile, New England is in fifth place with 37 points over the Houston Dynamo (37 points) by virtue of their goals-for total (35 to 30).<\/p>\n

The all-time, head-to-head record between the two favor the Impact over the Revs, as the Impact, who joined MLS as an expansion team last season, have beaten the Revs in\u00a0two of the\u00a0three matches played by scoring\u00a0three goals in those\u00a0pair of\u00a0victories. However, the last meeting was decided on a header from A.J. Soares in the concluding minutes to give the Revs their first win over the Impact.<\/p>\n

New England will be without the services of the rarely-used Honduran forward Jerry Bengtson and newly-acquired defender O\u2019Brian Woodbine of Jamaica as\u00a0both have been called upon for\u00a0international duties with their respective countries.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Revs head coach Jay Heaps has to be concerned with the status of striker Juan Agudelo, who suffered a hamstring injury during last week’s contest in Toronto. The 20-year-old forward\u00a0was not spotted at\u00a0training on Wednesday, and his status for Sunday is uncertain at this point.<\/p>\n

The Revs aren’t the only ones with injury concerns. On Tuesday, Impact midfielder Hern\u00e1n Bernardello tweeted a picture of his left ankle, which he injured in the 72nd minute, and suggested that he may be out for at least three weeks. If that proves to be the case, he will likely be replaced in the starting line-up by Davy Arnaud or Collen Warner.<\/p>\n

The Revs have only allowed 25 goals this season,\u00a0and they remain\u00a0the best defensive team in MLS, while Montreal possesses one of the most prolific offenses in the conference with 41 goals scored, with 15 of them coming from golden boot frontrunner Marco Di Vaio.<\/p>\n

Although the stats suggest that the Impact have the upper hand, the challenge posed to the Revolution isn’t insurmountable by any stretch.\u00a0The Impact have\u00a0only gained\u00a0two points in their last\u00a0six games on the road. In that span, they were defeated by low-ranked teams like D.C. United, Columbus Crew and Chicago Fire. Their last road win in league plays came against Sporting K.C. three months ago. New England won\u00a0five of their last\u00a0eight matches at home.<\/p>\n

Sunday’s clash is the first of two games the conference foes will face off\u00a0against each other this season. They will play each other again on Saturday, October 19 at Stade Saputo in Montreal (Canada) for the second and final time this season — unless, of course,\u00a0they meet in the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Revolution and Impact meet for the first of their two-game season series on Sunday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":21681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1304,596,49,119,595,1274],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Tierney1.png?fit=495%2C257","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21675"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21675"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21692,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21675\/revisions\/21692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}