If Revs Are Direct, Vertical Team, Porter Needs to Prove That Against Red Bulls

The Revs head coach says he wants to play a more direct, vertical style but the numbers (and his previous quotes) say otherwise.

Photo By J. Alexander Dolan

This normally would be the precursor to my usual Know Thy Enemy preview tomorrow (which is still happening, don’t worry), but this is important enough to get its own post.

Okay, let’s actual get the easy part out of the way - I can not stress enough how strongly I agree with Caleb Porter’s quotes about being a direct/vertical team and that’s the exact style I have been begging the team to get into more all season. The Revs thrive on quick, forward play against backpedaling defensives and have done this for years.

Andrew Judd of Revs Nation did a deep dive on pre/early season quotes as well earlier in the week and we have absolutely overlapped on some the numbers and statistics that I’m going to detail and how those quotes have translated into the present but this is maybe a new peak.

Porter said yesterday that he doesn’t want his team to stubbornly play out of the back and not be predictable when the Revs attack. He’s absolutely correct that this is the best way the Revs should be playing and he describes well the process of going long with a purpose rather than just clearing aimlessly. The problem is the eye test says New England absolutely been focused on playing out of the back and we have a lot of numbers to back it up… which makes the pushback from Porter here very strange.

“That is our style. Our style isn't to just stubbornly play out the back. So, if you've been in the meetings that we've had with the players from day one of preseason, it's about playing vertical, ideally on the ground, but having variety to how we move up the field, sometimes softening the press by playing more direct. That goal actually is very much a part of what we talk about. Playing out sometimes through the pressure on the ground, sometimes playing over the pressure, not being predictable, playing vertical, and looking to break lines. You look at that play, we don't just dump it up. We drive it from our goalkeeper, Giacomo [Vriomi] flicks it on, Tomás [Chancalay] runs behind, and now on the second ball, we're driving at the back four. So, I disagree with you about that being our style. That is our style.”

- Caleb Porter on if Tomas Chancalay’s goal at Chicago was created in a way that is at odds with his desired style of play

First, lets take a quick look at the Revs most recent goals in league play this year:

62’ at CHI - Goal kick flicked on by Vrioni, CHI fails to get possession, Chanca collects, drives on goal and goes top bins…also that stoppage time 2v0 against the Fire should’ve been a goal as well.

1’ vs MIA - Interception by Carles, over the top to Chancalay, Chanca chip

45+3’ vs CLT - Midfield turnover, Vrioni carries forward to start a 4v3, pass to Carles, centering pass to Nacho on a trailing run in the near post channel, shot/save, rebound finished by Carles

These are quintessential Revolution soccer goals from a team that used to do them a lot more often than seven goals in eleven games. New England has the fewest goals in the league so far this year but the numbers go deeper than that:

• New England has the 4th worst expected goal (xG) mark according to MLSSoccer.com.

• 4th worst xG mark according to American Soccer Analysis and have not broken 2.0xG in a game this year.

• 6th least vertical team according to ASA (search by “VertF”).

• Per FBref the Revs have made a total of 1418/6583 passes in the attacking third (21.5%) with just 203 being in the penalty box (about 3%) and have an average shooting distance of 18.1 yards and a 5% conversion rate on all shots and just 15% on shots on target.

• Firmly in Opta’s “slow and intricate” attacking style graph thanks to playing the 6th slowest in their direct speed metric as well not having control of most of the central midfield in touches/possession on the same page in the “Zones of Control” sections further down.

Basically what Porter is trying to sell here is snake oil and I’m not buying it. At his introductory press conference Porter touted his past MLS Cup wins with “an aggressive, proactive way of playing, which I believe in” and after the Revs road leg win at Independiente in Panama hailed what could have been a fluid, matchup-orientated style of play instead of the plodding mess that has been the first third of the Revs season. Shout out to Hayden Bird on the last two Boston.com articles linked above.

“We're not going to be a team that's naive, so you won't see every game, us naively laying out. We have to be smart, and we have to look at each game as it comes, but I do want to have control always in a match.”

“I think over time, you'll see that my teams are organized in every phase, and our mentality is always strong, and we usually have a lot of respect for the opponent too, so we'll have a game plan that's respecting the opponent.”

Caleb Porter during Revs media availability February 23rd, 2024

Last month in the midweek pressers after the NYC game Porter talked about getting more of his pieces in and evaluating the roster and also that the Revs were too direct which is impossible on that postage stamp. While it’s impossible to play any kind of clear style at Yankee Stadium, to me this is at least a clear indication that a month ago Porter was still focusing on build up and controlling play with a roster that clearly succeeds and generates goals doing the opposite.

Porter was not hired to rebuild the New England Revolution into a possession/control-orientated team but merely hit the refresh button on a team whose morale was decimated midway through last year that saw them drop from second in the East to a first-round playoff sweep. There shouldn’t be any long-term talk about building up the roster or implementing a style for something that already existed and just needed to be reforged, polished, and/or rediscovered.

It is absolutely understandable however that the Revs season was never likely to get off to a great start without your starting right-hand side of the formation in Dylan Borrero and Brandon Bye combined with a bunch of extra CONCACAF games. All the more reason to focus less on the intricate build from the back possession elements and simplify your gameplans and style to help out a constantly shifting backline/goalkeeper, take the pressure off your backup fullbacks getting a lot of minutes, and having to play your DP winger as a striker more than once.

If Porter is going to be seemingly this defensive about a legitimate question about what the numbers clearly state is his team’s playing style, then go get a result tomorrow. Because if Porter really does think the Revs are this vertical attacking juggernaut then Saturday at the house of horrors known as RBA is a perfect time to prove it.

Lloyd Sam Discusses the Revs' Lineups And Previews Saturday's Game

Because if the Revs are the attacking team I know they can be — and Porter apparently now thinks they are — there’s enough game film from the Red Bulls 6-1 loss to Miami on how to score on them that New England should be able to take advantage of to generate and convert plenty of chances. Neither of which are things I’d call strengths of the Revs this year under Porter. Having more of the ball and controlling the game are two very different things, and last week the Revs had more of the ball in the first half but the Fire absolutely controlled the majority of play.

If this is the soccer team that Porter has coached the first ten games of the year, then the buzzsaw of angry pink cows with wings that got blown out last week is going to steamroll the Revs if they deploy their usual gameplan against an opponent that feasts on slow play and defensive zone turnovers. RBNY might let the Revs have the ball a decent amount in the hope they keep in their half and continue to play slow and methodically right into their counter and press. So if the Revs coaching staff is proactive and respectful of their opponent as they say they are, they should avoid falling into this trap by limiting the number of mistakes in the back by having the ball in the back significantly less.

Winning on the road is just something that doesn’t happen in this matchup, the Revs are 9-24-9 all-time away from Gillette against the Metro Energy Drink Stars. So now amid the Revs climb up to a one-point-per-game average (1.0 PPG) that I talked about in last week’s post, the New England Revolution currently sit at 7 points from 10 games, thanks to a not-so-convincing win over the Chicago Fire which we detailed in our TBM roundtable earlier this week. So by napkin math by the end of the month in three more games, the Revs need two wins/six points out of three games to accomplish that goal of having 14 points in as many games.

This coaching staff needs to prove to me - and probably a lot of the fanbase - that they can execute a game plan and compete against a top-end playoff team in the East. Getting results against a bad Fire team and a win over an inconsistent Charlotte team is not going to get this team out of the basement. they’re going to have to beat good teams and get results on the road. But for now, I’ll start with merely putting up numbers that would be worthy of a solid offensive performance.

There are very clearly strengths to this team that are very clearly being stifled by a myriad of factors, some of which Porter and the team can control and some like injuries they can’t. But under no circumstance should a team with the 2021 MLS MVP and a 50% take on success rate (4th best in the league per FBref) be as horrid as they currently are offensively.

This team should be overly aggressive tomorrow to the point where we should be asking maybe we should tone down the forward passing just a bit. Take-ons should happen early and often from the wide areas especially to the point someone should be commenting the Revs are executing on the dump and chase as often as the hockey Rangers.

And most importantly against RBNY, the Revs should absolutely not be looking to dink the ball around their penalty area and should see significant improvement and quickness from the press breaking/get the ball forward part of the gameplan.

It’s time for the Revs to flip the script and throw out all this early-season nonsense. We’re still waiting for this team to reset itself and play like they were a year ago. That free tempo and getting the opponent on their heels style is somewhere for Porter and his staff to find again consistently and maybe combine it with some elements of this possession stuff Porter does seem to like.

If they are in fact looking for that original style to begin with. Because the numbers and the Revs record so far suggest they aren’t.