The Revolution remain unbeaten at Gillette in the 2018 season (2-0-1) after a commanding win over the man-down Montreal Impact. The game was tight until the Impact suffered a red card when Saphir Taïder committed a foul on Luis Caicedo that earned a red card.
The game was tilted completely in the Revolution's favor after the booking and there was no holding back in the Revolution's offensive plans. The Revolution owned the ball and the field position for most of the game and the goals continued to roll in until the final whistle.
Let's look at the starting 11...
The personnel remained the same following last week's game against the Houston Dynamo. It's clear at this point that Brad Friedel has found a core group of players that he trusts to execute his game plan week after week. It surprised Revolution supporters that Friedel began to leave Juan Agudelo, Kelyn Rowe, and Antonio Delamea on the bench during the start of the games in the 2018 season. Those three players together averaged 23.3 games started and 26.6 games played last season, and played big roles throughout. More than half of the players in Friedel's current starting group are either new to the team this year or haven't started a game with the Revolution prior to the 2018 season. It's impressive that Friedel was able to develop the amount of trust in these new players that he has so early in the season and stack up the results that they have earned together.
THREE TAKEAWAYS
Impact were undermanned in more than one way
It came as a surprise to many prior to the game on Friday that the Impact's most dangerous offensive player (Ignacio Piatti) wouldn't be playing because of an injury. I was only able to find one lead as to what the injury could have been. However, it also could have been an injury that the Impact coaching staff didn't want to aggravate on the Gillette turf.
https://twitter.com/GrantNeedham/status/982387058202238976
Also, the Impact obviously played down a man after the red card in the 15th minute. The challenge that earned the red card didn't appear to be malicious. After seeing it live, I was shocked when the referee pulled a red out of his pocket. The replay gave everyone watching a better view of the challenge and then it became considerably more apparent why Jose Carlos Rivero pulled the red.
The first 15'
Before the red card, we got to see what the Revolution looked like against Remi Garde's 5-3-2, and it wasn't pretty. The Impact's formation made it difficult for the Revs to string together any form of possession play and didn't allow the Revs to develop any form of comfort on the ball. The problem for the Revolution with the 5-3-2 is that it can quickly become a 3-5-2, which leaves opposing teams with clogged passing planes and little space to create in the midfield. Let me show you what I mean. In the first image below you can see how the Revolution's 4-5-1 (the blue o's) matches up against the Impact's 5-3-2 (the red x's).
You can see where the Revolution have plenty of lanes to play the ball from their defenders into their midfielders and create going forward. This type of space is more like what we saw in the last 75-80 minutes of the game when the Impact were down a man (minus a forward). The image below is much similar to what we saw out of the Impact in the first 15 minutes of the match. The wing backs played much higher and pressed on the Revolution's midfielders. The defensive positioning and pressure from the Impact forced 14 giveaways from the Revolution before the red card.
Further, take a look at the possession statistics for the first 15 minutes of the game before the red card. It was all Montreal.
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