{"id":28798,"date":"2014-10-30T10:25:21","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T14:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28798"},"modified":"2014-10-30T10:25:45","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T14:25:45","slug":"tough-task-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28798","title":{"rendered":"Tough Task Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

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

The one team of all teams that the New England Revolution had to face in the Conference semi-finals just had to be the stubborn and similarly-streaking\u00a0Columbus Crew.<\/p>\n

For Revolution fans, there is just one team in the conference that scares them: the Crew. The playoff series features two strong midfields that know how to take over a match. Will the Revolution have it in them to keep pace with the red hot Crew?<\/p>\n

Coming into the 2014 MLS season, both the Revolution and the Crew were both expected to contend, but top-3 finishes weren’t predicted for either of\u00a0them. And when both stumbled along earlier in the season, the prospect of the\u00a0postseason seemed\u00a0like pure fantasy.<\/p>\n

Now, both clubs look to make their dominance felt in the playoffs. While New England relies heavily on Lee Nguyen and Jermaine Jones to power their offense, Columbus looks to young Will Trapp, Federico Higuain and Ethan Finlay. Two different clubs with very different styles of finding the back of the net.<\/p>\n

New England wins matches by dominating the midfield, especially with Nguyen serving as its attacking catalyst. The Revolution\u2019s\u00a0best kept secret is out,\u00a0and every team from here on out knows that Nguyen is the life blood to the Revolution\u2019s success. Can New England only rely on Nguyen alone\u00a0to make their MLS Cup dreams a reality? Absolutely not.<\/p>\n

Columbus is a team that is hard to score against, especially at home. The Crew allow an average of\u00a00.9 goals at home and see a substantial shift when on the road,\u00a0where they leak through an average of\u00a01.6 goals. Those figures do not play well into New England\u2019s favor going into the first leg at Columbus.<\/p>\n

Another worrying thought: New England concedes an average of 1.9 goals against on the road, while Columbus averages 1.6 goals scored when playing at home. When the two clubs met back on September 20, New England went into Columbus, and\u00a0were blanked by\u00a0squad that dominated them from start to finish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One bright spot\u00a0from that 1-0 loss at Crew Stadium:\u00a0the play of\u00a0goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth, who kept the Revolution\u00a0close by making a slew of incredible saves. If Shuttleworth steps up and makes big plays on Saturday, the\u00a0his team has a good chance of getting the best of the Crew in their second\u00a0trip to the league’s original soccer specific stadium.<\/p>\n

The two players that New England must contain throughout the playoff series are, without question,\u00a0Finlay and Higuain.\u00a0Both tallied 11 goals and 7 assists\u00a0in 2014. On top of their incredible success, Finlay emerged as one of the top up and coming\u00a0attacking talents\u00a0in MLS.<\/p>\n

Considering his success already, Finlay will continue to grow and become a premier striker for years to come. Do not think that Higuain is the main focus of the Crew attack, because Finlay will\u00a0warrant a lot of attention from the Revs defense.<\/p>\n

New England face an uphill battle against a talented and largely\u00a0underrated Columbus squad. The Eastern Conference playoffs present more excitement this year than the Western Conference, due to their being five solid contenders rather than just a two-team battle for conference\u00a0supremacy.<\/p>\n

The west only have the LA Galaxy and Seattle Sounders, while the\u00a0opposite conference\u00a0is an incredible toss-up. If New England beat the Crew in the conference semi-finals, no team can stand in their way. Columbus present the biggest challenge, and will demand perfection from the Revs in order to defeat them.<\/p>\n

Prediction: New England-4, Columbus-3 (on aggregate)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Baxter Colburn likes New England’s chances, but knows full well that the Crew present a tough challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":28932,"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\/2014\/10\/Chris-1.png?fit=479%2C257&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28798"}],"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\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28798"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28935,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28798\/revisions\/28935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}