Brad Friedel noted Tuesday he “expected a little bit different” than what he and the Revolution supporters saw this past weekend, when New England fell, 2-0, to Atlanta United.
The reason? Look back one week prior to the match against Columbus.
“I thought the Columbus performance, as far as effort and defensively away from home, and the way that we even controlled portions of the ball with 10 men, and a little bit unlucky with how we conceded the goal, there were a lot of positives from the game to take out. So, I expected a little bit different from the Atlanta game,” Friedel said prior to training Tuesday morning. “We knew Atlanta had their backs to the wall. Of course, they hadn’t won all season. Give credit to them — they came out and they closed us down and we didn’t respond, so now it’s up to us as a staff, again, to regroup the guys and get us going. We have two really important home games coming up that we have to get maximum points from.”
The Revs will host New York Red Bulls at Gillette Stadium on Saturday. The Red Bulls are coming off a 2-2 draw with Sporting Kansas City on Sunday night, and currently sit ninth in the Eastern Conference (1-3-2, 5 points) entering the weekend.
“I thought they performed very well against Kansas City,” Friedel continued. “When I was watching the game, they closed down Kansas City. They didn’t allow them to play. I thought they were a little bit unfortunate to come away with only the one point in the game. I assume they’re going to come here and have the same exact tactics. They’re going to try to high press all over the field and get in the face, and it’s important that we move the ball much quicker than we did against Atlanta when they were pressing us.”
Against SKC, New York only had 39 percent of the ball and yielded only 6 on-target shots out of 20. The Red Bulls also blocked seven shots, and notably that, came up with 32 clearances against the Wizards — so this is a defense that is used to doing the same thing that Revs’ opponents to date have done to keep The Boys In Blue off the scoreboard.
This week in the Revolution changing room, it will be about re-grouping and trying to end this 208-minute scoreless streak they find themselves mired in.
Friedel notes that if his club can register a win against New York — and then another against Montreal next Wednesday — it can start turning things around.
“It’s only seven games into the season – there’s a lot of points on the table, and back-to-back wins changes a lot of things and a lot of people’s mentalities. So, it’s very important that the staff stays positive and very important that the players in there stay positive,” he said.
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Delamea and Diego Fagundez stopped by the New England Aquarium on Monday, as part of the club’s environmental initiatives — Earth Day is coming, by the way. ... Interesting to note the Revs hadn’t lost a home game by multiple goals since Aug. 20, 2016, when they lost, 2-0, to Columbus — until this season, where they have three multiple-goal losses at The Fort. ... Drew Fischer is slated to be this Saturday’s referee in the middle against the Red Bulls. ... We’ll be watching film on New York Wednesday night and Thursday morning, so we’ll talk about them during Soccer Weekend. Supposed to be a wet night, by the way. ... Revolution Recap podcast co-host Sean Donahue posted this on Twitter Tuesday — and I know, somewhere Jim Mora is giving me the side eye — that FiveThirtyEight has the Revs’ playoff chances at 22 percent. At SportsClubStats.com, they have the Revs’ playoff chances at a smidge under 12 percent. ... We want to give our peeps at Boston City FC a quickie shout-out: season tickets for the Lions’ seven home games are now on sale. Their first home game is Saturday, May 4.