Sweeney: Four takeaways from Saturday's dastardly draw with DC United

FOXBOROUGH — Chugging Mountain Dew and prepping for the light show that’s sure to come when I get on 495 North; just have to get through the takeaways, of which there are four this week, and then I can spend the next half an hour in the car…

Don’t let me be alone in feeling gutted for Brandon Bye

You’ll notice in the Match Report that I didn’t mark Brandon Bye down for the late handle against DC United Saturday night. It was a costly handle, of course, given that Wayne Rooney, otherwise kept in-check (more on that in a second), buried the 90th-minute peno to level the score at 1-1. And sure, it would have been well within my rights to do just that. After all, I marked Matt Turner down, and I’ve done the same to Michael Mancienne in the past.

The difference here? Take Bye’s entire game into consideration. Watch the way he defended Wazza in front of The Fort in the first half — Rooney was set up more on Bye’s side than up the middle like he was in the second half; Bye had two good defending moves against the old man — and the all-important slide tackle in the 63rd minute, just as Lucas Rodriguez went tippy-tap into the box.

That tackle was well-timed: if it’s too early, Rodriguez can easily avoid the move and still get closer to Brad Knighton and score, and if it’s too late, well… Rodriguez is clattered, Dave Gantar points to the spot, Bye is shown at the very least a yellow, maybe even a straight red, the Revs would be down to nine men, and Rooney, of course, converts the pen.

And by rights, the penalty he did allow was by the letter of the law a penalty: he made himself bigger on that play. Yes, he was protecting the melon. Still a penalty no matter which way you look at it.

So yeah, it wouldn't have been fair to mark him down. He had a phenomenal game and is really coming into his own.

Five points out of nine since The Sacking

So that’s three matches since the debacle in Chicago, and for the third match since the Revs relieved Brad Friedel of his duties, New England has claimed — at the very least — a point in all three. While the point Saturday should have been three, we can still take that as a positive result.

Why, you ask? Did you really think that after going down to 10 men that the Revs had a chance to get one? With one less player on the pitch, DC was going to feed Rooney or Luciano Acosta with regularity and put this match to bed. They did the first part. They didn’t do the second.

And ask yourself this: you thought that’s what would happen, the second part. You’ve been conditioned by this club to expect the worst; seriously, if I were to say Atlanta 7-0 Revolution, you’d have your psychiatrist send me the bill for the next session.

So think about it. Five points out of nine, getting the Revs to 13 on the season — and there are plenty of people out there who didn’t think the club would get to 20 by the end of the season. Had the Revolution won, that would have been seven out of nine, and nearly doubling their take through the first 12 games.

We’ll take the positives where we can get them, right?

Mike Lapper really liked the way they came out of halftime — and so did I

Let’s call a spade a spade and say that the offense sucked in the first 45 minutes Saturday night. It’s OK, I checked with the boss, we can say that. Four shots taken, two blocked, two off-target. I happened to think that in the first 45, the Revs tried to do too much offensively, and tried to force it into the box, much like John Candy tried to force all of the Old 96er into his gullet in The Great Outdoors (Classic Candy).

It took until the 47th minute of the game for the Revs to register their first shot, by Brandon Bye. About 15 minutes later, they got their second — Juan Agudelo’s goal.

In between those two events, New England didn’t necessarily have more of the ball — they were just peckish, and they did quite a bit of harassing Bill Hamid’s penalty area. It was an eye-opener.

And so I asked Mike Lapper about it in the post-match press gaggle: “In those five or 10 minutes, something clicked; it looked like there was a little bit of piss and vinegar in the attack in those first five minutes."

Lapper said this in response: “Our press wasn’t very good, and I had to sort that out; that was an easy fix. I think it was just motivation; we challenged them again in the locker room. (The first half) wasn’t good enough, and a lot of bounces weren’t going our way for some reason… it just wasn’t settled. Once we got settled, like you said, second half it looked a lot better. Confidence goes a long way.”

So how does Lapper or Bruce Arena approach the Open Cup in terms of who gets the start in keep in two weeks?

Lapper said in the San Jose post-match press conference that Matt Turner was his guy until he proves he isn’t.

Wel l… I’m not saying that Turner won’t be the guy moving forward, especially when Bruce Arena takes over; I do know that Arena will have his first media availability on Tuesday, and maybe he’ll address how he wants to deploy personnel then.

But with Turner suspended for the flight to SoCal on Friday afternoon, that will mean either Brad Knighton — and seriously, what a solid effort by Knighton Saturday; I could have put him up, too — or Cody Cropper in goal against the Galaxy Sunday night (spoiler alert: I’d put down a fiver on Knighton, but that’s just me).

And with Sunday the last game before the US Open Cup game some nine or 10 days later, depending on Thursday’s draw, it leads me to ask: what will Lapper or Arena do for the goalkeeping situation in the Fourth Round? Do you start Cropper to give him additional minutes? Do you stick with Knighton? Or do you put in Turner given that it’ll be nearly two-and-a-half weeks since his last start?

Really, this may keep me up tonight … either that, or the Mountain Dew.