{"id":18514,"date":"2013-03-16T09:22:20","date_gmt":"2013-03-16T13:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=18514"},"modified":"2013-03-16T09:25:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-16T13:25:24","slug":"five-questions-revolution-at-union-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=18514","title":{"rendered":"Five Questions: Revolution at Union"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Juan<\/a>

Juan Toja helped steer the Revolution a 1-0 win in Chicago last week. Can he point his club to three more points in Philadelphia on Saturday? (Photo: Kari Heistad\/CapturedImages.biz)<\/p><\/div>\n

Do you remember\u00a0the last time the Revolution started a season 2-0-0?\u00a0Not undefeated, not a win and a draw, but winners of their first two. Six points in their first two. I’ll give you a few minutes to ponder it. Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.<\/p>\n

Wait, who am I kidding? You know this one.\u00a0You already know the last time the\u00a0Revolution\u00a0won two straight to start the season\u00a0was\u00a0nineteen ninety never. And you know that they’re o-2-2 following season-opening wins.<\/p>\n

I say that to say this:\u00a0on Saturday,\u00a0the 2013 Revolution have a chance to rid themselves of that dubious mark. A chance to show the world that this team is different. A chance to\u00a0let everyone know\u00a0that they mean business. An opportunity to\u00a0prove that\u00a0New England’s\u00a0path to MLS Cup\u00a0glory isn’t secured in late autumn. No. The key to winning it all rests securely in the first two games of the regular season.<\/p>\n

You laugh. Go ahead, laugh all you want! But the stats don’t lie: the Revs have never won an MLS Cup in years they’ve fallen short of\u00a0six points\u00a0in their first two. Never. They are an embarrassing 0 for 17.<\/p>\n

Anyway, let’s dive headfirst from the heights of\u00a0that preposterous proposition into a pool of possibilities, or as\u00a0I like to call them, Five Questions.<\/p>\n

1. Which Union team will show up on Saturday?<\/strong> So far, Philadelphia’s two games into their season, and both of those games featured very different approaches. In their opener against Sporting K.C., the Union grabbed an early lead, and kept the pressure on.\u00a0It looked like it was going\u00a0to work\u00a0until their guests responded with three unanswered goals, handing the Union a loss unbefitting of the Bethlehem Steel\u00a0third jerseys they sported. A week, later they went to\u00a0Dick’s Sporting Goods Park,\u00a0a place they’d never won, and beat the Rapids using the\u00a0a crafty\u00a0counterattack gameplan employed by every team to ever play in Colorado. Now that they’re back in\u00a0Philly,\u00a0expect the Union to resume their attack first, ask questions later approach against the Revs. If their showing two weeks ago was any indication, that\u00a0gameplan will\u00a0yield plenty of chances – for both clubs.<\/p>\n

2. Will a healthy Kelyn Rowe get a spot in the starting XI?<\/strong> The way Jay Heaps described Rowe’s performance last week, you have to think that the Revs head coach is itching to pencil in his sophomore midfielder into this week’s lineup. Earlier this week,\u00a0Rowe sported a drugstore variety knee wrap during training, but despite that, he looked like a player ready\u00a0to go for\u00a090 minutes. Or at least 60-65 minutes. Then again, Heaps knows that there’s no such thing as a must-win game in March. Well, at least not since his days at Duke. That said, expect Heaps to consult\u00a0with the training staff before making a decision on whether last week’s gamechanger is good to go for the 5 o’clock first whistle.<\/p>\n

3. What can we expect from Juan Toja?<\/strong> If you have any sense of what the Colombian midfielder\/wreaker of havoc will bring to PPL Park after last week’s awesomely erratic performance, do yourself a favor: quit your job, create a bogus identity,\u00a0procure a forged passport,\u00a0link up with an underground\u00a0betting syndicate, and watch the cash cascade into your illegal bank account.\u00a0Seriously. I won’t say a word. Because, let’s face it: Toja in the hole is an unpredictable adventure. <\/em>He is the Captain\u00a0Jack Sparrow of the Revolution, an eccentric playmaker who uses guile and trickery (see last week’s the\u00a063rd minute dive)\u00a0to get into the box, set up a teammate or nearly trip his way into a goal. He may look awkward doing it,\u00a0cut in and out of scenes at times, but you can’t argue that he wasn’t effective last week.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0Can the backline bottle Jack McInerney?<\/strong> They’ll have to\u00a0if they have any chance of snapping their dreaded winless run against the Union.\u00a0He’s already touched New Engand for three goals in the last two years, scoring the game winners in both Union victories against the Revs last year. Just a suggestion: it might be a good idea for\u00a0whomever’s marking him\u00a0to never let him out of\u00a0his sight on set pieces. Both game-winners were the result of McInerney sneaking through the defense and burying it right on the doorstep. In other words, the Revs can’t afford to\u00a0cast McInerney as an afterthought, not even\u00a0for a split second.<\/p>\n

5. Will the Revolution walk away from PPL Park with their shutout streak intact?<\/strong> Believe it or not, but the last goal the Revolution conceded was McInerney’s 73rd minute tally back on Oct. 6. Since then, New England has quietly strung together a 286 minute shutout run. Quietly, of course, because shutout streaks are rarely accomplished loudly. But anyway, the backline was fortunate to face a Fire attack that wilted in the final third last week. Say what you will about the Union and\u00a0their goofy Twitter hashtag, but that dude McInerney\u00a0and his boy Sebastien Le Toux don’t miss very often inside the area. And their teammates? They send numbers, and then they send more numbers, or as Kevin Alston told me earlier this week, “they swarm you.” It’s tough to\u00a0picture the Revs withstanding that\u00a0brand of\u00a0blatant disregard for defense\u00a0completely unscathed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t look now, but the Revolution’s MLS Cup hopes may rest squarely on the outcome of Saturday’s early-evening affair in Philly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18519,"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":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Toja1.png?fit=486%2C264&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18514"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18531,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18514\/revisions\/18531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}