Revs Defensive Positional Woes Let Them Down

The New England Revolution almost held NYCFC to shutout on Saturday night before conceding in the 82nd minute, the warning signs were ignored...

Photo By J. Alexander Dolan

The New England Revolution are struggling in all possible measurable ways in all phases of play. They are touching upon historic levels of poor goal-scoring inability and have been magnifying it with poor defending. It’s a situation that can’t continue if the Revs want to avoid being the worst team in MLS in 2024 (and possibly, historically as well).

There has been much said by fans, those of us covering the team, and Caleb Porter about his system of play. But most of that focus has been on the attacking aspects of Porter’s positional system, for good reason, of course, we were promised goals and an exciting style of play. We have received neither.

Nine goals scored in 13 games is not going to get enough points to make the playoffs and when you concede 26 goals from an expected goals against of 25.9 you’re certain to fail. On Saturday night against NYCFC the Revs only conceded one goal — half their average — but some of that is down to luck thanks to some poor shooting and shot selection from NYCFC. They did finally concede in the 82nd minute and the warning signs were loud and clear in the preceding 81 minutes of play.

The Revs tried to ride their luck all the way to the end and take a point. That is not how things panned out. We’ll look at those warning signs and how it all came together to doom the Revs to another night of misery.

Hopefully, Porter can address some of the defensive positional errors this week with yet another full week of training at his disposal. He is halfway through his self-defined second quarter and the returns don’t look good.

The first clip below took place inside of the first minute to open the game and should have had the metaphorical alarm bells ringing. The Revs were scrambling defensively but Nick Lima does well to show the overlapping Kevin O’Toole wide, not over commiting to the ball and leaves him only with the option to play the ball back towards the penalty spot.

Agustin Ojeda meets the ball with a well-struck shot that he has time and space to get his foot through as Matt Polster realizes too late that he’s not tracked Ojeda’s run. Kessler — at great risk to his health — stands tall and blocks the shot and possibly saves the Revs from being down a goal inside of the first minute. This is not the last run Polster will decline to track.

Next up, the Revs are faced with a counterattack in the 23rd minute and are briefly caught out in a 3v3 situation, spare men not being a feature of Porter’s system as we’ve seen before. Mark-Anthony Kaye is well, well out of the play and Polster is hustling back to try and rectify the 3v3 situation. Xavier Arreaga does well here to not commit to the ball and simply delays by keeping defensive angles against both the wide runner and ball carrier. He slows the attack down just enough to allow Kessler and Polster to recover and put some pressure on Monsef Bakrar’s poor shot.

They get lucky that Bakrar doesn’t make a more threatening decision to play one of his teammates and capitalize on the Revs getting caught even numbers at the back. For all of Porter’s positional attacking play wisdom it must be mentioned his idol, Pep Guardiola, protects against being countered as part of his attacking positional play. The attacking structure isn’t just about attacking. The Revs have been hurt defensively in this way plenty this season because of the attacking system’s faults. Anyway, we move on.

The Revs have six players in the attacking half in addition to DeJuan Jones who’s taking a throw-in. The Revs lose the ball quickly and NYCFC starts a counter. Both Polster and Kaye have vacated the central space entirely.

However, Polster does well to cover Jones’ pressing action to try and slow the counter. Kaye, on the other hand, does not recover centrally, a common instruction for central players to do once the ball has gone beyond you. Instead, he back presses towards the ball in a situation Jones’ has covered quite well. The player on the ball has his back to goal and Jones is in the optimal defensive position, he doesn’t need help here. Kaye should be filtering back centrally to cover for Polster.

The midfield duo gets away with it this time and scrambles back to help defend the penalty area. Jones gets sent the wrong the way by Bakrar who takes an under hit shot that Ivacic deals with easily. The central space being left wide open doesn’t cost them in this particular moment.

After an unsuccessful clearance, Keaton Parks gets on the ball centrally under no real pressure and Kaye decides to come out and press him, admirable to do so but he immediately gets beat with a pass to Wolf, who drifted into a central position. Parks, Gray, and Wolf created a 3v2 against Borrero and Kaye. Borrero could be deeper tracking Wolf and we also have to ask why neither Gil or Vrioni is back pressing onto Parks to help alleviate the 3v2.

Bakrar’s poor shot, if you can call it that, once again bails the Revs out of paying for their errors.

Finally, NYCFC has had enough of Bakrar’s poor shooting and Parks decides to take matters onto his own head and deliver the winning goal. All of the Revs’ previous defensive errors show themselves in this game-deciding sequence.

The Revs only have eight players behind the ball and that leaves Ema Boateng caught in no man’s land defensively. He is too far away to apply pressure to Justin Haak, who would be expected to be marked by a central player, and also has Gray out wide to be aware of. He can’t step away from the ball carrier and let him dribble forward nor can he leave Gray open.

This is exactly why teams look to create 2v1s in attack, it puts the defender in a situation where every choice is a bad one. To his credit, Boateng actually just about gets close enough to exert some pressure on Gray’s cross and wasn’t far away from getting a slight touch on it. If he charges in, he leaves the possibility of getting done on the dribble as Gray would have had plenty of room to carry the ball forward.

Polster is initially in front of Parks but he lets him go, unmarked into the penalty area, and points at Parks expecting someone to cover him. The person who should be covering him is the one doing the pointing. But he doesn’t, Arreaga doubles up on Kessler’s mark and Lima can only be blamed for the genetics of his parents not blessing him with more height as Parks nods three points into the onion bag.

You make your own luck and Revs rode theirs until it ran out, making no adjustments defensively along the way. It might only be one goal but when the margins are as tight as they are for the Revs right now it doesn’t take much to put them further into the red.