{"id":38059,"date":"2015-09-07T00:02:20","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T04:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=38059"},"modified":"2015-09-08T00:07:11","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T04:07:11","slug":"five-things-we-learned-nevorl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=38059","title":{"rendered":"Five Things We Learned: #NEvORL"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo credit: Bernie Hoelschen\/Prost Amerika<\/p><\/div>\n

So much for the rug of the real stuff slowing down the Revolution on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Despite\u00a0a few\u00a0moments in which the ball behaved far differently than it did on the regular rubberized surface, the locals more than soldiered on en route to a 3-0 thrashing of a depleted Orlando City side that looked\u00a0very much\u00a0like that lion in the latest\u00a0tifo display\u00a0in front the of the Fort.<\/p>\n

So what did we learn from what we saw on the temporary turf on Saturday?<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Lee Nguyen may have just reinvented himself.<\/strong> Let’s call a spade a spade: 2015 has not been particularly kind to the Revolution playmaker. After scoring 18 goals last year, Nguyen not only struggled to find last year’s form, but grumbling about his contract only made the situation all the more awkward. Well, that was all forgotten on Saturday thanks to a new and different Nguyen. Instead of trying to exploit the central channel, he dragged defenders to open up space for others. He exploited pockets of space, and started to venture wide after Orlando City packed the center. The result: a three-assist game and a well-deserved shout out for Man of the Match.<\/p>\n

2. Jay Heaps doesn’t focus solely on stats when it comes to player evaluations.<\/strong> Following\u00a0Saturday’s match, the Revolution coach was asked whether he believed Nguyen’s performance was the best he’d seen all year. The answer, in summary form: no. Heaps wasn’t trying to troll the media with his answer, but rather, he\u00a0said that he’d seen even stronger performances from Nguyen this year.\u00a0In fact, Heaps\u00a0disclosed that that stats likes assists and goals are only part of the equation when it comes to how he measure’s a player’s impact on a particular match. While Heaps was quick to give Nguyen all the credit for the three assists, he was quick to remind us that the real measure of a player’s impact can’t be told in numbers alone.<\/p>\n

3. Juan Agudelo may not be a starter at the moment, but he’s been invaluable\u00a0off the bench.<\/strong> It’s hard to say whether Agudelo has fully healed from the knee knock he suffered with the national team earlier this summer. After all, most coaches\u00a0aren’t inclined to leave their third-highest\u00a0paid player on the bench\u00a0unless there’s an underlying\u00a0issue in play.\u00a0Either way, there’s no doubt the Revolution are getting the most out of the 22-year-old striker off the bench as of late. For third straight game, Agudelo was a dangerous presence in the latter stages, and for the second straight home game, he scored to put the game out of reach. One thing that’s undoubtedly helped: the return to his striker’s spot instead of out on the wing, where Agudelo seemed to get lost far too often.<\/p>\n

4. The beat goes on for the backline.<\/strong> There’s no doubt that much of the press has been about the Revolution attack over the course of the team’s six-game unbeaten run. But it’s worth noting that only three goals have leaked through since mid-July, a testament to an unshakable backline. On Saturday, we saw more of the same, as Andrew Farrell and Jose Goncalves in particular brought a steadying presence. Granted, the Lions were without their two best players (Kaka and Cyle Larin). Either way, a clean sheet is a clean sheet, which only serves to boost the team’s collective confidence.<\/p>\n

5. Jermaine who?\u00a0(j\/k)<\/strong>\u00a0One of the biggest – if not the biggest – storyline for the locals heading into Saturday’s contest was how they’d weather the absence of Jones, who was just rounding into form following his latest sports hernia surgery. Apparently,\u00a0this wasn’t as big a\u00a0deal as we originally thought. The rounding into form that is, and\u00a0not the sports hernia surgery, of course.\u00a0With Jones in tow with the U.S. and Periscoping at every chance he could get, Daigo Kobayashi and Scott Caldwell held it down in the midfield, and both showed grit and vision to keep Orlando City from gaining any semblance of positive momentum at any time, really. While the Revolution will\u00a0be more than\u00a0happy to get Jones back\u00a0this weekend in\u00a0Toronto, it was\u00a0positive\u00a0development\u00a0to see the\u00a0locals barely skip a beat without their best player available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What did we learn from Saturday’s clash between the Revs and Lions? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38066,"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":[891,49,1109,888,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Nguyen-11.png?fit=600%2C415","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38059"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38059"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38072,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38059\/revisions\/38072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}