FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – The road to the postseason may go through, well, the road.
Five of the New England Revolution’s remaining nine regular-season games are away from home, beginning with this weekend’s trip to PPL Park to face the Philadelphia Union. The Revs will also visit Toronto FC, the Montreal Impact, Chicago Fire and New York City FC in the next two months.
New England’s home form has been as consistent as the sunrise; they’ve gone 15-1-7 in Foxborough since last July, their only loss coming in a match they played shorthanded for almost 70 minutes.
But points have been hard to come by on the road. Since a 2-1 win on their last visit to PPL Park the Revs have gone 0-6-2 away from home, managing just two road points since mid-April. Comparatively they’ve racked up 21 points at home during that same stretch.
It’s a trend head coach Jay Heaps is hoping to reverse through the season’s final two months.
“You hope you have the same overall mindset (on the road) and that you go in and prepare the right way,” Heaps said. “If you go about it the right way and you plan properly and you set the team in the right way – right line of confrontation, right way of going about the game – you feel that you have a chance every time you step on the field.”
The Revolution’s struggles on the road are, of course, not a problem unique to New England. In fact, the club’s 2-8-2 road mark this season puts them just behind the average compared to the rest of MLS.
Only one team in the entire league – the Vancouver Whitecaps at 7-5-2 – has a winning record away from home, and a staggering 80 percent of clubs have at least three more losses than wins on the road.
“MLS, if you look at it, it’s hard to win on the road,” said Heaps. “It’s just kind of a natural statistic in our league – or an unnatural statistic – but the away team definitely has an uphill battle.”
That’s a hill the Revolution will be attempting to climb on Saturday, and despite this year’s struggles on the road, they’re buoyed by recent history. They’ve won on their last two visits to PPL Park and are unbeaten in their last five trips to BMO Field, where they’ll visit TFC in two weeks.
“Philly’s a tough environment to go into – that place can get rocking,” said goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth. “We’ve gone there and we’ve gotten results before; we got a result earlier in the year.
“So I think we can rely on those experiences and try to go into Saturday knowing that we’ve done it before, and what this group is capable of and try to put our best performance and get three points.”
