Sweeney: Four takeaways from Bruce Arena's introductory press conference

FOXBOROUGH — The Bruce Arena introductory presser came in at about 25 minutes, give or take a few seconds for those who keep track of such things. Here are our main thoughts and musings:

Brad Friedel isn’t the only one who will be on the players about their mentality

It became a little bit of a running joke during the second half of last season, wondering how many times Brad Friedel would mention the mentality of the Revolution players in any individual press conference. Admit it, you took wagers about it.

So when Arena was asked about how long it would take him, as sporting director — not necessarily as head coach — to assess the roster and see how long it would take him to decide who to keep and who to jettison much in the same way he did with LA Galaxy in 2008; he had taken a blunt axe to the side, gutting it right down to the studs… which is basically what many want him to do with this team.

“I think you know I have plenty of experience in doing this,” Arena replied, “but whenever you're on the outside, you really don't know until you get inside of team so I'll be able to evaluate the roster obviously a lot better as I get on the field with them, get to see the players day in and day out, see the kind of mentality they have, the kind of players they are. And as this is the case with this team and other teams in the league, you know we have until November to make decisions on player contract so I think we're going to take our time, be patient, be smart and evaluating the players that are here, and enable us to make some good decisions as we get towards the end of the year.”

So I have the feeling it’s a safe bet that we’re going to hear more about mentality while Arena is in charge.

Arena doesn’t believe the Revs have to spend like Atlanta United to win

One of the problems Revolution supporters have had for some time is that the Krafts have been rather reluctant to pry open the pocketbook for players; of course, that ended this season with the fees for Carles Gil and last week’s attempted purchase of Paul-José M’Poku.

And what the former regime had done — getting bargains — really, and clearly, hadn’t worked. And one can make the argument that a lot of the designated players New England has signed, with the exception of Jose Goncalves, haven’t been worth the paper their contracts are printed on.

Arena believes, “You can be successful without being the top spender in the league. Follow the history of the league; the team that spends the most money doesn't win every year, and actually, in most cases, they don’t. I think we can be smart about how we spend and still be positioned to be much more competitive and, ultimately, one day, win an MLS Cup.”

So if I were you, I wouldn’t expect Arena to back up the Brinks truck to anyone’s door. I will expect, though, for the Revolution to find the right players. And with the new CBA coming into play next year, we don’t necessarily know what the spending levels for the next five years or so will be.

And the veteran manager believes the Revs can get to the level of the other four teams in our neighborhood.

“That's why I'm here. You know it's not going to happen in the next two weeks but I’m confident of the next couple of years that we can make very good progress and make this team much more competitive than it is today,” he said. “Everything will be here to be successful: the new training facility that will come on board at some point this year, is fabulous. We want to have the energy to be a team that can attract free agents in a league, as well as players from abroad. So I think they're going to be a lot of resources here to allow us to make this team much more successful than it is today.”

This was a “short recruiting process” — and I think Burns got hung out to dry

They came out and admitted that the process wasn't necessarily lengthy. What else did they admit?

“Brian I first talked last week,” Arena said. “And then I spoke with Robert and Jonathan (Kraft) over the weekend, so this has not been a process has gone on a long time. I've known the Krafts since the beginning of this league; in 1996 I remember Mr. Kraft hosting a party for the MLS Cup. So we've gone back a long ways. I've been well aware of the ownership, the organization, the city and all of that. So, when Brian (Bilello) initiated contact a week ago, it wasn't like I had to do a whole lot of work to have some conversations with the right people and understand what the project was and they convinced me that this is something that we can make better.”

So let's work through this: A week ago, Michael Burns was still employed as general manager. He came out on Friday to speak with myself and my colleagues — as I put it in the press conference, “The club threw Michael to the wolves.” — about the change in leadership and how he would be involved in the process to choose Friedel’s successor… and three days later, he’s out of a job.

So… what happened there?

“Bruce wasn’t a reactionary hire,” Bilello said. “It's something we've been thinking about for a long time and so again I don't think there was anything in the short term that made this hire desirable or not desirable. This was someone we really wanted to bring into the organization. I think making those two changes and sort of the order they did and as quickly as it did, part of that was due to the fact that we had to fix the results on the field.

“I think what made frankly this situation with the club so difficult is when you're not having long term results over a period of time, you start thinking about your big picture soccer organization, and making changes there in this case, in the very short term we had a string of holistically unacceptable performances on the field that caused us to say, we have to make an immediate change in the coaching position. Your general manager can't change what's going to happen in two days on the field, but a coach certainly could. And so I said the timeline for everything wasn't something that you can plan out strategically and say this is the order of which we want to make changes and how we want to do it.”

Bilello went on to note that “that timeline might look a little bit weird.”

And it does. Not a lot of that adds up. If Burns was going to be a dead man walking anyway, why wait until Monday? Why, if you were going to make a change regardless, wait until Monday? Why didn’t you relieve Burns of his duties along with Friedel in the same move, or why didn’t you step in front of the cameras instead and not let Burns get obliterated?

And since we found out from Arena that he will report to Bilello, logic tells us that it really should have been Bilello taking those salvos Friday morning.

One other quick takeaway from Thursday...

Arena to get started in the technical area in June: He noted that he “can get a staff together rather quickly.” Interim coach Mike Lapper told me after Thursday’s training session that he has not yet spoken with Arena regarding his potential place in his staff yet. Arena also said that he would lead the team during the game at the Galaxy on June 2, or after the CONCACAF Gold Cup break. “I don’t expect to be on the field Saturday for the game against Montreal, nor do I expect to be on the field against DC United."