{"id":19836,"date":"2013-06-10T18:05:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T22:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=19836"},"modified":"2013-06-18T12:37:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T16:37:14","slug":"five-things-we-learned-revolution-vs-d-c-united-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=19836","title":{"rendered":"Five Things We Learned: Revolution vs. D.C. United"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Revolution<\/a>

Revolution midfielder Diego Fagundez rues a missed opportunity in the second half of Saturday’s 0-0 draw against D.C. United. (Photo: Chris Aduama\/aduama.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Fear not, Revolution supporters: Saturday’s\u00a0morale-deflating 0-0 draw to the downtrodden D.C. United will soon be forgotten.<\/p>\n

Yes, 90 minutes came and went with nary a goal from the local XI. The attack stalled inside the final third. The defense, which has played resoundingly well this season, were\u00a0fortunate that D.C. had so many poor finishers on the field.\u00a0Meanwhile, the\u00a0midfield, to its credit, improved its form after last week’s unwatchable first half. Then again, it’s difficult to give them too much credit when D.C., on the road,\u00a0wins the possession battle in the first half and Lee Nguyen continues to summon his inner Stephen Gostkowski and hits the ball over the bar yet again.<\/p>\n

Now, credit due to D.C.\u00a0 After all, the data suggested that the Revolution\u00a0shouldn’t been troubled to\u00a0score a goal or two\u00a0against the worst defense in the league. That Diego Fagundez and Juan Agudelo would have a field day in front of the D.C. net. And maybe, just maybe, with a little bit of luck, Juan Toja would’ve found his first tally of 2013.<\/p>\n

But Saturday night belonged to Ben Olsen and the husk of the club he guided to 58 points last season.<\/p>\n

For starters,\u00a0his talented, yet supremely\u00a0underperforming side\u00a0came to Foxborough as the hungry Wolff, er, wolf. They\u00a0showed their fangs\u00a0when Fagundez went into the final third. They\u00a0beckoned toward the referee\u00a0when Agudelo attempted to outmuscle a defender. And when Sene sauntered toward the 18, they backed him into a corner. Above all\u00a0else, though, they accomplished something that the Galaxy and Dynamo failed to do in recent weeks: they kept the Revolution off the board.<\/p>\n

Some will say that the local XI were the victims of their own hype on Saturday. That they were overconfident after the 5-0 win over the Galaxy, and the\u00a0back-to-back wins before that.\u00a0There’s no doubt that they\u00a0knew the game against D.C. wasn’t going to be easy. Many of the players said as much afterward. But, to\u00a0a man,\u00a0how do you get the\u00a0blood flowing for a game against the worst team in the league?<\/p>\n

Simply put, there really is\u00a0no way of preparing for the\u00a0current D.C. Uniteds of the world. You just can’t predict what a desperate team will bring to the table. There is no cheat sheet or secret code when a team with nothing to lose knocks on\u00a0the door. All you can do is adjust. Sometimes, the adjustments aren’t drastic enough, and you find yourself backed into the same alley over and over. Other times, your fearless forward gets called for a foul right before your blonde mohawked forward beats the keeper. Both happened to the Revolution on Saturday.\u00a0That both scenes transpired Saturday night was a\u00a0sure sign that there would be no late-game heroics this time around.<\/p>\n

The bitter taste of\u00a0Saturday’s disappointing\u00a0draw won’t last long, though. This game won’t define the Revolution any more than the 5-0 loss the Galaxy suffered a week ago will define them. There will be\u00a0more important games to play as the season progresses.\u00a0A draw to\u00a0Olsen’s lowly squad won’t only be soon forgotten – it’ll probably be inconsequential with\u00a0more than half of the season’s worth of games\u00a0remaining.<\/p>\n

Scoreless draws aren’t often bastions of insight. But we managed to pull a few nuggets from Saturday night.<\/p>\n

1. In hindsight, the five\u00a0goal output from\u00a0the Galaxy game just might have undermined the offense against D.C.<\/strong> On paper, the Revolution blew out the defending champs in grand fashion a couple of Sundays ago. Five goalscorers, one of them\u00a0coming from the red-hot Fagundez, another coming from last year’s leading scorer, and\u00a0two others from the bench. Sounds like a convincing display of firepower, right?\u00a0It was, if you\u00a0that ignore\u00a0two important facts: 1.\u00a0the Revolution played a forgettable first half, with Sene’s goal the exception, 2.\u00a0the three goals at the end were, essentially, garbage time goals with the Galaxy extending themselves for a pair of strikes\u00a0in the\u00a0hopes of\u00a0leveling it. But a five-spot, no matter how it unfolds, is sure to give any offense confidence. Did it make the Revolution attack too confident? It might have. After the game, Juan Agudelo hinted that offense was trying to do the same things they did well against the Galaxy, and even after it was apparent that it wasn’t working, they continued to on the same track. Agudelo suggested that employing a more direct style, especially with him up top, could’ve been the made a difference. It’s possible that the attack simply believed that they’d eventually break through, with Sunday’s performance still fresh in their minds.<\/p>\n

2. Jay Heaps gave D.C. far too much credit in his postgame presser.<\/strong>\u00a0You often have to take what a coach says during a post-game presser with a grain of salt.\u00a0After all, he’s only minutes removed from what is, especially for Heaps, an intense and emotional 90 minutes, regardless of the scoreline. But what Heaps said about how good D.C.\u00a0is reeked of excuse-making.\u00a0True, D.C. is only months removed from a second seed playoff berth. And yes, they still have dangerous players. But\u00a0those same dangerous players have also allowed a league-high 24 goals,\u00a0and\u00a0only have\u00a0six goals of their own. Worse, they haven’t won since March, and have accumulated a league-worst 10 losses this year. The Revolution didn’t draw to the team that picked up 58 points. No matter how you slice it,\u00a0\u00a0the Revolution\u00a0were kept off the board by the worst team in the league, and Heaps simply didn’t want to face that sobering fact..<\/p>\n

3. The fact that the offense failed to deconstruct what was\u00a0a largely\u00a0unexceptional\u00a0D.C. gameplan suggests that the Revolution\u00a0might have forgotten to “turn on the soccer brain,” as A.J. Soares likes to say.<\/strong>\u00a0Although D.C. might be the worst team in the league, you have to hand it to them: they did their homework. They put together a pretty good gameplan to neutralize the Revolution’s best attackers.\u00a0By pushing Fagundez wide, keeping close tabs on Agudelo, and forcing Nguyen to take a shot or make the safe pass, D.C. essentially dared the Revolution to beat them along the\u00a0flanks. And when D.C. wasn’t cornering them, they were cutting them down in the attacking third, which set up some pretty ugly set piece action. The attack countered in the same manner it has for the past six weeks:\u00a0\u00a0interchanging\u00a0spots, with Fagundez and Sene\u00a0switching between the left and right, Sene pressing up and Agudelo dropping back, Nguyen shifting wide when Agudelo dropped back, and so on. But D.C. was clearly prepared for that, too. Agudelo’s suggestion to go more direct could’ve worked. Then again, it might not have. But we’ll never know because seconds before the final whistle, the attack was still trying to show the D.C. different looks, instead of changing the gameplan.<\/p>\n

4. There really aren’t enough positive adjectives to describe the Revolution defense.<\/strong> Say what you will about the way the defense allowed D.C. no fewer than three excellent opportunities to capitalize. Let’s be honest: you can’t be great every night.\u00a0Nevertheless, the Revolution have no one\u00a0to thank for\u00a0avoiding a potential upset than the back four and Bobby Shuttleworth. How good is this defense?\u00a0Statistically, they’re one\u00a0of the best seen in club history. Their 395-game shutout streak is club record. They currently lead the league with nine clean sheets, and Shuttleworth, who wasn’t even the starting goalkeeper at the start of the season, is tied\u00a0for the lead in shutouts (7) with reigning Goalkeeper of the Year Jimmy Nielsen.\u00a0On Saturday, Jose Goncalves and Stephen McCarthy imposed their will on Carlos Ruiz and Chris Pontius. Chris Tierney may have been caught out of position early, but largely manned the left well and provided decent service on the attack. Andrew Farrell may still be a work in progress, but\u00a0he\u00a0helped keep\u00a0Kyle Porter largely anonymous from the run of play.\u00a0Lastly, Shuttleworth snagged a\u00a0dangerous shot from\u00a0Pontius, and continues to organize his defenders well. It wasn’t their best game, to be sure. But it’s telling that even\u00a0when they’re not on top of their game, they’re still pretty darn good.<\/p>\n

5. Even though one point may have felt like a disappointing result,\u00a0Shuttleworth summed it up best: this was the kind of game\u00a0the Revs would’ve found a way to lose last year.<\/strong>\u00a0The Revolution’s ability to “stay in games”\u00a0was a recurring theme last year, as Heaps attempted to return the club to respectability. It was often said that one of the most telling examples of the team’s improvement was its ability to stay within striking distance of their opponent every week (i.e. not get blown out, which is an admirable characteristic, of sorts, if you’re coming off the worst season in franchise history). But even though the Revolution played in a whopping 27 games in which the outcome was decided by a goal or less, the fact is they went 4-15-8 in those games. In other words, they found a way to lose a lot of close games, especially when they hit the skids during the summer. It looked like we’d see more of the same this year, with a a pair of 1-0 losses to FC Dallas and Philadelphia earlier this year. But with the way the defense is playing, the clumsy mistakes are finally starting to disappear. Zero-zero (or nil-nil, if you will) to D.C. may not be the ideal result. But it’s safe to say is that one point against D.C. is a heck of a lot less embarrassing than zero points against D.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It wasn’t pretty, but we went back to look at the tape to pluck out five things worth discussing about Saturday’s 0-0 draw. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19837,"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":[5,115,49,1274],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/DF-14.png?fit=480%2C257&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19836"}],"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=19836"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20092,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19836\/revisions\/20092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}