{"id":35078,"date":"2015-05-24T00:45:53","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T04:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=35078"},"modified":"2015-05-24T00:45:53","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T04:45:53","slug":"when-the-going-gets-tough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=35078","title":{"rendered":"When the Going Gets Tough…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

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

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – For 52 minutes, Jay Heaps felt his team was the better side. But in a six\u00a0minute span, New England saw both Chris Tierney and Lee Nguyen ejected with red cards and his team reduced to nine men.<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0thanks to a strong effort from those remaining on the field, the Revolution were able to walk away with a point in a 1-1 tie.<\/p>\n

Tierney saw a straight red from referee Mark Geiger in the 52nd after getting his studs up on a tackle on Chris Pontius. After Pontius served in a corner, the clearance went back towards him. As Tierney raced out to it, he brought his boot up and caught Pontius just above his knee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chris Tierney red card, for me, that\u2019s gotta be 100%,\u201d Heaps said. \u201cI gotta be honest with you, there\u2019s no way he could have seen it from where he was going and how quickly he went to the red, you saw his hand go to the pocket within a millisecond of the whistle being blown. Those are the situations where you just hope there\u2019s a little bit more common sense and say alright \u2018Did anyone else see it like I did?\u2019 If they all agree, I tip my hat. If just one guy makes the call, I hope that there\u2019s a pause there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just six minutes later, New England went from 10 men to nine men when Geiger issued Nguyen his second yellow of the game, resulting in a red card. Nguyen got his first yellow in extra time in the first half on a tackle on Davy Arnaud. His second card came just before midfield, again tangling with Arnaud before following through with his challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the red card, we have to be smarter,\u201d Heaps added. \u201cTo be fair to Lee he was fouled first, he was right in front of us. But he\u2019s got to react better and unfortunately he gave the referee a chance. Believe me I thought there was going to be more red cards after that, it was a free for all.\u201d<\/p>\n

New England\u00a0had\u00a0grabbed a 1-0 lead when Charlie Davies scored in the waning moments of the first half on a rebound.<\/p>\n

Despite having to play more than 35 minutes down two men, the Revolution only allowed DC United to get one shot on goal. Unfortunately for New England, United cashed in when Jairo Arrieta tapped in Taylor Kemp\u2019s near post cross in the 80th minute.<\/p>\n

For the 22 minutes between Nguyen\u2019s sending off and Arrieta\u2019s goal and for the 15 minutes following the strike, New England didn\u2019t allow a shot on target despite DC United\u2019s two-man advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cCredit them,\u201d DC head coach Ben Olsen said. \u201cThey dug in, there\u2019s a lot of guys on their squad that were doing everything to make it difficult on us. I thought we could have just played what\u2019s there, 10-v-8. Just give to the next guy, side to side and eventually you\u2019re going to get your looks or get a service in better spots.\u201d<\/p>\n

New England\u2019s back line of London Woodberry, Andrew Farrell and Jose Goncalves went the full 90 while Kevin Alston spelled Juan Agudelo in the 56th minute to keep four defenders on the field for the Revolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was tough going down to one man is really tough, two guys, like Chris and Lee who help us so much going forward, it\u2019s tough,\u201d Farrell said. \u201cI think the guys did well, I think it was hard for the guys who went 90 minutes on Wednesday. I got a rest so I felt like I had to give a little bit more. It was impressive guys like Jermaine and Scotty, Kelyn when he came in, Teal, they were going hard so we\u2019re all in this together. I thought it was a good effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

New England switched to a 4-3-1 approach with Jermaine Jones and Scott Caldwell patrolling the midfield the entire game, Teal Bunbury going in the middle for 77 minutes before moving up to striker for the final 13 when Kelyn Rowe came in to the midfield.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew we just had to keep them wide, we couldn\u2019t let them down the middle,\u201d Caldwell said. \u201cI just tried to stay inside and as the ball went wide get as much pressure as I could so it wasn\u2019t an easy service, trying to make it easier on the back line.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just know you can\u2019t be stupid but there\u2019s not much to change. You still have to go in hard, you can\u2019t ease up or anything. You still have to win the ball, still have to try and counter attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between Davies, Bunbury and sub Sean Okoli, New England tried its best to extend the field and keep DC United\u2019s defense honest. Jones and Caldwell turned their defense into offense trying to spring counter attacks with Jones even registering a shot on target.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it\u2019s mental just trying to push there,\u201d Caldwell added. \u201cLike right away within a minute Jermaine won a ball and that kind of got everyone going knowing that we could still make it through this game. Unfortunately we couldn\u2019t hold the lead but keeping it 1-1 was okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

New England moves to 5-3-5 overall, but their home unbeaten streak is extended to 17 games with an 11-0-6 record dating back to last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defense holds strong to limit D.C. United to just one shot on goal, despite two-man advantage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":35083,"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":[611,891,1274,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/nevdcdefense.jpg?fit=615%2C400","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35078"}],"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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35078"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35086,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35078\/revisions\/35086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}