{"id":24538,"date":"2014-03-21T09:11:20","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T13:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=24538"},"modified":"2014-03-21T11:15:49","modified_gmt":"2014-03-21T15:15:49","slug":"preview-nevvan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=24538","title":{"rendered":"Preview: #NEvVAN"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

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

The New England Revolution (0-0-2, 0 points) will hope to record their first points of the season when they welcome the Vancouver Whitecaps (1-0-1, four points) \u00a0at Gillette Stadium on Saturday for their home opener at 2:00 pm.<\/p>\n

The Revs have struggled in the early part of the season so far.\u00a0\u00a0A pair of road losses to Houston and Philadelphia, along with a negative-five goal differential, has\u00a0sunk them\u00a0to the bottom of the Eastern Conference table.<\/p>\n

Vancouver started the season solidly under new coach Carl Robinson, recording\u00a0four points in their first\u00a0two games. Robinson\u2019s side comes to Gillette Stadium as the Western Conference leader.<\/p>\n

The new-look Whitecaps debuted their season by\u00a0slaying the New York Red Bulls 4-1 in Vancouver and coming from behind last week in California courtesy of Kekuta Manneh\u2019s late strike to earn a point against a surprising Chivas USA side.<\/p>\n

Kekuta, who’s scored a goal in each of his last five MLS matches, looks be the Revs\u2019 latest nightmare on the defensive front. He will likely be partnered upfront with Kenny Miller \u00a0and Jamaican international Darren Mattocks. Midfielders Pedro Morales, Nigel Reo-Coker and Sebasti\u00e1n Fern\u00e1ndez will look to stretch the field for the visitors. The Whitecaps may get back midfielder Russell Teibert, who was ruled unfit to face Chivas USA last week.<\/p>\n

After making several changes for last week\u2019s defeat to the Union, Jay Heaps will likely introduce some new wrinkles to this week\u2019s lineup. Kelyn Rowe may return to the lineup after sitting out last week’s match due to a hamstring injury.\u00a0 Diego Fagundez, Teal Bundury and Lee Nguyen are expected to spark the attack for the home-side.<\/p>\n

Former U.S.\u00a0Men’s National\u00a0Team stalwart\u00a0Jay DeMerit, who joined the Canadian side in 2011, acknowledged earlier this week that New England may be winless, but has the motivations to put together\u00a0a good performance in Foxboro.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re coming off two losses so they\u2019re going to want to put points on the board,\u201d DeMerit told the media on Tuesday. \u201cThey have all the inspiration needed to put in a good home performance and we\u2019re going to have to combat that and make sure we go in ready from minute one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jose Goncalves\u2019 standing with the Revolution remains the biggest storyline surrounding the club.\u00a0Unhappy with his contract,\u00a0 Goncalves was not only\u00a0dropped from the lineup, but\u00a0was not\u00a0a part of\u00a0the gameday\u00a018 in\u00a0week\u2019s match\u00a0at Philadelphia. For the first time since joining the club, Goncalves’ spot in the lineup is no longer a certainty.<\/p>\n

New England leads the all-time series between the clubs with a \u00a02-1-1 record, with both wins coming at Gillette Stadium, including a 4-1 victory back in 2012.<\/p>\n

However, the last time these two teams met, the Whitecaps erased a two-goal deficit to beat\u00a0a short-handed\u00a0Revolution side\u00a04-3 to give the Canadian club its first victory over New England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Revs will step onto the pitch at Gillette Stadium for the first time in 2014 when they face the Whitecaps on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":24541,"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":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Saer1.png?fit=495%2C260","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24538"}],"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=24538"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24548,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24538\/revisions\/24548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}