{"id":43748,"date":"2016-10-28T16:45:23","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T20:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=43748"},"modified":"2016-10-28T16:47:52","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T20:47:52","slug":"that-bitter-feeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=43748","title":{"rendered":"That Bitter Feeling"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

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

Days after his team\u2019s playoff hopes officially met their demise in Sunday\u2019s regular season finale, Revolution midfielder Kelyn Rowe was still bitter about the way the season unfolded.<\/p>\n

Rowe, who was a significant part of the Revolution\u2019s three-straight postseason berths from 2013-2015, took a dejected tone during the team\u2019s final media scrum of the season on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a feeling that no one likes,\u201d Rowe told the media on Thursday. \u201cI don\u2019t want to feel this feeling again, because it\u2019s almost like the season\u2019s just been nothing, it\u2019s for nothing, all the hard work we\u2019ve put in is for nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, missing the postseason isn\u2019t new development for Rowe. The former first round pick was a part of the 2012 squad that missed the playoffs by a wide margin during what was, by all accounts, a rebuilding year with Jay Heaps taking the reins the previous winter. <\/p>\n

But this season had little in common during Rowe\u2019s rookie campaign. The Revolution were supposed to be contenders in 2016. They were supposed to be among the top sides in the Eastern Conference with Rowe, Diego Fagundez, Juan Agudelo and Lee Nguyen in tow. The midseason addition of Kei Kamara did nothing to temper those expectations.<\/p>\n

New England\u2019s arch-nemesis proved to be consistency, especially in the rear. The club spent much of the season at the top of the goals allowed charts. <\/p>\n

Converted center back Andrew Farrell returned to his original right back spot after it became obvious he and Jose Goncalves weren\u2019t gelling after a season-and-half together in the heart of the defense. Instability between the sticks \u2013 where Bobby Shuttleworth and Brad Knighton shared minutes \u2013 left the club without a true no. 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe obviously felt like we underachieved our potential,\u201d Nguyen told the media on Thursday. \u201cObviously, again, now watching the teams in the playoffs, it hurts a little bit, because we feel like we should be there, but we didn\u2019t do enough early on in the season to give us a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just the early part of the season that doomed the Revolution. After it took five games to clinch their first win of the season, the club suffered not one, but two six-game winless streaks before finally catching their form in September.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t go on streaks like that,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cThe summers have been what has killed us, so we have got to focus on that. I think we have to come in with a mentality next year that, you know, we\u2019re not just a team that\u2019s going to compete to make it into the playoffs.\u201d <\/p>\n

If those sentiments sound eerily similar to last year\u2019s offseason assessments, it\u2019s because the Revolution still can\u2019t seem to escape the clenches of the summertime swoon. And while the players are fully aware of the problem, it is, ultimately, the job of the coaching staff to keep the squad from repeating the same mistakes.<\/p>\n

Heaps will be back for 2017, per a report from the Boston Globe<\/em>. But unless the squad puts the skids on a regression that’s spanned the last two seasons, it might be his final year at the helm.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, players like Nguyen and Rowe are wholly focused on a strong offseason if only to avoid another autumn without a playoff game to prepare for. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to come back as good as I can and as fit as I can,\u201d Rowe said, \u201cbecause this offseason is going to be too long for me mentally, and I can\u2019t wait to get back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The smiles were few and far in between as Revs players cleaned out their lockers on Thursday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43749,"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":true,"_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":[891,1300,888,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Rowe-1.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\/43748"}],"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=43748"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43752,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43748\/revisions\/43752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}