{"id":28704,"date":"2014-10-25T23:44:03","date_gmt":"2014-10-26T03:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28704"},"modified":"2014-10-25T23:44:03","modified_gmt":"2014-10-26T03:44:03","slug":"keeping-it-clean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28704","title":{"rendered":"Keeping it Clean"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

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

A lot has gone right for the New England Revolution over the past three months, but one thing the club has struggled with recently is keeping a clean sheet. Until Saturday night, the Revolution had failed to record a shutout since a 3-0 win at Toronto FC on August 30th<\/sup>, leaving some questions about the defense going into the postseason.<\/p>\n

Toronto again proved the cure to the Revolution\u2019s shutout woes as New England finished off the regular season with a 1-0 win for their 17th<\/sup> victory of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The clean sheet] was part of what we really wanted to do,\u201d said head coach Jay Heaps. \u201cIt\u2019s so important going into the playoffs to not concede home goals because of, obviously, the weighted away goals. We really wanted to shore that up and I thought our defense was really good. I think Bobby [Shuttleworth] had one or two good saves, but no one was behind us and that was key number one and I thought that was good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shuttleworth finished the match with four saves in picking up his eighth shutout of the season. In addition to his saves, Shuttleworth was also called on to make a key punch deep into second half stoppage time when Toronto FC was awarded a corner kick and put all eleven men into the box, including goalkeeper Joe Bendik, who positioned himself right in front of the Revolution \u2018keeper.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good to be able to come home and be able to get our organization down and get our lines, keep the zero and get a win,\u201d said Shuttleworth.<\/p>\n

Defender A.J. Soares, who was named the Revolution Defender of the Year and Players\u2019 Player of the Year before the game, helped lead the backline with three tackles, four clearances, a blocked shot and an interception on the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something we focused on all week,\u201d said Soares. \u201cWe know in the playoffs if you give up a goal at home it is trouble with that road goal rule, but I was happy with it. I thought the whole group, not just the back four or five, defended. I think you\u2019ve got to play like that in the playoffs. You\u2019re coming up against teams that are as good as you, so you need all eleven guys defending and doing the work on both sides and we did it today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Left back Chris Tierney, who was one of the players who contributed on both sides of the ball by setting up Lee Nguyen\u2019s game winning goal also played a key role in the shutout with two tackles, three clearances and an interception. But, despite the shutout, Tierney still recognized the team\u2019s need to improve heading into the postseason.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very important [to get the shutout],\u201d said Tierney. \u201cOur goal coming into the game was to be tight and not concede. There were a couple of dicey moments there, but overall I think we defended pretty well. Still have to improve going into the playoffs, so we\u2019ll like to get a good week of training in and get ready to go next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Nguyen, named the team\u2019s MVP before the match, and scorer of the game-winner, his 18th<\/sup> goal of the year, recognized the importance of the clean sheet, but also in getting a positive result, despite the match mattering little in the standings, in front of the 32,766 in attendance, the club\u2019s largest home crowd of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to be solid in the back, keep a clean sheet,\u201d said Nguyen. \u201cCredit to the guys in the backline and Bobby as well, they did a great job. At the same time we wanted to make it exciting for the fans who came out and get three points, going into the playoffs on a strong note.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revolution record first shutout since August in 1-0 win over Toronto FC to conclude regular season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28710,"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\/10\/goncalvestorfeature.jpg?fit=490%2C240","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28704"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28704"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28711,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28704\/revisions\/28711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}