{"id":35076,"date":"2015-05-23T23:25:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T03:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=35076"},"modified":"2015-05-23T23:29:07","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T03:29:07","slug":"nine-man-revs-hold-on-for-draw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=35076","title":{"rendered":"Nine-Man Revs Hold on for Draw"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

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

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2013 The New England Revolution saw two men ejected with over half an hour left to play, but held on for a 1-1 draw against D.C. United in front of 15,216 at Gillette Stadium on Saturday night. Charlie Davies gave the Revolution the lead in first half stoppage time, but red cards to Chris Tierney and Lee Nguyen in the 52nd<\/sup> and 58th<\/sup> minutes, respectively, put the Revolution on the back foot. D.C., however, wasn\u2019t able to equalize until the 80th<\/sup> minute through Jairo Arrieta and never found a winner as the sides settled for a share of the points.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe practice being down to 10 men,\u201d said Revolution head coach Jay Heaps. \u201cI have to be honest, we don\u2019t practice down to nine men, but we just had a 35 minute session so we\u2019re alright. It\u2019s hard because you\u2019re asking guys like Teal [Bunbury] to cover a lot of ground, Scotty [Caldwell] covered a lot of ground, Jermaine [Jones] played excellent in there. It\u2019s a hard situation but I thought we even had moments to get another goal, but you have to be smart. \u201c<\/p>\n

The draw leaves D.C. United (6-2-4, 22 points) in first place in the East, while New England (5-3-5, 20 points) remains in second.<\/p>\n

After resting several players in New England\u2019s 4-2 loss to Kansas City on Wednesday, Heaps returned to his normal line-up with Bobby Shuttleworth, Chris Tierney, Andrew Farrell, Teal Bunbury and Charlie Davies all back in the starting eleven.<\/p>\n

New England had some chances early, but couldn\u2019t connect on the final pass in the box. It wasn\u2019t until the 29th<\/sup> minute that the match saw its first shot, with D.C. defender Kofi Opare heading a cross well high of the net. New England\u2019s first shot came a minute later on a London Woodberry header that was also off target.<\/p>\n

The Revolution\u2019s first real chance came in the 38th<\/sup> minute when Scott Caldwell sprung Chris Tierney down the left flank. Tierney sent a cross into the box that eluded several players before falling right to an open Lee Nguyen in the right side of the box. Nguyen hit a low shot on frame, but a sliding Opare managed to block the shot.<\/p>\n

Charlie Davies gave New England the lead in the first half stoppage time when a Chris Tierney corner kick was headed on frame by Juan Agudelo. Bill Hamid stopped the shot\u2014the first time either keeper was tested in the match\u2014but the rebound fell to Davies for a tap-in, giving the Revolution a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we thought we could have been up more at halftime but it was nice to get the goal right before half,\u201d said Heaps. \u201cBut I thought we could have been up two and then if you get a red card you could manage a little bit better. But I like what we\u2019re creating. Lets\u2019 be honest, you can\u2019t score every time you create something but if you continue to put teams under pressure and get inside their six and get balls into dangerous areas, you\u2019re going to score and put teams under pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things began to get ugly for New England early in the second half. D.C. gained a man advantage in the 52nd<\/sup> when Tierney was ejected by referee Mark Geiger for a high challenge on Chris Pontius. Then, six minutes later, New England went down another man when Lee Nguyen received his second yellow card and subsequent red for a challenge on Davy Arnaud, leaving DC with an 11 on 9 advantage. The second red marked the first time New England had been reduced to nine men since a 3-0 loss at Sporting Kansas City on August 10, 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the game was a pillow fight up to that point, there was nothing malicious in the game at all,\u201d said Heaps. \u201cAs much as we have to be smart, the referee has to be smart. I don\u2019t think the first one\u2019s a red card. After the red card, we have to be smarter. To be fair to Lee he was fouled first, he was right in front of us. But he\u2019s got to react better and unfortunately he gave the referee a chance. Believe me I thought there was going to be more red cards after that, it was a free for all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, D.C. had the better of the play from there, but still failed to test Shuttleworth until the 80th<\/sup> minute when substitute Taylor Kemp got open on the left flank and sent in a low cross. Jairo Arrieta beat Andrew Farrell to the ball and slotted it past Shuttleworth at the near post to make it 1-1.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew when they brought in Kemp that he was going to whip those balls in,\u201d said Farrell. \u201cIt just takes one miscommunication, one mistake and they tied. But, like coach Heaps said, it\u2019s a great one point.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Revolution were able to keep D.C. at bay for the rest of the match to hold on for the draw, despite holding just 20.3% possession in the second half.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m 100% sure if we play 11 v. 11 we win that game,\u201d said Jones.<\/p>\n

New England returns to action on Sunday, May 31, against the LA Galaxy at Gillette Stadium at 7p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revolution hold on for draw v. D.C. despite playing over half an hour down a man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35077,"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":[4,3],"tags":[891,1274,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/goncalvesvDC.jpg?fit=615%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35076"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35079,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35076\/revisions\/35079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}