New England Revolution Defensive Lapses Doom Team to Defeat

'But no doubt, the last goal can't happen, the first goal can't happen, and those two goals in particular we have to be better on.”

Photo Courtesy of New England Revolution

The New England Revolution’s performance against the New York Red Bulls on Saturday night can be defined by two plays and they both paint the Revs’ back line in a poor light.

Let’s look at the first goal of the game. A long ball goes by Henry Kessler and Xavier Arreaga. It appeared that Andrew Farrell was expecting the ball to be won because the defender was a step behind Lewis Morgan who burst forward and scored the first goal of the match.

Whether it be lack of communication or chemistry, it was an unacceptable goal to allow.

Then there was the final goal of the match. After a rare Giacomo Vrioni away goal, the score was 3-2. While the match neared its conclusion, New England received a burst of life.

Unfortunately, that didn’t last long.

Morgan received the ball which drew Arreaga to press his opponent as the Red Bulls moved quickly on the restart after Vrioni’s goal. Arreaga retreated to cover his space but it was too late as Morgan played a beautiful back heel past Arreaga and to Cameron Harper who scored the stoppage time goal.

I’ll also add that the third goal wasn’t great either. Farrell was beat on the wing while a large gap in the center of the box was left unmarked.

Porter admitted that there were too many mistakes after the loss.

“It's just the moments defensively,” Porter said. “We didn't have to defend much today, but the moments we had to defend today – a simple ball over the top early in the game, we’ve got to drop the lines, track, and cover. The penalty, obviously, you throw that out. I don't think it's a penalty and I'm not happy about that. But the third goal, we get beat on a wall pass and it's cross into the box, they got one guy on three and we don't track that. And then the fourth goal, obviously, we give away a clearance and they are in behind us. So, we didn't defend well enough in the moments, the few moments, we had to defend. When I look at those goals, it wasn't like it came from them doing anything special. It wasn't because they pressed us and countered us like they wanted to do. A long ball, a wall pass cross, we had a million of those and that's a routine play for us to defend, and then the last one was a missed clearance.”

Part of New England’s struggles can be blamed on injuries. DeJuan Jones and Brandon Bye remain out and Ryan Spaulding missed out on the match due to an illness.

This forced Andrew Farrell to play right back while Nick Lima played left back. The Revolution head coach said this was a far from ideal situation.

We lose [Ryan] Spaulding, who is our third left back,” Porter said. “We lose him [to illness] after preparing all week with him in, and so now we've got to shift the right-footed guy [Nick Lima] to left back and then insert [Andrew] Farrell, and we had to do that yesterday. A big part of our plan was once we created the advantage with the three line and broke their pressure, to get our outside backs in a position to cross or roll guys in for chances. I think it fizzled there a little bit with the execution.

“[Andrew] Farrell is a center back playing right back and Nick Lima is not a left back,” Porter later mentioned. “So, I think because you guys are the ones listening to me and trying to decide whether or not this is a good game or bad game, you need to remember that. We're on our fourth left back today and our third right back today, and if we have DeJuan and Brandon Bye or even Nick Lima and [Ryan] Spaulding, I think we would execute a bit better.”

But the performance against the Red Bulls was far from acceptable. if New England performed better defensively, maybe the club would win its third match of the season.

Instead, the Revolution are at the bottom of the Eastern Conference and seems to be staying there for the foreseeable future.