Memories Of 4-0 Home Loss To Chivas USA Still Fresh In Players’ Minds
- Updated: September 7, 2010
After Saturday’s big comeback victory against the Seattle Sounders, the New England Revolution were already looking to the big three game road trip ahead. Up first is a flight to Los Angeles where the Revs will take on Chivas USA.
Though the Revs have a pitiful 1-8-1 record on the road this season, playing a Chivas USA side that are only 4-4-2 at home and are at the bottom of the Western Conference may be just what the Revs need to turn their away form around. With their playoff hopes on the line, the Revs should have plenty of motivation, but if that isn’t enough they will surely want to avenge the 4-0 home loss suffered at the hands of Chivas back in May.
“We’ll have it in the back of our minds, the result when they played us here,” said midfielder Chris Tierney. “Luckily we can go there and flip it on them.”
Chris Tierney, seen here celebrating his first career goal on Saturday, will likely have to take more set pieces in Perovic's absence. (Photo by CHRIS ADUAMA/aduama.com)
The Revs had similar motivation against Seattle on Saturday after losing to them 3-0 in June.
“We don’t like losing 4-nothing and the same thing with Seattle, we lost 3-nothing,” said defender Seth Sinovic. “We got beat pretty badly, but hopefully we can keep eleven players out on the field against Chivas this time and hopefully we can get a win out of it.”
When they lost to Chivas on May 5th, the Revs were forced to play most of the match down a man after Marko Perovic was sent off in the 29th minute for lashing out at Ben Zemanski as the Chivas midfielder was grabbing his shirt. Unfortunately Perovic, the Revs’ leading goal scorer, will miss this game due to yellow card accumulation after picking up his fifth yellow card of the season Saturday for a needless reckless tackle late in the game.
“It’s tough to replace Marko,” said Sinovic. “But there are always guys willing to step up and I’m sure somebody’s going to step up and put in a great performance.”
Regardless of who steps in, the Revs can’t let the absence hurt their offense as three points are a must on Friday. Still eight points out of the last playoff spot with eight games remaining, the schedule just gets harder after Friday with road trips to Colorado and Dallas, who sit in 6th and 4th place, respectively, in the overall league table.
“We’re still in a hole, but we’ve got to keep digging out and we’ve got to keep getting points,” said Sinovic. “Hopefully we can get ourselves back in the playoff race.”
The playoffs aren’t out of reach yet, but just a few slip-ups could end the Revs chances.
“We need points, simple as that,” said Tierney.
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