FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – It wasn’t hard to identify what ailed the New England Revolution in last weekend’s 4-2 loss to FC Dallas, and therefore, what could cure them moving forward.
“The glaring negative was costly mistakes,” said head coach Jay Heaps.
In that match the Revs conceded four goals at home for the first time in almost three years, and each goal against could be linked back to a defensive error, whether it was a poor decision or poor execution.
Heaps said that’s been a trend for the Revolution in 2016, as they’ve seemingly been punished every time they’ve slipped up in the defensive third.
“It’s been probably 70 to 80 percent of the goals that we’re giving up are mistakes,” Heaps said. “We’re contributing to the other team scoring rather than limiting their chances.
“I feel like we do a good job of that for 70-80 minutes of the game, but there are moments in the game where we fail to do something and then make a mistake, and then the mistake is compounded.”
It would’ve been easy to blame Saturday night’s issues on a rotating backline – Chris Tierney, Jose Goncalves and Je-Vaughn Watson have all missed time in recent weeks, while Samba made his first MLS start against FCD – but Heaps refused to make excuses.
“Of course you’re going to run into issues when you don’t have the full (complement of) players that you built your team around, but at the same time, we had enough time to work on it,” Heaps said. “We were prepared. I think the guys felt prepared.”
The loss to Dallas was a frustrating follow-up to the previous weekend’s 2-0 victory over the Chicago Fire in which the Revs held their opponent without a shot on target for the entire 90 minutes. On that night New England played a clean game and were rewarded with their third shutout of the season.
“You’ve got to put together a full game and you see that when we do that, we’re a very good team,” said Kelyn Rowe. “Going into Saturday’s game against Seattle, our last home game in a while, we need to make sure we come out and we play well for a full 90 minutes.”
Saturday night’s meeting with Seattle Sounders FC will indeed be the Revolution’s final regular-season home game until July 6, and although Seattle’s attack has struggled this season, Heaps knows that a repeat of last weekend’s performance against Dallas would end with a repeat result.
“We have a little bit of a ways to go,” Heaps said. “We have to be better than we were this past Saturday against a Seattle team that’s coming in here for points.”
