New England Soccer Today

Davies Makes Immediate Impact

Photo credit: Chris Aduama/aduamaphotography.com

Photo credit: Chris Aduama/aduamaphotography.com

FOXBORO, Mass. – After playing 150 minutes over the past eight days, Jay Heaps knew he had to manage Charlie Davies’ minutes closely. He elected to start with Davies on the bench but understood that late in the game, Davies’s speed would pose a dangerous threat to a fatigued Chicago defense.

Although Heaps admitted he went to Davies earlier than they had planned, with the Revolution and Fire knotted 1-1, he had a simple message to the striker: score.

And it worked.

Just two minutes after being subbed on in the 58th minute, Davies took a feed from Jermaine Jones and raced in behind the Chicago defense and smashed home his third goal of the season.

“Charlie has been great for us,” Heaps said. “He’s been awesome. Quite frankly I think he’s been one of our inspirational guys. When you have an eight game set back like we did, no one stopped fighting and guys like Charlie in the locker room are really good. When he got his opportunity he took it. He wanted to start tonight there was no question about it. We as a staff, we really felt that tonight was going to be one of those games that later in the game his speed was going to make a difference. You have two tired center backs and that’s when we felt was a good time to put Charlie in. We went to him earlier than we thought and he went in and changed the game within two minutes.”

Shortly after the substitution, defender Jose Gocalves came away with the ball in the defensive third and passed it up field to Jones. Jones battled with Chicago’s Lovel Palmer right at midfield before using his left foot to send a through ball in. Davies sprinted onto it and had a one on one with Sean Johnson. Davies calmly took a low right-footed shot and buried his chance into the far post corner for what turned out to be the game-winning goal.

“That was my job to come on the field and change the game,” Davies said. “Obviously I wanted to make an immediate impact and I was fortunate enough to have Jermaine play me a great ball and as a striker you got to put away those chances and I made sure I took advantage of it.”

It was the first time that Jones and Davies – who have known one another for years – linked up on a goal for the Revolution.

“That’s why I brought him to the club,” Davies said with a big smile. “At least that’s why I helped bring him to the club. He’s a tremendous player, he’s got so much experience. He’s a player that can create opportunities for me so it was awesome to get my goal off his assist and hopefully there’s many more to come.”

Davies also doubled his touches on the ball from New England’s 3-1 win over Sporting KC on Wednesday, when he started and was subbed out in the 61st minute. He completed 75% of his passes in his 30-plus minutes of play.

“I think the best part about it is that we’re going to get better,” Davies said. “We haven’t hit our ceiling yet, Jermaine’s still getting used to the way we play and we’re getting used to Jermaine. He’s such a presence in the midfield so it’s going to be great when we’re running on full stride.”

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