Dave Romney: “I Have Confidence In Literally Every Player On Our Team"
“We lost a lot of quality with our injuries, but that’s why we have such a deep roster."
The New England Revolution will face a massive test in the coming weeks but they are confident they will respond well.
Carles Gil, Matt Polster, and Brandon Bye all went down with injuries in New England’s loss to the Philadelphia Union. On Tuesday, Bruce Arena gave updates on Bye and Gil along with Gustavo Bou who has missed the last four games.
While Gil was out on the pitch at training, Arena said that he wasn’t necessarily in training. The head coach and sporting director also said that Bou was working on his fitness and running/
When it comes to Bye, the comments from Arena indicate that he could miss some time. Arena described him as being evaluated on a weekly basis.
“[Bye] has a shoulder injury. We’ll look at it on a weekly basis,” the head coach and sporting director said.
On top of all these injuries, Henry Kessler will be out for the foreseeable future after having hamstring surgery, Dylan Borrero is out for the rest of the season, and Tommy McNamara and Nacho Gil remain out.
The depth of the Revolution roster was already being tested and now it is being pushed to the limit. While this might have some fans nervous, Dave Romney and Bobby Wood have faith in their teammates.
“I have confidence in literally every player on our team to come in and perform, so I’m not too worried. Carles [Gil] is obviously a tough guy to replace, but we have a lot of young guys who are playing well, and a lot of the young guys can step in and do well. I’m not too worried,” Romney said.
“We lost a lot of quality with our injuries, but that’s why we have such a deep roster,” added Wood. “Everybody has to step up and get that rhythm again. That’s all it is, we have to find out rhythm and move forward.”
On top of injuries, New England has to deal with playing three matches in the span of eight days. The stacked schedule begins on Saturday with a matchup against the Chicago Fire followed by a mid-week matchup against Atlanta United.
With the Revolution on the brink of a three-game losing streak, this could be a season-altering slate of games for the club. Losses could see New England start to drop down the table but wins would show that the Revs are able to dust themselves off the canvas after being knocked down.
“It’s tough because this is our second test essentially,” Romney said. “We had the first test in LA [Los Angeles Football Club], which was a horrible game, and we had an amazing run of eight unbeaten games after that. This little road stretch of two losses in a row is the next test we have to see how we respond to. The first time we responded well, and I expected all of us to respond the same way we did after LA.”
Wood stressed that the team needs to take things one game at a time. While it might be easy to look ahead to a matchup against World Cup champion Thiago Almada, New England will need to keep focus on the match against the Fire.
“We take it a game at a time,” the striker said. “Right now, we’re only focused on Chicago, and we have to step it up and that’s it. We’re not going to look at the three games in eight days type of thing. We’re just going to focus on Chicago and then will move on to the next one after that.”